MY MOTHER WAS RIGHT!

by Audrey

This is a follow up to yesterday's blog.  I received an email that reprimanded me and has prompted me to defend my words. 

The ultimate point of the blog yesterday was:  "DO NOT BE GULLIBLE AND BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT YOU READ OR HEAR."

Yesterday's blog was not primarily about McChrystal and his resignation.  It was about the credibility of a writer, Michael Hastinhgs, who admits to devious methods of obtaining stories, being biased in his journalism, and has questionable moral values in life.  It has blown my mind that a "writer" such as Hastings could bring down a man who graduated from West Point in 1976 and has spent his entire life in service to our country, fighting for our freedom.  THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE.

When I was growing up and I questioned something I heard or read, my mother would always respond, "Consider the source."

The email that prompted this blog was from a friend who holds a pretty high office in the government.  Does she have bosses over her that are perfect?  Is it a perfectly managed department?  As I said, we are friends.  What if I attempted to get closer to her, to the point that she might share some intimate details about her job because she thought she could trust me.  What if I questioned some of the people that work with her and their feelings about the department?   What if I deviously made it my business to solicit complaints from her and her peers about their superiors, thinking she/they were just "talking off the cuff" about some imperfections in the department.

What if I wrote a magazine article, naming her and her department, and slammed her with what I had learned.  What if I creatively "spun" the information to make her and the others look as bad as possible.  What if I wrote a letter to her immediate superior and related all of the information that I had gathered about her and her coharts?  What if she were asked to resign based on what I had wrote about her?  Would this be the proper way to handle the situation?

In such a situation, wouldn't an inquiry to ascertain the truth be in order?  What if everything turned out to be the truth?  Wouldn't a reprimand be in order instead of the resignation of such a valuable employee?

I repeat...maybe McChrystal needed to go...but I question how it came about.  Apparently, the "pen is mightier than the sword" and that scares the heck out of me.  While I am a blogger myself, the Internet is full of bloggers who deliberately lie and/or twist the truth and gullible people are drawn in by their rheortic. 

Advice for the gullible:  Writers are creative.  Writers are capable of twisting the truth.  Writers can be biased and slant the truth.  Writers can outright lie about a person or a subject.

Please don't misunderstand me!  I am not saying that all writers are capable of high jinks in journalism.  Where would we be without writers?  We would not know what was going on in the world.  I am still niave enough to believe that most writers stick to the code of ethics of "truth in journalism" but I agree with my mother, "consider the source" when you are forming an opinion about something.  In other words, use your brain/head for more than a "hat rack" which is another famous saying by my mother.

Michael Hastings may have cut his own throat in obtaining future interviews.  If anyone is stupid enough to allow him to follow them around for an interview, they may get what they deserve. 

This email friend suggested that I stay out of the workings of the government and contain my writings to the oil spill, which is practically at my front door since I live on Dauphin Island, Alabama.  She will probably not like what I am about to say in the next blog concerning the oil spill.