The Truth of the Matter - Sources

 X+Y: The Truth of the Matter - Sources

by Shawn K. Inlow

"Local authorities say they have solved a robbery that occurred last winter at the Altoona Quickie-Go.

Police say Roberto Dominguez, 27, of Miami, Florida, appeared before local police and confessed to the crime which occurred during an overnight snow storm more than a year ago, last January 7th.

He was arraigned and lodged in Blair County Prison without bail on charges of robbery, recklessly endangering another person, and multiple counts of theft, receiving stolen property, theft of a motor vehicle and drug charges."

This fictitious police story you might see in the newspaper, or hear on television or local radio, would seem to be true.  But today, I'm going to take you on a journey of critical thinking where you need to sharpen your wits and try to separate the truth from the fiction.

You ready?

One listener who hears this story might think nothing more about it and take it at face value.  Another reader, who is perhaps more of a critical thinker, might get involved with the story and take it a bit further.

"Wow," might go this reader's line of thinking.  "A guy from Miami robbed a convenience store during the holiday season over a year ago in a town more than 1,200 miles from his home.  That's incredible."  

And they might just leave it at that because they're busy and have things to do.  But the second individual has heard and responded to the story in a way that shows curiosity, a good habit for your mental hygiene.

A third reader of the same story might go one better still.  He might ask one of the questions that would have really made the story much more thorough and interesting.  This third reader asks the question why.

Why?  There is a point in every toddler's life where they ask their parents this question.  Sometimes to an absurd degree.  But it is often because that toddler wants to know the answer.  Somehow, in our lives, as we grow older and we think we know everything, we stop asking that very important question.  We get lazy.  We stop being curious.

The reporter who wrote the blurb did a good job.  They attributed the story to a source: "Police."  This means the reporter is not making any assertions of his or her own.  They are telling you that the police are the source of authenticity in this bit of news.  But the reporter is not asking a really important question that reader #3 wants to know.

"Why would someone drive 1,200 miles to rob a convenience store?  There has got to be a good story behind that."

Okay.  Let's take stock.  So lesson 1 here at X+Y:  If you encounter information that does not have "attribution," that is, at least one, but preferably many, sources, you need to hold up and check that information out.  Do me the favor the next time you're looking at news on television or in a newspaper and go through and count how many sources are cited in that information.  More sources, and the more reliable (Credibility will be next week's topic.) they are, make the information you are hearing more likely to be true.  Remember, we're after the truth.

So now we can assess that the reporter, perhaps has not done a "good" job, but, perhaps, a "half-job."  They have not lied to you, but maybe they were on deadline and they didn't have time to ask all of the famous five W's (who, what, where, when and - crucially - why).  But they got four of them.  In this case, you can go and ask the police yourself.  You can go to the preliminary hearing or trial.  You've got a foot in the door of this story.  But the reporter didn't give you the goods, did he?

Often, a reporter will acquire the criminal complaint and affidavit of probable cause; documents where the police say in particular that they believe the defendant committed the enumerated crimes and provide the particulars (or probable cause) which make these allegations "true and correct to the best of my knowledge under penalty of law."

When a reporter attains the charging documents, the why of the story often begins to come into focus.  The story becomes more detailed and interesting.  Now, the story might read differently.

"Local authorities say they have solved a robbery that occurred last winter at the Altoona Quickie-Go.

Police say Roberto Dominguez, 27, of Miami, Florida, appeared before local police and confessed to the crime which occurred during an overnight snow storm more than a year ago, last January 7th.

According to the Affidavit of Probable Cause, police say Dominguez appeared on station driving a car reported stolen from Miami.  Dominguez said he'd hoped to reconnect with a former lover from Juniata, but that he had died of AIDS.

Dominguez was arraigned and lodged in Blair County Prison without bail on charges of robbery, recklessly endangering another person, and multiple counts of theft, receiving stolen property, theft of a motor vehicle and drug charges."

Now, the story has begun to fill in some blanks.  The defendant appears now to have stolen a car in Florida in a desperate attempt to re-connect with someone he loved.  The story even attributes this fact indirectly, saying that this fact was part of the defendant's confession to the crime he'd committed a year ago.

In the space of two sentences, the entire scope of the article and the way the reader might react to it has changed.

Now, the critical thinker is thinking any number of things.  Is the defendant also an AIDS patient?  Did he come north because of health reasons?  The defendant has been charged with drug offenses.  Is the defendant a drug dealer?  Why did the defendant drive into a police station and give himself up?  Did he need health care that prison might offer?  If he was a drug dealer, did he need to vamoose out of Florida for his own safety?  Finding his former lover deceased and having nowhere to turn, was prison the only safe place for him?

Now the story is getting more and more riveting.  Those pesky questions "Why?" and those who ask them assiduously (like that three year old) are the people who ought to be news reporters.  They are the people who ought to be police officers and detectives.

You might have a man arrested for crimes.  And that might be true.  We are, after all, looking to sharpen your ability to tell the truth from untruth.  But good journalists and the best police detectives want something more.  They want "The whole truth and nothing but the truth."  Because the more curious your mind, the more questions you ask, the more the story evolves.

Here at X+Y, we want you to go there.  When you get an information, turn it over in your head, think it through.  Ask who, what, where, when and why.  Be bold!  Ask how!

Right now, in our story, we have one source, the police, and one indirect source, "the defendant."  Who else would you ask questions of to get everything you could from this four paragraph story?  I'm betting, if you ask the right questions, if you are a critical thinker, it starts to get pretty exciting.

I'm asking you to do what good editors do in a news room.  I'm asking you to do the kind of thinking a police detective does.  Then, when you get prospective answers, what do you do with those?

This is why I revile at the very idea of "fake news."  This is something I fight to destroy.  And you should too.

You should know now to look for attribution in your news.  You should know to look for sources in your news.  And you should look for motive in your news; that ever present why and how lurking behind the scenes in every bit of information.  If you do so, you're on the road to critical thinking and strong mental hygiene.

Next week, we'll take a look at the idea of credibility.  This is a quality that a source has.  Once you're counting up the sources in a story, then you have to weigh those sources' credibility.  This is where the equation gets tricky and even a sharp cookie can get thrown off the track.

Thanks for reading this Thursday.  We post here every Thursday on X+Y and you're welcome to dip in and catch up with the class.  We're only in Week #4 here.  

I'd like to also invite you to my writing over at LaunchPad Press, where I write on culture, art, entertainment, and you can even read my Father's daily diary from 1979 that I found.  It's a treat.  I publish over on LaunchPad Press on Saturdays.

AAANNND finally, if you're just down for a little inventive reading, I'm publishing a serialized science fiction novel, called "Solid," over on Substack.  I publish a new chapter there every Tuesday and it's a good deal of fun.  It's all free (though you can toss me a cookie, if you like).  I'm a busy writer letting it all hang out.  So if you need your X+Y, your LaunchPad Press AND your CultureAndCriticism, I can pretty much get you through the week!

Until Saturday, when we meet over at the LaunchPad, Enjoy!