# Chapter 328

Things aren’t as bad as the news casts are telling you that they are, I mean listen to the tone they use, that tone that screams “emergency” “dire warning” and “urgency”. It is their primary method of keeping you from changing the channel or turning them off. When someone, anyone, constantly is using this tone of voice, their believability drops a corresponding amount. Yet I watch everyone’s anxiety ramp up with each word coming from the news caster’s mouth. The news basically throws gasoline on every spark they can find, hoping for great ratings and a good fire. Things aren’t as bad as they are making them sound and the motives and focus of the people and events they are “reporting” on aren’t anywhere near what that news caster is telling you.

Let me tell you one of my own personal experiences with the media. When I was a young clergyman in Leesburg Florida, one Saturday I was in the barbershop with four others, waiting my turn in the chair. There was the barber, me, a reporter and a local shop owner. The subject turned into a mildly ribald discussion about the color pink and why men should never wear pink. We laughed and laughed and had a men’s moment. Imagine my surprise when most of my contribution to the men’s moment showed up in the Orlando Sentient’s Sunday morning edition newspaper! But not one single quote was in the context in which it was shared. Read that again. Yeah exactly. Each quote was framed to put me in the worse possible light and to keep readers diligently on that page reading. That was 35 years ago and the “news” is far worse now than it was back then and that was bad enough.