Thoughts Jar

I saw a movie once with Paul Newman and Sally Field called Absence of Malice. The plot involved the relationship that evolved between Field’s reporter character and Newman’s character, who is a suspect in a the disappearance and possible murder of a union official. As the story unfolds and their relationship becomes more intimate, Fields has to decide what information she reports about Newman to the public. She follows him and sees him do things that point toward his guilt but is what she sees really what’s happening and how does she report it?

I always think about this movie when a story breaks or a video goes viral that claims to be “the truth” about a person or event. Just because it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck doesn’t necessarily mean it is indeed a duck. Just because something is accurate doesn’t mean it’s true. If you’ve ever been caught in a completely innocent situation that doesn’t appear to be innocent, you know what I’m talking about.

So, how do YOU decide what to believe in this age of information overload? BEWARE SNAPSHOTS AND SOUND BYTES…