Every day, we encounter liars and master manipulators. Social media influencers, vloggers, and journalists often have agendas. Each of us needs to assess whether someone has a bias and a reason for the narrative they are attempting to paint. Ask yourself questions like these.

• 1. Which side of the left/right paradigm is this speaker on?
• 2. Is this statistic I’m being shown accurate in its depiction of facts?
• 3. Is this person leaving out essential data or information?

1. The left/right paradigm is misrepresented in the media and on the internet all the time. To put this into perspective we must first establish what being on the left means and what it means to be on the right.

If being on the far-left indicates that someone is an anarchist and far-right suggests that another is totalitarian in nature than this would be an excellent place to start. Some would ask, “Who in their right mind believes in being ruled by absolute authoritarianism,” and wouldn’t blame them for pointing this out. In this case, the ruling authority would be the authoritarian ones. There are many examples of this type of authority. Nazi Germany, China, North Korea, Modern Russia etc. But let’s not go off into a tangent, this is a subject on its own for a later time. To keep it brief Socialism is common in a dictatorship like Nazi Germany (NAZI means National Socialism), and North Korea under Kim Jong Un. If you didn’t know that you do now.

On the other side is the far left, which would be closer to Anarchy on the spectrum. Isn’t it funny how we hear Far-Lift and Far-Right here in the US? Most of the time, the right-wing wants less government, and the left wants more. So now you see the false paradigm we experience in America through the media, the internet, etc. You’re either left or right, and we’ve lost what that means in our day and age.

2. Again, look for the false paradigm. This could also be a subject, so I’ll keep this brief. Think about the voting polls we hear about in the news. One month, Trump will be leading, and the next, Kamala will take the lead. The media can manipulate this data by only asking specific population segments. Ask yourself this when you see a poll result. “Why didn’t they ask me.” The groups taking these polls could get their data from Twitter but leave out Facebook. Twitter users tend to be younger, while Facebook is more popular among the boomer generation. If CNN takes a poll on this, most people will know who would be more popular among their viewers. This goes for other polls, not just presidential ones. Yet it serves as a reminder that the data you see isn’t always accurate. Once this subject is covered in more detail I’ll find better examples.

3. Leaving information when presenting a story, whether it be about a Story or a Public figure’s life or scandal, is another way of manipulating the public perception. News coverage sometimes adds misinformation to a case to make a party look more guilty than they are. Take a look at the Karen Read case from this past year. Some time ago, a news organization reported that they had Ring cam footage of Karen hitting John O’ Keefe, who she is accused of killing with her car after a night of drinking, then leaving the scene. No such footage was presented at trial, and in all likelihood, it doesn’t exist. I could go on and on with many different examples but I’d like to visit this topic at a later date.

Now that I’ve given you a few keys to the deception I feel takes place every day in the media, I expect that those reading this can research this themselves more extensively. This was only meant as a small taste of the kind of lies we see every day from not only the media but also podcasters, social media influencers, vloggers, journalists, etc.