Where you gonna go?

"Well then, where can you go to get the right news?"

Ted asked me that a few weeks ago. He's a tall drink of water, older, seen a lot, was a Marine quite a long time ago, qualified to be on anyone's Nicest Guy in the World List. He's married to a wonderful woman, and they both run the country's oldest Wild Horse Sanctuary. Diane founded the sanctuary, and Ted has kept it up and running, using his long experience as a power guy -- working with bigtime power, that stuff that runs along poles with transformers the size of Volkswagons, pushing enough electrons along the wire to make it hum -- to do amazing things, like take their house almost entirely off the grid. They're both christian, not the unbending, you-ain't-nothing-if-you-ain't-my-type evangelical christian, but the believing in God and reading the bible and living by the tenents and actions that go along with that kind of belief. They're just dang good people.

I always have wonderful conversations with Ted, always have a pleasant exchange of opinions or insights. For a few years there, he'd ask me about a certain ex-king of pop,had I heard this, or did I know about that, because years ago I'd worked with said fallen king. Ted wanted to talk about ex-pop king not because he had that kind of Access Hollywood need to know, but because, as much faith as he had about the innate nature of our humanity, he found it had to believe that someone could 'be' the way that the fallen king was; he liked to hear my impressions because I at least had interacted with the guy.

A few weeks ago, we're hanging out on the front porch, talking about this and that, and a couple of current topics came up: intelligent design and WMD. (I'll write up the intelligent design conversation in a few days). Ted couldn't, and in all likelihood still doesn't, believe that Sadam didn't have WMD. It was his personal belief, strongly held. My wife's nephew Evan, between his second and final year of law school, was up there with us, and he was part of the conversation. Ted was "pretty sure" he'd heard that they'd found at least some WMD. All of this ocurred before the Rick Santorum hyperbolic incident about the 'discovered' pre-Gulf War, degraded nerve agent report last month.

We talked, went over some of what was found, and about what's never been found.

Let me time shift a bit here: the week after this conversation, Frontline did a solid report on the now thoroughly discredited intel about WMD that got us into the Iraq mess. I'm getting a copy for Ted. Ted found it hard to believe that Sadam didn't have something, and we discussed that while intent and money may get someone like Sadam a lot of nasty things, there are certain controls around the globe that make it REALLY, REALLY, REALLY DIFFICULT to acquire the technology to design, assemble and use the kind of WMD that Sadam dreamed about. At the end, Ted may not have been convinced, but it remained a personal thing, and we all hold some kind of secret personal beliefs that we keep to ourselves, for all sorts of reasons. That's when he asked, ""Well then, where can you go to get the right news?"

Short, tough question, really. It is hard, I responded, it's hard for most people to take the time and get enough info from different sources so that you have a pretty good idea of the 'truth'. Part of my awareness of the Iraq WMD story is due to my relationship with a former WMD inspector. This person, by the way, has never said one way or the other that Sadam did or didn't have WMD, nor has this former inspector revealed any secret info, but it's clear from our conversations that the highly educated, highly trained, unbiased professionals who looked for Iraq WMD, preceeding the latest quagmire, concluded there were none to be found. But, there is enough information 'out there' that you don't have to know a WMD inspector to accept those findings. In the run-up to the war, that same kind of information -- from the mis-characterization of the tubes to the mobile chemical and gas labs -- was out there, but hard to locate without putting in some effort.

People like me, writers and such, and people who can't stop themselves, we make a conscious decision to get to information. Many who need info must, by personal leanings or by time constraints, focus on a few subjects: politics, spies, weather, college sports, dance, science, etc. Others, myself included, spend way too much time finding out what we can about everything, usually because we believe that there's enough misinformation pouring out of big pipes that it's up
to us to keep our family, friends and associates attuned to what's going on in this world, which is far different that what is PRESENTED as what's happening in the world. I once had a publisher tell me that "there is no unbiased news or information organization; everyone has an agenda." He's right, but some agendas are a damn sight more harmful, insidious and dishonest than others.

So, where do you go to get the right news? As many places as you can. Blogs are good, but, geez, I can't think of information presented with a more strident agenda than blogs! If you're only listening to Rush and Fox, and other portals with a sismilar slant, you are doing yourself wrong. The same can be said for PBS, Air America and CNN. Now personally, I find the latter group to be less strident and in my face than the former (all right, by a lot), yet caution and diversity need to be watchwords here. Information comes in many forms, and its provenance, where it comes from, is just as important as the delivery platform. A medical study financed by Bayer doesn't neccessarily make the study biased, but that backing needs to be realized and taken into account. Statistics about the insurance indsutry, presented by an insurance industry supported think tank, is another example. Studies done by chambers of commerce, or other stated pro-business organizations, on the "impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on business" is another.

My initial "it's hard" answer to Ted doesn't help him, really, in finding the 'right' news (no jokes about left or right here, please), and history proves how often good people get the right news wrong. A smaller amount of effort, or maybe a social-based reliance on friends or family who make a commitment to getting as much info as possible on certain subjects, is a way to sift through the chaf and fog of a busy world.

That being said, here's my contribution to you: for a clarification of Bob Novak's latest 'revelation' about his CIA agent outing source, and, more interesting, a very inside look on how the Taliban is establishing control in Pakistan (the July 12th post is "Dispatch from Pakistan: The Taliban Expands"...yikes), go to today's The Washington Note, a blog by Washington D.C. insider Steve Clemons.

The right news? Can't say that you can always find it in one place, but, for the love of whoever, keep trying to find it.