Don't believe something just because you want to

Years ago on the old TV show Lou Grant, they had a story line about, as I recall, a small mining town that was supposedly run by a corrupt company. For some reason the paper sent a young inexperienced reporter to the town to see what he could find. A photographer called Animal, one of the main characters on the show, goes with the young reporter. The reporter finds a young somewhat ne'er-do-well in town who is more than willing to dish a ton of dirt -- for a price. The reporter, with visions of Pultizers dancing through his head, is excited about what he is being told.

Every time the reported meets with his source, he pays. As long as the source gives information the reporter wants to hear, the reporter is willing to pay for it. If no further information is provided, the gravy train reaches the end of the line.

Animal finally points out the obvious to the reporter. Again as I recall, the reporter then goes to other sources and finds that most of the information from the original source was a load of manure.

There are a couple of recent videos going around that brought that episode to mind.

The first is a video about Kari Lake, who is a Republican candidate for Governor in Arizona

That video is on Rumble. I could not find it on YouTube. Unfortunately, Blogger no longer accepts EMBED code for videos, the link function for videos only seems to work with YouTube, and I don't see how to download the video so I can upload it here myself. You can find that video here.

There are some things that bother me about this video. I do understand that Lake was a news anchor so her voice is well trained and professional. However, I have heard high school girls who were more well spoken than that "reporter."

I also cannot help but wonder what the source is for that video. If it was made by a staffer for Lake, the camera would probably be hand-held. In that case, the shot probably would have moved around and more than likely shown the camera for the TV station involved. Also, the audio is too good to be from an on-camera microphone. That would suggest that, if the video is authentic, that the video was released by the TV station. What are the odds of a TV station releasing a video of someone making mincemeat of one of their reporters?

While I am not saying with absolute certainty that the video is a creation by the Lake campaign, there certainly is enough to make me think that it is. 

The other video is from someone named Benny Johnson. Not that I go looking for new people to follow on the internet (I would not have time for anything else if I did), but I have never heard of Mr. Johnson before.

His video tells of upcoming changes at CNN, information coming from "sources I cannot name."

Yes, I would love for CNN to adopt a new business model by practising journalism. However, how many times in the past couple of years have we been told "The world will be made safe for Freedom and Truth and Justice shall prevail in three months." Of course, none of this comes to pass.

Trey Gowdy went to the House of Representatives and seemed to be a voice for the American People.

However, despite much of his time in the House being when Republicans held the majority, not much ever happened as a result of his confrontations. In fact, to many people his name has come to mean "Saying things to get people worked up but never delivering anything of substance."

According to things we have been told, Hillary Clinton would have been in prison a long time ago. I understand that not everything we want to see comes to pass. However, we have really seen little if any effort to accomplish anything we have been told was about to happen.

It is nice to see videos and "news" articles that say what I would like to be told. I just want to see those things actually happen. The point is that we need to scrutinize sources that tell us what we want to hear just as much as sources that tell us things we don't want to hear.

I, for one, have more Arpège than I will ever need.