Does Truth Exist?

There’s been a bit of a stink this morning, and rightfully so, after the Washington Post decided to make a front page story out of claims that Obama is secretly a Muslim.
This is a story that reminds me so much of the Swiftboat attacks on John Kerry. It reveals a serious problem in how major media outlets conduct political reporting.
There is an assumption that balance is achieved by giving both sides of an issue equal weight. This is simply not the case. We are lucky enough to live in a world where there are objective realities. We can verify that something is true or false.
The problem is, it isn’t easy. It takes hard work to show that something is demonstrably false. You can’t simply compile a few quotes and head home to write. You have to do your due diligence.
We have seen the media take the lazy route. Instead of doing research and presenting the reality as fact and the rumors as unsubstantiated attacks, the media simply records both sides as worthy of equal time. This simply is not the case. We live in a world where sometimes there are many many equally valuable opinions and where sometimes there is simply a single reality. It’s part of the media’s job to distinguish between these cases and provide us with the truth, where ever possible. Sometimes that means calling a lie a lie.

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