When I was a lot younger than I am now, I was a great fan of the National Geographic Magazine and even went to Washington, D.C. to sign up personally at National Geographic Society headquarters. Some years ago, the magazine ran an article about Salt Lake City, Utah. Of all the things they could have written about, the National Geographic writer chose to talk about polygamy. There were two photos in the article; one showed a lovely polygamist family in a large beautiful home with children all dressed in matching clothes and the other showed a "typical Mormon" family sitting in their weed overgrown, and very messy backyard with very overweight people apparently overeating with a table full of food. Granted, polygamy is an issue here in Utah and in other places around the world. Historically, my own ancestral family members were polygamists. But the issue of polygamy is so low on the concerns here in Utah as to be almost non-existent. Recently, the Utah State Legislature reduced the penalty for polygamy from a criminal action to about on par with a traffic ticket. See "Polygamy bill passes the Utah State Legislature."
My opinion of National Geographic made a major shift with that one article. I suddenly began to see that the "primitive" societies and other depictions made by the magazine were just as biased and unrealistic as the article that offended me. I subsequently got rid of almost all of my huge collection of back issues and stopped regularly reading the magazine. This experience with many others has sensitized me to writing that is biased and exploitive. I have also focused on how much "propaganda" passes for news and commentary. By the way, propaganda is defined as information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. I am not advocating cutting off reading anything you personally disagree with. If you do that, you are creating your own propaganda. But in my case, I stopped viewing the National Geographic as an unbiased source of information and put it into the same category as most of the other publications I regularly read.
Now, what does this have to do with the virus COVID-19. Quite a bit actually. I read extensively, probably 20 to 30 or more different magazines and news reporting entities on a regular basis. I also spend a very short time reviewing a little bit of my Facebook stream. What I am seeing in this pandemic era is an extraordinary increase in propaganda much of which is just plain false. Unfortunately, the sources for this propaganda are almost universal from the heads of our national government, political parties, popular news online, magazines, and almost every other possible venue. No, I am not going to give examples of "fake news." The stream of such drivel is so constant and so pervasive as to basically create an alternative reality where everything from UFOs to flat earth theories are considered to be mainstream acceptable topics for serious consideration.
How do we avoid being "sucked in" by propaganda and false news? The best way I know is to read an expanded and extensive variety of news sources. Next, it is important to identify and listen to those people and news sources that do not have any particular political or cultural bias. If you are listening to or reading the same online commentator or watching the same news station or company every day, you are being desensitized to fake news and propaganda.
Of course, all this is easier said than done. But what do you do when even the statistics lie? The best decision is to examine your own best self-interest. If the world is buying toilet paper, do you actually need to fill your garage? If you are old and vulnerable, like me, do you listen to people who say that social distancing is a bad idea and counter to your "freedom," or do you take reasonable measures to protect yourself from disease and infection? Do you listen to people who say that a disease that has, at the time of this post, killed hundreds of thousands of people is really a political hoax and no worse than the flu?
You can believe what you want to believe but you should take the time to think through the consequences of buying into an idea that will put you personally in danger or be detrimental to your family.
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