The Palantír

I worked for the local newspaper for 28 years, off and on, and I learned a great deal about research and verifying sources of information. I was no reporter, but I did do an incredible amount of what was called informational graphics. Info graphics were generally small boxes of descriptive art and textual commentary focusing on any number of subjects usually tied to a story helping the reader interpret the material presented therein. I prided myself on accuracy and fully researched facts for these info graphics. In recent years the internet made this research much easier, just type in a subject and google it, pages and pages of material just waiting for you to verify or disprove your graphic point of view.

In J.R.R Tolkien’s epic fantasy, The Lord of the Rings, the wizard, Saruman, who owns a palantír, uses it to seek information and is snared by the evil lord Sauron. By selectively allowing Saruman to see only what Sauron wanted through the palantír, he was able to convince him to do his bidding.

It has occurred to me lately that the internet is much like the palantír. There are many who seek to relay their certain points of view. The distortion of facts, the twisting of historical narratives, pseudoscience and outright falsehoods exist in abundance. These people seek to drown out any of those who have differing views. In our open and free society, everyone has a right to their opinion, but we also have the right to ignore others opinions if we wish, or if it is proven to be a lie, we have the right and sacred duty to say what it really is, a lie.

(Below, my cube at the newspaper before they laid me off and a good portion of the staff. In my many years there at the newspaper, we never published a deliberate falsehood, never one instance of fake news. Without a free press, (guarantied by the very first Amendment of the US Constitution), we are much weaker as a democracy, much to the delight of many people in power today.)

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