The Biggest [Fake] News Story

This week, a very public war of words erupted between John Stewart of The Daily Show and Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money. If it wasn't obvious to me before, but I now I realize two things: the media can be an important advocate for the public, and they failed miserably at that task.

[Unfortunately, Viacom isn't so progressive as to allow embedding of their video clip, but the full, unedited video is on their web site.]

I'm thankful that we now have so-called alternative news sources. One, unfortunately, is The Daily Show. It seems that John Stewart really cares about America. Cares in a way that allows him to ask the difficult questions and hold those responsible to account. If anything, I hope this financial crisis in the States helps people to realize the bias or poor job their news network of choice is offering, and also to take some responsibility for finding things out on their own.

I think Americans (including me) can blame their leadership for some of this blase attitude towards the truth. Its easy to blame W., who praised people like Michael Brown, head of FEMA during the Katrina fiasco. But lets not forget Clinton and Nixon.

But, of course, we need to take some responsibility ourselves. Here's a simple way to start. Before you forward an e-mail, usually one with a political agenda, but most e-mail forwards would do, double-check that it is factually accurate. I still get a bit angry every time my father forwards an e-mail that is totally inaccurate. A simple Google search, taking no more than 30 seconds of your time, can quickly debunk almost any e-mail you are about to forward. A good place to start is Snopes.