Just Add Context

What is the value of instant news?

Does it fill you up? Or does it make you bloated? Are you hungry for more?

A lie can run around the world before the truth can get it's boots on.
- James Watt

Via Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and the myriad of online news sites, we get our news instantly. Some will report and add conjecture and assumptions, others will wait for verification. It's the sites/tweets/wall posts that add on toppings that will eventually have to be scraped off with a "sad face"*, and give the "oops my bad" mea culpa that make fiction into truth, that we need to delete from our daily online intake.

Assumptions, half-truths, gossip, conjecture and it's ilk are like junk food. Filling, tasty for the moment, but not really good for you. We can't just read just one, we love to read pages upon pages of it. TMZ.com is ranked #101, whereas our local newspaper's online version ranks at only #367, in this town we value who's dating who rather than what's happening in our own neighborhoods.

I am as guilty when it comes to reading online junk food, I go for the salacious, but I try to balance it out with a healthy dollop of real news and writing. What worries me is that I am the minority when it comes to getting my information from a trusted source as opposed to "on the spot citizen" reporting that most sites rely on.

My advice is to take it all with a grain of salt, and if its not verified, don't pass it down the table.

Image: Ophelia Chong / BangPowBang

* Sad Face :O(