The SoSA Perspective

In praise of newspapers

Everyone has an opinion, especially on politics and religion. In addition, it appears that most everyone is willing to share their opinion. In many cases this is unfortunate. It is unfortunate because there seems to be a widely held belief out there amongst the ‘opinion havers’, that their opinions are not merely opinions, but “truth”. This misconception is fueled by a veritable avalanche of books, web sites and magazines that serve to reinforce virtually any opinion you may have, on any subject that interests you.

There are political and religious web sites that will tell conservatives (ad nauseam) how right they are, and others that do the same for liberals. Books catering to the left and right poles in religion and politics are equally prolific. Most ‘opinion havers’ tend to read those books and visit those web sites that reinforce their own opinions. This, it strikes me, is an excellent way to breed a nation of opinionated idiots.

It would be much better, and we’d be much better informed, if we would read both (or all) sides of most major questions before forming an opinion. As far as I know newspaper editorial and op-ed pages are the only places where we are regularly confronted with differing views on a common issue. Come to think of it, the popularity of tunnel vision political and religious talk show dummies may be the result of decreased readership of our great newspapers.

At any rate, it seems to me that a disciplined reading of all sides of any issues should precede our voicing of opinions. Were we to adopt this strategy we would come to a much more balanced view of the world, and the solution to many of our problems would, I believe, become obvious. This is because the world is not black and white, or even red and blue. The problems we face every day come in varying shades of grey, and that means that their solutions will inevitably be some shade of purple.