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A few weeks ago, a local news anchorman admitted being dismayed by the onslaught of bad news the station reported and made an appeal for locals to send in positive stories. He was inundated with responses. There are many positive stories out there; however station officials are making a deliberate decision to report the negative. They bombard listeners with a plethora of dire warnings, pandemonium and catastrophic ruins. If you listen to them, it is easy to believe the world is going to hell in a hand basket and nothing anyone says or does will change the course of this trajectory

Because the world seems in a state of disarray, it becomes incumbent upon you, the readers and listeners, to read and listen to the news objectively and allow sufficient time to digest and process the information before formulating conclusions. If you apply objective guidelines to what you read or hear, you will get a more balanced view of what is going on.

Remember, everyone has an opinion, including you and the writer. Here are some important questions to ask yourself, especially when you reading the news. Why did the writer write the article and for what purpose? Do you detect the writer's objectivity or is the article rife with personal values or ideas? Is the rationale stated justifiable? Can you determine what the writer is attempting to prove or disprove?

There will always be writers who write based on their emotions, so what are the facts that validate the article or support the hypothesis or conclusions? What is being taken for granted? What are the key impressions? Did the writer make clear the premise in a way that leaves no room for conjecture? What is the main theory or assumption being put forward and are there problems with these assumptions? Are you able to bring to light from the article the important points being made in order to discern the writer's reasoning? Are there weaknesses in the reasoning? If you choose to believe the writer's reasoning what are the consequences to you if you choose to follow or ignore it/them? Are your choices based on egocentric interest?

At the end of the article, what was the writer trying to prove? Was there put forth an alternate point or view or was he or she guided by their own inflexible dogma?

It is important that everyone has some sort of filter in place, especially when they are being bombarded by so much negativity and pessimism. There are television news shows that are so steeped in partisan ideology, it is impossible to get an unbiased view of the nation and world events; consequently, it becomes important that you as listeners or readers have in place your own way of separating out facts from fiction.

It is equally important that you become critical thinkers, it is important that you not allow others to frame your thinking. Critical thinkers raise questions, they do not simply accept what they read or hear. They will read more than one news source as well as listen to several news shows and interject their own abstract notions to interpret information. They are open minded and they are careful not to formulate conclusions until all their assumptions and implications have been proven within a system of thought they established based on their own frame of reference.

Above all, critical thinkers are self-governing individuals with excellent problem solving skills. They seek above all a strategic process that takes them to a logical conclusion based on their own set of assumptions.

Learn more about this author, Dossie M Terrell.
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