The Absence of Truth
For years, I've been a bit of news junkie. Specifically, during my years travelling around the world on business, usually to places where I had little or no understanding of the native tongue and where either CNN or the BBC World News were the only English language channels on the hotel tv service, the experience turned me into a news junkie as there was bugger all else to watch (except for porn in some of the better hotels and, of course, on the internet - this was pre-Netflix, Amazon Prime and the other streamers). With CNN and the Beeb you could be reasonably sure the reporting was factual since the reporters took pains (and often accepted tremendous personal risks) to go to where the news was - to battlefields, to angry street demonstrations where there was of the chance of a riot developing, to authoritarian countries like Russia and China, North Korea and Iran and Syria - and both film and report exactly what they saw happening. Difficult questions were asked of politici