TOC, conspiracies, truth, and me

How wonderfully intriguing this week as been, as I observe from the sidelines conspiracy theories thrown at one of our more prominent local political blogs, The Online Citizen.

In a nutshell, a certain “jasper” accused TOC of having PAP connections, more precisely he instigated that certain writers of TOC were paid by PAP to write, well, pro-PAP articles. TOC then came out and made it clear that, to spare you from the details, it was neither pro-PAP nor anti-PAP; it strived to maintain neutrality and objectivity in their articles. More dirty linen are probably being strewn around even as I continue with this entry, but ultimately does TOC’s alleged links with PAP bear any significance at all?

Personally, as long as TOC produces well argued and substantive objective articles, I don’t mind whoever is paying them, if they are even getting paid. TOC is, fundamentally, a political blog aimed at bringing about awareness to its readers. It’s not a market vendor, whereby knowing where the fish or meat came from would be important. Neither is it a jewellery store, whereby knowing if its diamonds came from conflict zones would play a part in the purchase.

The fact of the matter is, TOC’s articles are ultimately left up to one’s interpretation and critical analysis. If the article is biased or manipulates statistical figures, criticism is needed. But what this brouhaha has been all about is scrutiny on TOC’s writers and their alleged links to PAP. Let’s assume if they do get paid by PAP but still produce well-written, politically-neutral articles (of course we all know this is near impossible but bear with me), would it be all that bad? Why are we putting an unnecessary amount of attention and spotlight on the writers, instead of their written articles?

As Molly puts it,

People are looking for truth dispensers. Because people simply don’t even think of becoming truth creators. They want to be told what the truth is without having to filter information with their critical faculties. Either that or they are afraid that others simply do not have the critical faculties to evaluate information with which they are being fed (which is also pretty scary).

and more succinctly,

the point for the reader is not just to believe, to agree or disagree, but to work on producing one’s own truth relative to what others have produced.

I’ll like to end off with this quote from the movie Into The Wild :

“Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness, give me truth”

- Christopher McCandless, paraphrasing Thoreau.

Oh and to all readers, hoped you had a Happy Valentine’s Day thus far A little thought-provoking picture, also from PostSecrets ~