It is about the story. it doesn’t matter how one chooses it to be delivered. It could be radio, television or social media. The casual banter is distracting and it is tough to pare down the stories to focus on the facts at hand.
The human interest story behind the story is all important. I spent many late afternoons watching my grandfather turn the dial to find out what was happening with the rest of the world. As the buzz of those unfamiliar languages wafted into the air, my siblings and I would try to figure out the location of the country of origin. The old globe on the high stand stood at the ready.
We sat on the floor around the wooden 1930’s console in the living room and urged him to try and tune into the most exotic location he could find. Eventually he tuned into an English speaking station that reported news events. It was our first experience of listening to another point of view. While the transmissions had a lot of static, they offered us a different perspective and helped widen our world view.
Too often, we become numbed by the startling statistics assaulting us from all sides. Is it that we have become jaded from the constant bad news blast? Taken out of context, we lose the thread and thus the meaning of the original story. Attempting to find our way through all of the extraneous details threatening to disguise the true narrative, the path becomes obscured. A closer look often reveals the real “story behind the story.
By DOLLY VISCARDI – Special to the Herald Times
