No matter how many times you have been told that you are a unique, special snowflake, that's not completely true.
The people we associate with have a big impact on our personalities and values, we mimic the good behaviors of people that we look up to. Using these different traits from many different people, you form your own identity. No one is completely unique, but learning from those around us helps us improve as people. This also applies when it comes to your truth.
Everyone personally decides what their own truth is. The only thing that can make something true, is you accepting it as true. This means that truth varies greatly from person to person.
The kind of person you are has a big impact on what your truth will be, some people only believe facts while others believe only what they feel. Some people are very open to changing their opinions, and some rarely change their minds.
Because our morals and truths are closely connected, our truth, just like morals, can be influenced by outside sources. The reason that our friends and family can more easily change our truth, is because we trust them and admire them. We believe that what they think is right and good, so we consider their opinion more when forming our own truths.
Our role models are not the only ones we trust though, we also believe other sources of information in our lives to be true, and that's where journalism fits in. When we watch the news for example, we assume that the information being given to us is reliable and true. We are more likely to trust CBS for example, than a person we just met on the street. We usually assume that because the information is coming from the news, it has to be true.
Some people more than others, take this new information and unquestioningly add it to their truth. They trust that it is true just because the news said so. As a writer or a journalist, you have the power to change these readers truths. This makes it easier to take advantage of the trust that is sometimes placed in news sources, and intentionally change readers truths to match your own. Which isn't a good idea.
It's good if someone identifies with your writing enough to consider adding it to their truth, the part that isn't good is when people don't think through the information, and assume it's true just because it's in print. That's not something we can easily change, but we can pay attention to what we say when we know there are people listening.
It's obvious that writing could never completely go without question. People still don't fully trust and believe news sources, they just expect them to be more reliable than an average statement.
So, because news is generally assumed to be true, it's important for us to keep our biases out of our work as much as possible. It would be silly to think that we could completely detach our morals from our writing, that would make it a lot less sincere and believable. We just have to find the right amount of ourselves and our opinions to show in our writing.
Although the writing that I do is small scale compared to national news networks, it still carries power. Now, I just have to figure out how to use it in the right way, knowing that it could influence the truths of others.
