I Believe Nothing

As part of my day job I talk to a lot of people. The news involves all kinds of people from all kinds of walks of life, so in order to do a good job reporting it I have to go out and get to know those people. While it was difficult for me to get over some of my shyness in the beginning of this job, getting out and meeting so many different folks has become one of my favorite parts of my journalism work.

But it also brings me to an interesting dilemma. Covering city politics, even in a small town, means knowing a lot of people who dislike a lot of other people. I hear rumors almost daily about who said what and who did what and who hates who and so on and so forth. Lately, I've been wondering what to do about it. You can't believe everything you hear. I understand that, and have always lived by that rule. Just because Jimbo tells me that Trevor is a jerk doesn't mean that Trevor is actually a jerk. I know that, I understand it, so no problem, right?

Here's where I'm having issues. Jimbo tells me that Trevor is a jerk, Barney tells me that Trevor is a racist, and Sally tells me that Trevor tried to assault her. Then, Trevor tells me that Jimbo tried to run him over with his car, that Barney is a Nazi, and that Sally is having an affair with Jimbo. Then someone else tells me that Jimbo and Trevor are actually friends who are stirring up trouble so everyone is too distracted to learn about their plot to steal all of the city funds, and that Sally is secretly married to Barney even though publicly they pretend to hate one another. Then I receive an email telling me that Jimbo, Trevor and Sally are childhood friends who split apart once they all learned they were adopted and that Barney's father was the evil doctor who had adopted them and then beat them.

You call that crazy, I call it my Tuesday. And it's led me to this simple, yet powerful realization. I believe nothing. I'm at a point where I've simply overloaded on rumors and speculations about people. Maybe none of it's true, maybe some of it's true, maybe all of it's true, but my new policy is that I believe none of it. If Trevor really is a jerky racist who tries to assault women, I either need hard proof or I need to learn it myself by talking to him.

But here's the final issue this creates. If you can't believe what anyone says, how do you learn about people? Do I really have to go and talk to Jimbo, Trevor, Barney and Sally in order to learn who each of them are? And how do I know that whatever they tell me is the truth, and they're not just lying to cover up their jerkish racism attitudes?

There you have it. If we boil all of this down what do we get? A reporter who needs a break from covering politics!