Preparing yourself to find the truth is the very first step in dealing with any kind of news source. If the topic or the words used to describe the topic disturb you, it will be very difficult for you to find or understand what the truth is.
Angry people do not see clearly, and one’s ability to see what is occurring gets worse as the emotional tone level of the observer drops down the scale from enthusiasm to apathy. This is because the environment becomes less real as the person goes down tone. One’s ability to perceive get less and less as one goes down the tone scale and has less and less life force to bring to bear on solving problems. The person becomes less and less alive as he goes down the tone scale. The bottom of the human tone scale is death. The bottom of the spiritual tone scale is total failure.
Therefore, to find truth, you must first center yourself so that all of your attention is directed to events occurring in the present moment. You will know when you have achieved this state because you will be calm and alert and will be ready to observe what is actually happening and be ready to observe what has happened to create the current situation.
When you have centered yourself, you can look calmly at the outrage presenting itself to you, and your next steps will be productive rather than retaliative and self-destructive. In other words, if you are to fight back against treachery and outright betrayal, it’s best if you can plan your actions calmly and execute them enthusiastically.
Whether the betrayal involves a faithless loved one, a group of elected officials who have shown their true colors as evil madmen, or fake news that accuses someone falsely, your best response is to avoid the instinctive response of striking out and destroying them and erasing them from history. You need to get your wits together by whatever rituals you can muster until you can focus your attention on the present moment and can see what you failed to notice or do, which brought you into the situation in the first place. Once that is located, and you can take responsibility for it, you are ready to move forward and take effective action to reduce the results of the betrayal or treachery.
So, what does a non-credible news source have to do with betrayal and treachery? A non-credible news source is treachery personified. They transmit altered information that arouses your anger and directs it at targets that are innocent of the charges presented. You are incensed that some person has done some evil activity, and you target this person with insults and continue to tell everyone you know how bad that person is. If you stay angry, you don’t even bother to see if the charges are real, and you contribute to the mob that is calling for punishment. Fake news is designed to create anger, and when you fall for it, you become part of the problem rather than a part of the solution.
Fake news is not limited to the media. You can be the effect of fake news if someone insinuates that your loved one is unfaithful or your company is doing evil things by not hiring deserving people. There are people who seem to delight in manufacturing and spreading bad news. In the old days, these people were called gossips. Today they are called journalists.
So, these people are not credible news sources. How do you deal with them? First, you get yourself into a state of calm alertness so you can assimilate data and see what is actually going on. Then you dig for the real data underlying the disturbing and alarming news. You need to see more than one source for the best results. If you cannot find sources of corroborative data, the initial report is probably false. If an initial report sounds too good to be true, it may be a false report, and you need to follow the same procedure to see what the truth is.
If while you are running down the truth, you find yourself getting angry or misemotional, calm yourself down again and proceed only when you can investigate calmly. Truth is not arrived at when the seeker is angry. This applies to scientific as well as political matters. Angry people do not tell or recognize the truth, even if you agree with them.