This is difficult subject. I'll relate it to my days working in the field of electronic warfare. There are noise jammers that drown out or distort the victim signal. It is a form of censorship. There are also deception mode jammers. They start with a signal that is seemingly legitimate before if pulls of your lock with a false signal. It is a form of false news. Our problem is finding truth in a world of noise and deception. We can only turn to discernment, and it has its built-in jammer, confirmation bias. It affects us all and only fools deny it.

Borrowing from thoughts from China, the official press is the running dog lackies hoping to be tossed scraps of meat from those in charge. I'll limit my reason for finding the official press untrustworthy to three.

1. My government told me that the communist North Vietnamese attacked our Navy ship. Nobody can do that, except on nearly the day I enlisted in the Marines, Israel attacked the USS Liberty. The Gulf of Tonkin incident probably was a lie and the attack on the USS Liberty was explained away as an accident (pure bullshit). But as a patriotic young man I went to the other side of the world to kill communists based upon the words of my government.

2. Some of my training as a Marine was about "venereal disease" where we saw films that showed the penises of black men rotting off from syphilis. The Tuskegee Syphilis study where these men were told they were receiving treatment. Horrific injustice.

3. Years later when I worked as a contractor for the Air Force in the Electronic Test Environment my job was analyzing jamming. Between missions I was listening to the Voice of America. It was broadcasting a speach in the UN Security Council that was making America look bad. The signal seemed to fade but my spectrum analyzer displayed a strong signal way above the grass. The noise was modulated in at the source. I checked across the band and every VOA signal sounded like it was in a fade. The VOA jammed itself until the speech ended.

I said that I would stop at three. The list of reasons to not automatically trust the official press is longer.

At the other extreme there are the detractors of government stories. A mix of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones types. A blend of truth and lies no better or worse than governments. One difference is that it is OK for governments to turn young men into killers but it's not for others.

All of that to reach this thought. When you hear the words disinformation and debunked do you ask yourself, is that true? The answer to our conclusion is highly biased by our existing beliefs. No matter how hard we may try, no one is exempt. My bud Chris objects to the question, "Who decides?" but it is fair to ask, is there any reason to assume that the government is a reliable decider of what we should hear? I find none. I'm not an anarchist, but relying upon government is walking with a tiger. I long for a world of truth, but it makes me sound like a Miss Universe Pageant contestant to say it because it is a dream that starts in a brass bowl pipe.