{"id":9203,"date":"2014-12-03T17:46:58","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T22:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9203"},"modified":"2014-12-10T14:14:45","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T19:14:45","slug":"politics-as-usual-alien-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-alien-babies\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Alien Babies"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

We live in an era in which anyone and everyone has the potential, the very real risk in fact, to experience the excruciating reality of public exposure of every foible, be it personal or professional, regardless of its magnitude.
\nFrom hogging two parking spots at the local mall, to cheating on your spouse, anything and everything you do can end up at some point on someone\u2019s blog or twitter feed should it strike their fancy \u2013 or more likely, appeal to their sense of spite.
\nEvery Blackberry and iPhone has a camera and video capability \u2013 with pretty good quality. As a result, someone is always watching and just as likely someone is always recording. There\u2019s no need for the massive Big Brother CCTV infrastructure that exists in the UK. Joe Public is more than capable of handling the job.
\nIt seems like everyone has a blog these days or – God help us \u2013 a twitter feed. Facebook page updates from all and sundry bombard us with fantastically inane musings about, well, nothing. Foursquare updates on where people are every minute of the day are particularly irksome. Why someone feels they must account for their whereabouts in 15 minute increments all day, every day is simply beyond me. For the record, I do not care what restaurant you are at, what you had for dinner or what intersection you are passing. But the thief who is breaking into your house right now sure appreciates the information.
\nOn balance, social media is a wonderful thing. It makes information use and dissemination accessible to anyone with a computer and internet access. Some argue its relevance and importance in terms of democracy is akin to the creation of the printing press and the Gutenberg bible. I\u2019m not sure I would go that far, but it is an incredibly important leap in terms of increasing the accessibility of democracy. Injustices can be exposed by anyone. Sanitized versions of wars, uprisings, atrocities are no longer possible in the face of real-time reporting by real people on scene.
\nYou can still lie, but you won\u2019t get away with it. Eventually, someone, somewhere will produce a video, a photo, a recording that will expose the\u201d truth\u201d for all to see.
\nAnd therein lies the problem
\nThe downside is that there is a complete and utter lack of consideration for what constitutes the \u201ctruth.\u201d \u201cNews\u201d can be posted without any verification, without any semblance of objectivity at all. It can be manipulated or even manufactured. Speed of reporting and \u201cgotcha\u201d moments caught on tape rule the bandwidths.
\nThere is no context. Many a public person has been snared in that trap \u2013 of statements made, and duly reported, but in a highly edited way. A snippet of a conversation can seem extraordinarily damning when heard without the benefit of the sentence before and after.
\nPhoto-shopped images and doctored recordings make people question the \u201ctruth\u201d of anything.
\nNo one has the time to sift through the massive amount of detritus that litters the web in search of the important information. As a result, many things pass as fact when they are in most cases entirely fiction.
\nThis is our reality.
\nThe next time the web explodes with a story about a celebrity, a politician or even an ordinary citizen alleged to have done something extraordinarily bad, I think we should view that \u201cnews\u201d story with a healthy dose of skepticism.
\nTreat it like it\u2019s a story by the National Enquirer. Yes, there is a slim chance that they have indeed got a scoop, but it\u2019s much more likely that there is no alien baby.
\nUntil next week, stay informed, stay involved because this is \u2013 after all \u2013 our Town.<\/p>\n

Alison can be reached at acollinsmrakas@gmail.com.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas We live in an era in which anyone and everyone has the potential, the very real risk in fact, to experience the excruciating reality of public exposure of every foible, be it personal or professional, regardless of its magnitude. From hogging two parking spots at the local mall, to cheating on your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2or","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-30 01:39:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}