Letter to the editor: We need knowledge delivered without breathless emotion

The word that comes to mind when I think of political reporting since the Clinton era is breathless. Whether from the right with respect to Obama or the left with respect to Trump, most of the reporting is little more than cliches wrapped in a tone of all-knowing assurance. Needless to say, this is a far cry from journalistic impartiality. Whether we will ever see a return to more credible reporting, one could hope that at least some journalists would seek to resurrect that kind of professionalism.

The illustrations of this include the obsessive coverage of Monica Lewinsky, the fear-mongering with respect to Iraq, the incessant deification of Obama and the constant vilification of Trump. Here is a clear fact: We have never had a perfect president and never will. Journalists do no one any favors by pretending to be unbiased while propping up or dragging down their political target. Most literate Americans have always preferred to base their judgments on demonstrated facts and tend to overlook the obvious human failings prone to us all.

The only antidote which seems possible at present is for all of us to make a concerted effort to know as many facts as possible from both sides of the aisle and up and down the philosophical, cultural and psychological spectra.

While we should expect those who do journalism to ground their work in the same, that seems less and less likely as the decades roll by. I cannot think of a person I know who would not prefer to have more facts and fewer pontifications.

In the meanwhile, we can stumble along blindly, or we can decide to be as well-informed as possible. One thing that is refreshing is that we have at our fingertips access to more knowledge than any previous generation by orders of magnitude. The speed with which the bots are learning makes all other searches for facts and knowledge almost obsolete. Within just the last year the degree of knowledge that can be gleaned from these multiple artificial intelligence sources is astounding. As the door to the internet opens wider and wider to these computers, the accumulated knowledge explodes. And it is as easy as simply asking questions and reading the answers and then asking additional questions.

Along the way I have had dozens of professors from acclaimed universities both here and abroad. The robots that are at this very moment learning at exponential rates can convey more concise data and interpretation than any learned scholar I ever encountered by far. Test it. Ask Chat GPT about quantum mechanics, or the origin of life, or the basis of knowledge, or anything that comes to mind. Perhaps this will be a way for people to begin to escape the bias that so easily clouds political debate today.

Knowledge is a valuable and precious thing. We need it delivered to us accurately and without the breathless emotion so common in our time. In the Gospel of John, it is recorded that Jesus said this: "You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free!" I can only say Amen to that!

JAMES R. CHANDLER JR.

Sumter