PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

The question posed by this headline has crossed my mind lately as we have watched a variety of developments in national public policy. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to know whether what you read or see is real or whether it’s all contrived to make a certain point, to sow confusion or to breed discord>

A few examples:

FAKE NEWS: With the proliferation of social media sites – not to mention the millions of Americans who appear to rely on such sites — all of us have been affected by a relatively new phenomenon – fake news. What can you believe these days? Who knows?

TWEETING: Incoming President Donald Trump is a master at the so-called art of saying something in 140 characters or less – and, frankly 140 characters is not enough to convey the very real complexity of the issues on which Trump feels a need to comment. Further, are his tweets “news?” Journalists disagree on the answer.

SPINNING: Depending on how you define the term, there may be nothing wrong with spinning. If it’s an attempt to put the best face on an issue, no problem – it’s what all of us do in everyday life to explain the situations or issues we face. But, if it’s more these days – putting a knowingly fake spin on public policy developments – then it is done for reasons other than accuracy or context.

CREATING NEWS: A cousin of spinning, this is the attempt by various politicians to create events in an effort, not necessarily to move a proposed policy forward, but to get their names in various media – the general circulation media or, more likely, social media.

PUNDITRY: This is a class of commentators that always has existed, but has emerged to a greater degree lately, especially with the rise of social media platforms which don’t exercise the same degree of editing than would, say, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal (to name two publications that are, respectively, left and right of center).

BLOGGING: I don’t mean to criticize this form because, this very piece, my piece, is an example of blogging. I don’t have an editor or even, most of the time, a reviewer. So, like other bloggers what I write and how I write is up to one person – me.

Of course, my stuff is imminently accurate and in context, but the same cannot necessarily be said of all bloggers. They say what they want to say often without regard to accuracy or context.

So, in the face of these and other questions about news accuracy, how do all of us behave so as not to react to untruths or just read what supports our own point of view?

My view is several-fold:

1. All of us should read enough material from various sources so as not to believe any one is the epitome of accuracy and context in and of itself. For me, this means that every morning, besides the local, in-Oregon media outlets, I read at least portions of three newspapers –- the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

2. All of us should set out to talk with family, friends, colleagues and neighbors who might not share our particular point of view. That way, we consider other perspectives. The risk is that, without various viewpoints, where we happen to sit dictates how we happen to think.

3. All of us should be appropriately skeptical of various social media outlets where writers are only trying to steer us to their point of view rather than to provide accuracy and context. Their bias drives what they write and say.

4. All of us should believe that we, as individuals, do not have a corner on truth. We should be open to other perspectives even if we hew to a basic set of personal convictions.

So, read and view on, but, I say, do so with disciplined eyes, ears and minds.