A couple of articles in the Sunday Post point out the need to read with a critical awareness, recognize when only one point of view is represented and question the objectivity and motivation of the writer.

In praising the city of Salisbury’s “anti-discrimination ordinance,” Natalie Anderson refers to “barring transgender athletes from competing according to their gender identity as well as the prohibition of certain medical services.” Citing three bills introduced in North Carolina as intended “to limit the rights of those in the LGBTQ community,” she fails to present a point of view held by most commonsense people that boys should not compete in girls’ sports, that children should not be encouraged to change their gender before an age when they fully comprehend the consequences or that medical professionals should have a right to not violate their personal conscience to do so.

A characteristically opinionated and one-sided Associated Press article bemoaned the fact that the author of the New York Time’s 1619 Project — a series increasingly recognized as non-factual and the source of racial tension, was rightly denied instant tenure at UNC’s school of journalism. It failed to point out that the only reason Nikole Hannah-Jones was offered a teaching position at all was that she was given a politically motivated Pulitzer Prize or that typically faculty have to earn tenure, not have it granted immediately upon employment.

These examples show that much of what is passed off as “news” nowadays is little more than promotion of political ideology, discord and false victimization. As you read, have the judgment and common sense to recognize it as such.

— Tim Deal

Salisbury