Cardinal Tweets

By Cindy Cardinal

I have developed a new pet peeve or maybe I am just finally acknowledging something that I have felt for a long time. It relates to something happening in your community and people saying, “I didn’t know that.” For some things that occur that might be true. Obviously you can’t be everywhere at once, but there are major exceptions, the things that you have no excuse for not knowing. This is what causes me to say, “People are as ignorant as they choose to be.”

What brought this to mind this week was a post on Facebook where someone said they shouldn’t have to attend school board meetings to find out something they claim they didn’t know, basically about a decision the board made a few years ago. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. I guess it depends on how informed you choose to be. Either way, the issue in question was discussed at a number of school board meetings, it was in the school board minutes, articles were written about it in the newspaper. You even have the option of watching school board meetings these days through livestream, so you can attend the meeting sitting on your couch in your pajamas. So if this person didn’t know about this decision, it was because they chose not to.

Government should be open and transparent, but they aren’t required to hand you information on a silver platter. You need to take the initiative and find out a few things for yourself. That might mean you attend meetings. But at a minimum, you should look at the meeting minutes. Not only are they published in the newspaper, but you can view them online at wisconsinpublicnotices.org. You can look at meeting minutes that are printed in any newspaper in Wisconsin on that site. Or you can choose to purchase your local newspaper or read it at the library. It is pretty rare that we don’t write something about school board, Owen council, and Withee Village board meetings when they occur.

The other thing this person did was provide information from websites, at least one of which has had complaints against it for inaccuracy. The same information is public information and could have been requested directly from the school. Then it would at least be accurate. But it might not agree with the point they were trying to make, so why bother with the facts.

This brings us to social media posts in general. Check your facts, check your sources. I have friends on both sides of the aisle, so I see all sorts of posts. There are some I look at the source, and I think enough said. I don’t even need to look further as I know it isn’t a reputable news source. There are other things I might look at, but I am probably going to do a search and see how many sources are printing the same information before I might choose to share it. If everyone would do that, it would go a long way toward getting rid of all the misinformation that is out there and it would make the world a better place.

It only takes a little bit of your time to be informed and to doublecheck the accuracy of what you are reading and sharing on social media to see if it is accurate. Choose being an informed citizen over being an uniformed one.