I’ve advocated that people who watch hours and hours of national news on TV should switch between networks. The networks, newscasters, teleprompter writers and researchers can, knowingly or unknowingly, slant what you hear. This is one reason you might want to listen to the news on different networks, to see if it is the same or if one slants to the left and one slants to the right. By watching and comparing, you might get the straight story.

Don’t forget, the priority of the cable networks is not to be accurate but to have lots of viewers so and use those figures to sell more advertising. One way to get more viewers is to slant their news to get more people to watch. It’s interesting, but not surprising, that news stars on the same network will present different views of the same news story. This allows them to appeal to all sides of a controversy.

I remember a time when newscasters reported the news, separating their comments from the news. Often, today’s news stars report their opinion as news. To be fair, some think they do make news, instead of reporting actual events.

I’ll not limit this to national news. Reporters can slant the news simply by not reporting something they may disagree with- and, what a revoltin’ development this is!

I’ve learned, from experience, that there is only one way to really know what is going on. Get involved, even if it is just as an observer.

(Jerry Riley comments for the Chronicle. He is a retired telecommunications supervisor. © 2015 All Rights Reserved)