It’s been a doozie of an Old Year. Isn’t that what we call the year before the New Year? An old year? Well, if not, it sure felt old, and dreary and, whew, what a whopper!
After 2 years of not anchoring news, by choice, not design, I started to get back into the trenches. As a local news anchor, it’s not often you must question if the material you’re working with is true or not. But, in 2025 we had to start questioning a lot. Am I right? Is that Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) or is it real? I saw so many photos circulating online that truly frightened me. One off the top of my head, was of popstar Madonna. It was around Christmas time and was supposedly a photograph of her with her family, but her face was really blown up, but just in the cheeks. Honestly, I was worried. I thought, surely, she wouldn’t do this sort of thing to herself. And sure enough, the sleuths of the internet came to my rescue, it was not a true photo. But these same sleuths cannot police every news story we see online. If only!
It’s hard to know what is real and fake anymore. Some of the stories we saw crossing our screens last year were horrific and traumatizing. News can sometimes be those things, but this felt quite different to me. I had to temper what I was taking in as to not feel it in my bones.
From what I’ve been reading some of the things many of us found scary will be accelerated this year. So, prepare yourself if you can. Ask people around you if it’s true. Question everything. Question me. And if you want me to, I will find out for you. #forreal #realnews #storytelling
