It took only a few days.
Only a few days after I wrote about the naysayers, political agitators and perpetual malcontents who seem incapable of allowing a fact to exist without immediately attaching a conspiracy to it, we published another political article and the familiar mob returned. Suddenly, according to the keyboard authorities of social media, we were “fake news” again. Never mind the facts. Never mind the documentation. Never mind whether anyone screaming the accusation had actually bothered to read and comprehend the article. The verdict had already been delivered because “fake news” has become the convenient refuge of people who cannot successfully dispute what was reported.
And here we are again.
You can’t fix those stuck on stupid.
I am not talking about people who disagree with me, this newspaper or an article we publish. Disagreement is healthy. Journalism should be questioned. Government should be questioned. Politicians should be questioned. I am talking about something entirely different: the increasingly common refusal to investigate anything that threatens a predetermined belief.
We have somehow reached a place where five people repeating the same nonsense on Facebook can convince themselves they have established a fact. Nobody knows where the claim originated. Nobody produces documentation. Nobody bothers checking whether the original assertion was accurate. They simply pass it around until repetition creates the illusion of credibility.
Then somebody inevitably types “fake news.”
How original.
Politics in 2026 has become a strange carnival of immediate accusation, tribal loyalty and astonishingly short attention spans. Attack the messenger because dealing with the message requires effort. Discredit the newspaper because confronting the documents might require admitting that your favorite politician screwed up. Invent sinister motives because accepting an ordinary explanation is nowhere near as entertaining. Find somebody to blame, somebody to ridicule, somebody to hate, and preferably somebody outside your political tribe.
Social media has done enormous damage to our ability to communicate like rational adults. I have said it before and will undoubtedly say it again: social media is, in my opinion, the bane of our existence. We communicated before Facebook. We maintained friendships before Instagram. Businesses advertised before social platforms. Families shared photographs. Telephones worked. Letters arrived. Newspapers delivered information. Somehow civilization managed to function without every person possessing an electronic podium connected to several billion potential spectators.
I do not need to see what you ate last night. I do not need to watch you dance. Yes, I enjoy looking at car parts, but I managed perfectly well when they came printed in magazines.
Technology advanced much faster than human behavior evolved to manage it. We consumed too much, too quickly, with virtually no adjustment period for what instantaneous communication would do to judgment, patience, attention and social behavior.
People react before they read. They condemn before they investigate. They repeat before they verify. Then they wonder why everybody hates everybody.
This is where I inevitably return to Idiocracy, the 2006 comedy that was supposed to be ridiculous. I have referenced that movie before, and I probably will again, because portions of what was once exaggerated satire are becoming disturbingly recognizable. Watch the deterioration of political conversation, the celebration of ignorance and the growing inability to maintain an argument beyond slogans and insults, and tell me there are not moments when the resemblance becomes uncomfortable.
Pick a team. Memorize the approved villains. Learn the approved vocabulary. Repeat whatever your side repeated yesterday. If information damages the opposing camp, believe it immediately. If equally credible information damages your own camp, attack whoever reported it.
That is not politics. That is fandom with consequences.
The Grants Pass Tribune has been accused of being conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat, pro-government, anti-government and just about everything else depending upon which article somebody happened to dislike that morning. Apparently our political ideology changes according to the headline.
It does not.
Our job is to report the news, whether that news flatters somebody or irritates them. We have received recognition for unbiased reporting, yet the accusation of bias continues whenever someone encounters information incompatible with what they already believe. Awards do not determine whether an article is accurate anyway. Facts do.
So challenge the facts.
If we report something incorrectly, bring us the evidence. If a document contradicts what we published, produce it. If a public record establishes something different, send the record. We will examine legitimate evidence every single time.
But calling something “fake news” because you dislike it proves absolutely nothing. Neither does gathering political allies into a social media pile-on. Ten people repeating the same falsehood are still repeating a falsehood. Fifty angry comments do not amend a government document. A hundred laughing emojis do not overturn a public record.
Facts are stubborn that way.
There is also a peculiar obsession in modern politics with creating villains whenever something goes wrong. Somebody has to be responsible for the failure, embarrassment or uncomfortable revelation, and preferably it should be anyone except the person whose actions actually produced it. The politician made the decision, but blame the newspaper. The official signed the document, but blame the reporter who found it. The candidate made the statement, but accuse the publication of having an agenda for printing it.
We are not interested in serving as somebody else’s scapegoat simply because accountability is inconvenient.
Everyone has a purpose. We have ours. The Grants Pass Tribune exists to report information to this community, ask questions, examine records and tell readers what we find. We do not require permission from political factions to do it, nor do we require their applause afterward.
Read the information. Examine the evidence. Reach your own conclusion. You are perfectly entitled to disagree, but disagreement becomes considerably more respectable when you actually know what you are disagreeing with.
Our community has legitimate problems deserving considerably more attention than another evening spent throwing political mud at strangers through a glowing rectangle. Josephine County needs informed voters, competent public officials, engaged residents and people willing to ask difficult questions without immediately being branded enemies for asking them.
We can disagree without becoming ridiculous. We can question without inventing. We can investigate without assuming. We can even discover that somebody we dislike happens to be correct about something.
Imagine that.
Read. Research. Verify. Think.
Then speak.