A Mission Statement

We live - supposedly - in a world where information is as readily available as it's ever been. A one-second Google search or flick through the innumerable pages of Wikipedia can throw up the most obscure of facts from the most hidden of sources, and once something's recorded, it stays recorded. But increasingly, despite the obvious benefits of such easy access to media and knowledge, we find the airwaves clouded with static. Politics has turned into a platitude, any semblance of a clear or distinct message having drowned amid tepid clichés and apologetic non-sentences. Journalism has become a caricature of itself, catering so transparently to specific audiences that sometimes the same sequence of real-world events is reported (or ignored) in completely different fashions by different publications.

What are facts, and where do we get our information from? In an age where news is accessible at the touch of a button, which buttons do we press, and how do we know that what we read when we get there isn't either made up or distorted? Where does the noise come from which prevents us from distinguishing fact from fiction and spin from substance? And, perhaps most importantly, what are people actually thinking as they speak or write words which have been designed to have a specific effect?

Unquestioned Answers is a blog which, from today, aims to translate the things that public figures and news outlets say into non-bullshit - that is to say, it will attempt to strip away the layers of artifice which have become so accepted in the 'information' we receive on a daily basis, and to present news stories and discourses in a way which actually means something beyond the convenient and trite cages of the people we ordinarily trust to deliver them.

Here's to restoring some form of sense to the things we read and hear.