Who Should I Believe?

I remember the news
when it wasn’t a brand—
when anchors wore facts
like pressed shirts, not slogans.
When truth wasn’t bent
like a flag in the wind
to fit someone’s budget
or someone’s campaign.

Now every voice
is just an echo chamber—
a velvet trap
lined with sponsored rage.
They sell us the story
they think we deserve,
or worse, the one
they want us to serve.

Right slants the truth
until it bleeds red.
Left spins the tale
till it’s barely thread.
And somewhere in the middle,
the facts die quiet deaths—
not with a bang,
but a shrug and a scroll.

I’m a wife, a mother,
a woman who’s lived
through the rise and fall
of so many “truths.”
I’ve learned to read
between the screams,
to wonder who writes
the camera’s dreams.

We’re being fed
through filtered lies—
packaged hope
with commercial eyes.
And we smile, we share,
we shout, we fight,
but none of us
sees clearly at night.

So who should I believe?
The one who shouts loudest?
The one with the logo?
The one with the crowd?

Or maybe,
just maybe—
I trust what I see
in the quiet moments,
off-camera,
in real life.
Like my daughter’s questions.
Like my wife’s sigh.
Like the truth that slips in
when no one is trying to sell it.

© Susie Stiles-Wolf