The founder of C-SPAN reminds us of the importance of thinking for ourselves.

Let the viewer decide. That, according to its founder, is the philosophy of C-SPAN, the television network that offers viewers start-to-finish coverage of speeches, meetings, hearings and other events.

During the inaugural lecture of the new Dole Forum lecture series at Kansas University this week, C-SPAN’s president and founder Brian Lamb explained the network’s mission of passing unedited information along to viewers. The viewers’ job is to evaluate that information without the assistance of on-air commentators or journalists.

It’s a mission that any deliverer of news and information hopes its readers and viewers will take seriously. Whether it’s from C-SPAN, a local news broadcast, a newspaper or an Internet source, information needs to be examined and evaluated. There are sources you trust and sources you don’t, but it’s up to every reader and viewer to decide what they will believe.

People who produce editorial pages are particularly sensitive to this philosophy. On the news pages of a newspaper, reporters do their best to set aside any opinions they may have on a subject and fairly report both sides of every issue. Editors review reporters’ work with the same goal in mind.

Because many people don’t have time to watch entire speeches and meetings on C-SPAN, newspapers usually are in the position of trying to summarize what they see as the most important points of an issue for their readers. To make the news more accessible, they have to make decisions about what stories are most important and what issues have the greatest impact on their audience. But the goal is, to the best of their ability, to provide an unbiased report.

Then there’s the editorial page. This is where opinion comes into play. Editorial writers and editors take an issue and take a stand. They fashion a rationale to support their stand and try to write convincingly, but that doesn’t mean they expect readers to blindly accept their viewpoint. They still hope that readers will consult other sources including opposing viewpoints expressed in letters to the editor or by editorial columnists and, as Lamb advocated, make up their own mind.

Now, more than ever, it’s important for media consumers to carefully evaluate the information they receive. The explosion of information sources, especially on the Internet, makes huge amounts of information both good and bad available to the public. It’s a citizen’s duty to be an intelligent consumer of news.

Especially during an election campaign season, it’s important to consider Lamb’s reminder that members of the public are eminently capable of evaluating information and deciding for themselves. In our democratic society, the media play a vital role in providing information and offering viewpoints, but whether you see it on C-SPAN or read it in the Journal-World, it’s still your right, your privilege and your responsibility to make up your own mind.