What is truth? The definition states truth is an actual state of matter, conformity with fact or reality; a verified or undisputed fact, proposition, principle; and an ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience ("Truth," 2010). Can people identify the truth? Or do they make up their versions of the truth? Farhad Manjoo proves the latter in his book True Enough.
Manjoo discusses how media fragmentation, which is broadening the media landscape from corporate conglomerates to include niche market players, has allowed information to be spun by millions often times bastardizing truth into snippets of opinions and biased commentary. It is easy for people to gravitate to political pundits like Bill O’Reilly or my personal favorite Rachel Maddow, when seeking strong consonant information that agrees with our points of view that are easily proven, in our minds.
Watch this seven-minute clip from Rachel Maddow's show on Bill O'Reilly to get a feel of the cognitive dissonance.
One of the problems is that each side, in this case Republican verses Democrat commentators, has its own set of facts and distributes information from a slanted perspective espousing truths of things that are merely opinions. Language choices like accusing all “Muslims” of being terrorists, with reference to 9/11, got O’Reilly into some trouble this week on the TV show The View. Barbara Walters was able to get him to rephrase “all Muslims” for “extremist Muslims”. The problem is the people in O’Reilly’s camp probably have already inherited his prejudices and will go around espousing the untruths for truths. Manjoo (2008) states, “People have generalized their preferences for politically consonant news…they’ve gotten into the habit of saying, ‘whatever the news is talking about, I’m just going to turn to Fox’” (p. 19). By subscribing to one politically-driven machine’s news, a person can get really off track. This was seen recently with the Shirley Sherrod case eventually leading to some apologies on the network for espousing inaccurate claims.
Another problem is that people have accepted beliefs over facts. The Swift Boat Veteran’s for Truth group was able to take down John Kerry in the 2004 election over unsupported claims that he was an unpatriotic Veteran and did horrible things in war. The group used the niche markets, and word-of-mouth and viral marketing to get the word out and take Kerry down. It worked! Why did people believe the information even though evidence supported the contrary?
It is interesting how reality can shift from one news source to the next, one blog to the next, or in the press on a daily basis. What is truth? Manjoo explored the cognitive basis of truthiness. I agree with him that now-a-days people construct their own realities regardless of actual states of matter or fundamental principles, as in science. If I say, “The sky is blue,” someone else is likely to say, “No it isn’t.”
References:
Manjoo, F. (2008). True enough . Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Truth. (2010). In Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/truth
YouTube. (2010). Rachel Maddow to Bill O'Reilly: sticks and stones can break my bones but facts will never hurt me . Retrieved from http://el Maddow To Bill O'Reilly: Sticks And Stones Can Break My Bones But Facts Will Never Hurt Me
Friday, October 15, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Journalism and truth telling
Journalists: Let's play chess
I was a journalist for the Daily Herald in Chicago and also the Medill News Service. I experienced the daily beat reporting on companies, how their stocks were performing, and how their quarterly-earning reports looked. I made calls each morning to gain access to corporate heads or financial analysts to get some nuggets of great information to put in my articles that would make my pieces the most intriguing for the editors to select and print, hopefully front page of the business section. It was interesting who allowed me to gain access. Some companies’ CEOs said yes to my calls and answered my questions. I suppose they wanted the free press. Other companies had multi-layers of protection from reporters like me and wanted nothing to do with the press. Those companies selected one-way teleconferences to convey their messages to the networks, which provided them a controlled environment and a change to spin the negative information any way they wanted. The point that Herman, Chomsky and Lippmann made of control or propaganda shaping by companies is real and I experienced it often.
Are journalists just corporately censored, or do they self-censor as well? Yes and no. Yes they know that they need to produce stories that will get published. That means the information in their stories should link in a favorable way to the advertisers of the station. That limits what they write.
Other times, journalists don’t even know they are being indoctrinated by their news channel or corporate heads. They are taught to respond in certain ways, write in a certain way, and deliver information that will gain viewership but not rock the boat in a negative way, in terms of revenue.
Additionally the fast-paced news cycle makes it hard for journalists to do much investigative reporting and deliver deep material on the daily beat. Most journalists are expected to output multiple articles a day. Due to this, journalists rely on experts and political set-ups such as press conferences to get information and deliver it quickly, in hopes that those speaking are credible and reliable.
Moreover only a few news conglomerates like the Associated Press or Bloomberg have the man power and budgets to have journalists on the ground around the globe. So the news stories dispensed from those sources trickle down to local newspapers and nightly news junkets. The majority of what we read and hear comes from the AP. So let’s hope the AP has good journalists. Let’s be real that the journalists are working in controlling environments involving: corporate interests, advertising interests, governmental interests such as national security- which keeps a lot of information from hitting the air waves- and circulation interests, which require journalists to write on stuff that is sensationalized, trendy, and eye catching.
Although rebutters of Manufactured Consent will say the theories of Herman and Chomsky are based on: conspiracies, failure to touch base with reporters, failure to take account of media professionalism and objectivity, failure to explain opposition and resistance, and that the press is free to report on whatever it wants. My guess is that those rebutters are likely right-leaning elites that are part of the hierarchical system of information management.
It would be very interesting to do a survey of journalists, off the record in hopes of protecting them from their companies’ backlashes, and citizens to see if they can truly think about: what information they know and don’t know, what is released, if their thoughts are corrupted from a young age from corporate speak and delivery methods, if they can identify the indoctrination by this flow of communication, and if they even care.
I am reminded of 9/11 in America. For the following year, it was seen as unpatriotic for the press to critique President Bush. No news network did so, very little reporting was allotted to topics like: Bush-Saudi relations, how Bush handled the crisis, or how we were thrown into a war with misinformation about weapons of mass destruction. It took years for information to come out about the USA Patriot Act, which in my opinion is the greatest attack on American constitutional freedoms ever pushed into law. In other words, the press, due to special interests and control, were silenced. That in itself demonstrates exactly what Herman and Chomsky explained in their book.
Reference:
Chomsky, N. and Herman, E. (1988). Manufacturing consent: a propaganda model. Third World Traveler. Retrieved from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html
YouTube. (2007). The corporation (17/23) unsettling accounts. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
I was a journalist for the Daily Herald in Chicago and also the Medill News Service. I experienced the daily beat reporting on companies, how their stocks were performing, and how their quarterly-earning reports looked. I made calls each morning to gain access to corporate heads or financial analysts to get some nuggets of great information to put in my articles that would make my pieces the most intriguing for the editors to select and print, hopefully front page of the business section. It was interesting who allowed me to gain access. Some companies’ CEOs said yes to my calls and answered my questions. I suppose they wanted the free press. Other companies had multi-layers of protection from reporters like me and wanted nothing to do with the press. Those companies selected one-way teleconferences to convey their messages to the networks, which provided them a controlled environment and a change to spin the negative information any way they wanted. The point that Herman, Chomsky and Lippmann made of control or propaganda shaping by companies is real and I experienced it often.
Are journalists just corporately censored, or do they self-censor as well? Yes and no. Yes they know that they need to produce stories that will get published. That means the information in their stories should link in a favorable way to the advertisers of the station. That limits what they write.
Other times, journalists don’t even know they are being indoctrinated by their news channel or corporate heads. They are taught to respond in certain ways, write in a certain way, and deliver information that will gain viewership but not rock the boat in a negative way, in terms of revenue.
Additionally the fast-paced news cycle makes it hard for journalists to do much investigative reporting and deliver deep material on the daily beat. Most journalists are expected to output multiple articles a day. Due to this, journalists rely on experts and political set-ups such as press conferences to get information and deliver it quickly, in hopes that those speaking are credible and reliable.
Moreover only a few news conglomerates like the Associated Press or Bloomberg have the man power and budgets to have journalists on the ground around the globe. So the news stories dispensed from those sources trickle down to local newspapers and nightly news junkets. The majority of what we read and hear comes from the AP. So let’s hope the AP has good journalists. Let’s be real that the journalists are working in controlling environments involving: corporate interests, advertising interests, governmental interests such as national security- which keeps a lot of information from hitting the air waves- and circulation interests, which require journalists to write on stuff that is sensationalized, trendy, and eye catching.
Although rebutters of Manufactured Consent will say the theories of Herman and Chomsky are based on: conspiracies, failure to touch base with reporters, failure to take account of media professionalism and objectivity, failure to explain opposition and resistance, and that the press is free to report on whatever it wants. My guess is that those rebutters are likely right-leaning elites that are part of the hierarchical system of information management.
It would be very interesting to do a survey of journalists, off the record in hopes of protecting them from their companies’ backlashes, and citizens to see if they can truly think about: what information they know and don’t know, what is released, if their thoughts are corrupted from a young age from corporate speak and delivery methods, if they can identify the indoctrination by this flow of communication, and if they even care.
I am reminded of 9/11 in America. For the following year, it was seen as unpatriotic for the press to critique President Bush. No news network did so, very little reporting was allotted to topics like: Bush-Saudi relations, how Bush handled the crisis, or how we were thrown into a war with misinformation about weapons of mass destruction. It took years for information to come out about the USA Patriot Act, which in my opinion is the greatest attack on American constitutional freedoms ever pushed into law. In other words, the press, due to special interests and control, were silenced. That in itself demonstrates exactly what Herman and Chomsky explained in their book.
Reference:
Chomsky, N. and Herman, E. (1988). Manufacturing consent: a propaganda model. Third World Traveler. Retrieved from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html
YouTube. (2007). The corporation (17/23) unsettling accounts. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Media and Cognition: Is it possible?
Cognition, defined by Wikipedia, is having faculty for processing information, applying knowledge, changing preferences, analyzing different perspectives within different contexts, ability to process abstract concepts such as mind, reasoning, intelligence and learning, and able to think in a natural, artificial, conscious or unconscious way (Wikipedia, 2010).
If we apply this definition to Walter Lippmann’s content in Public Opinion on media and people’s inability to truly understand, capture, and digest global issues in a way that is authentic instead of aligned with stereotypes, biases, and narrow thinking, cognition is not likely happening broadly.
The pictures inside our heads often mislead us in the real world, as Lippmann describes (Lippmann, 1997). The limited access to facts, artificial censorship, limitation of social contacts, and meager time to engage in public affairs, make us want to distort events to fit into sound bites that use small vocabulary to express complicated issues. We fear that facing facts would threaten our routines, understandings, and lives. Due to this predicament, most people want morsels of truth that do not shake their grounding. For example, in the past slavery was considered natural, normal, and routine. Lippmann describes it as if the slave was meant to be a slave and therefore the owner was doing something very normal and rightful by owning slaves. That mindset had been set for generations and the norms were seen as normal, thus slavery continued for thousands of years.
If cognition is limited by most people, especially laymen who do not espouse to higher education and critical thought processes, it is likely the media or any material out there, especially today on the Net, can mislead, persuade, manipulate, and lie to the general public with very little backlash.
Dr. Tuma questioned how cognition and media relate. According to Lippmann, most media rely on the fact that the majority of people do not utilize higher levels of cognition (Lippmann, 1997). If people challenged, questioned, fought for truth, and required transparency, credibility, informed, and accurate information, it would change the news cycle to a much slower one and it would require a much higher cost to produce it. Additionally most consumers prefer news in sound bites, as attention spans wane and interests to commit to lengthy discussions narrows. Media involves a business model that predicts what consumers want, how they will respond, and what they will buy. The end goals are higher circulation and advertising revenue. This business model is not always ethical, for the betterment of the public, or in the interest of sharing truth, and democracy. Instead this business model involves making lots of money. The media and press, even with their specific motivations, are not to be blamed entirely for the lack of ideas, discourse, and proponents of free speech. The public has its part to carry as well. In the past, people’s participation was void.
“If the press is not so universally wicked, nor so deeply conspiring, as Mr. Sinclair would have us believe, it is very much more frail than the democratic theory has as yet admitted. It is too frail to carry the whole burden of popular sovereignty, to supply spontaneously the truth which democrats hoped was inborn. And when we expect it to supply such a body of truth we employ a misleading standard of judgment. We misunderstand the limited nature of news, the illimitable complexity of society; we overestimate our own endurance, public spirit, and all-round competence. We suppose an appetite for uninteresting truths which is not discovered by any honest analysis of our own tastes” (Lippmann, 1997).
In the name of progress, today we see people participating in media and dialogue in blogs. “As of January 2009, there have been a total of about 133 million blogs indexed by the blog search engine Technorati dating back to 2002” (NumberOf.Net, 2009). Blogs enable people to have space on the Net to share, create, espouse, and debate information. Blogs involve citizen journalism. Although blogs are not typically fact checked, nor accurate, they are a great breeding ground for thought and participatory dialogue. They are places where ideas can be fleshed out, creative, and individual interests can be published. This is a very different news sharing operation than what we have seen in the past.
I suppose media and cognition can work if the players are engaged, interested, educated, and participatory, as seen in some blogging. The Internet has allowed a new way of sharing information that didn’t exist in Lippmann’s time of early 20th century. Through cognitive efforts, people can think things through, gain global information, research a lot, and deliver information in a way that is more thoughtful and thought provoking. However, Lippmann’s points on how people can only unveil information through their own filters and perceptions will remain true, and if exposure to good information is limited, stereotypes will remain intact and people’s pictures in their heads will remain unchanged. Taking people from cognitive conservatism, egocentricity, and the need to keep a positive self- image will take time and much effort but we are hopefully headed in the right direction.
References:
Lippmann, W. (1997). Public opinion (original 1922). Available from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper2/CDFinal/Lippman/header.html.
NumberOf.Net. (2009). Number of blogs. Retrieved from http://www.numberof.net/number-of-blogs-2/
Wikipedia. (2010). Cognition . Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognition
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