Good morning everyone! Wow has the world gone insane! With the election coming up, this country is more divided than ever. Rifts between friends and family, constant tensions, fights breaking out, looting and rioting becoming an everyday occurrence in major cities.
Under these conditions, it is getting more and more tempting for journalists to abandon truth, either through lies of omission or commission. In no time is it more tempting to do this than in an election year. This twisting of the truth, in the name of the means justifying the ends, may be hurting your political cause.
Recently I’ve started to stumble upon some major confirmation biases within my own mind. If we are letting journalism do our thinking for us, it might behoove us to step back a moment…
Under duress, confirmation bias can become very alluring. Something upsetting happens, being the social creatures that we are, we bond with and reinforce each others’ biases. What we think we saw, and how we feel about what we saw… it takes energy to question our perspectives, so we often become complacent in siding with our ‘team.’ We make any differing perspectives our enemy, and we create a fortress around our side, shutting out dialogue with others.
As I’m sure my readers know, news outlets have become major corporations, and major corporations have corporate personhoods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
Personhood, say you? But how can a company become a person? A media company is only representing the truth. I’m sure my readers are clever enough to know that any company is just providing a service or product. What could be corrupt about that? The Profit and Loss sheets, that’s what. Since a corporation, unlike a person, does not have a soul, it only produces cost benefit analyses. The service it provides is determined by what sells the most. But you know all that. Still, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded. We are relying on the principles of the company, advertisers and shareholders as the stopgap that keeps newspapers honest. But they are imperfect! Throw in the concept of ‘Ends justifying the Means,’ esp when there’s an election coming up, and you could have a real Frankenstein’s monster on your hands. And you thought you were just watching the news!
So let’s walk through the process of creating a story, what any journalist goes through any time an event is covered.
Something incendiary occurs. The video is broadcast. Everyone who sees it has a powerful, and usually same emotion about it. Anger, sadness, joy, etc. If we are a Republican, we refer to one news source, if we are a Democrat, we refer to a very different news sources. But upon first viewing, when we have that first emotion, we are more often united. We are having that same experience. Aside from rare and truly pathological people, when we see an event, we are united in our shared emotional experience. Upon witnessing the event, before the journalist has breathed a word of narration, we are unified, having a natural reaction.
But then the journalist brings the words to tell you what you are seeing. This is when they can start sowing seeds of discord, or bring us together to overcome or celebrate the same value. My following postings will be an attempt to unify our perspectives as Americans. I will try to point out that in spite of those bad players who want to win all the gold and hoard it in their castles, we can keep progressing forward as an amazing nation. Each day I will explore a different news event, invite us all in the spirit of democracy to explore what we are seeing, and then invite you, as part of a collective think tank, to help us work toward making this world a more compassionate and loving place.
I’m excited for anyone who wants to join me in this journey:)
Tales from the Little Shed 