Day Twenty. Don’t Be Brainwashed by the News Media

Every society and culture has a unique worldview. This worldview shapes what people see and how they see it. It shapes perceptions and beliefs. News media across the world reflect the worldview of their own culture. This is true both because those who work in national news media share the same views as their readers and because they need to sell what people within the culture want to buy. They need to present the news in ways palatable and interesting to their audience (to increase their profits). In the book The News About the News, Downie and Kaiser present the problems as follows:

“All journalists are, by virtue of their handicraft, alarmists; this is their way of making themselves interesting.”

—Lord Riddell

“The national television networks have trimmed their reporting staffs and closed foreign reporting bureaus to cut their owners’ costs. They have tried to attract viewers by diluting their expensive newscasts with lifestyle, celebrity, and entertainment features, and by filling their low-budget, high-profit, prime time ‘newsmagazines’ with sensational sex, crime, and court stories” (New York: Knopf, 2002), p.19.

Mainstream news coverage in any culture operates on the following (often unconscious) maxims:

• “This is how it appears to us from our point of view; therefore, this is the way it is.”

• “These are the facts that support our way of looking at this; therefore, these are the most important facts.”

• “These countries are friendly to us; therefore, these countries deserve praise.”

• “These countries are unfriendly to us; therefore, these countries deserve criticism.”

• “These are the stories most interesting or sensational to our readers; therefore, these are the most important stories in the news.”

The truth of what is happening in the world is far more complicated than what appears true to people in any culture.

If you do not recognize bias in your nation’s news; if you cannot detect ideology, slant, and spin; if you cannot recognize propaganda when exposed to it, you cannot reasonably determine what media messages have to be supplemented, counterbalanced, or thrown out entirely. These insights are crucial to becoming a critical consumer of the news media and developing skills of media analysis.

Be on the lookout for...

...products of the news media throughout the day. Study the newspaper carefully, noting how “friends” of one’s country are presented positively, whereas its “enemies” are presented negatively. Notice the not-so-important articles on the front page versus the important articles buried within. Notice significant world problems that are ignored or played down while the sensational is highlighted. Imagine how you would rewrite news stories to broaden their perspectives or to present issues more fairly. Make critical reading of the news a habit, not a rare event. Notice how TV news programs oversimplify the complex. Note how they target whatever they can sensationalize, and how they tend to dwell on stories that will be considered sensational by their viewers (rather than focusing on what is significant or deep). Note how they create and feed social hysteria (often around sexuality and what is considered criminal behavior).

Strategies for seeing through the news media

• Study alternative perspectives and worldviews, learning how to interpret events from multiple perspectives.

• Seek understanding and insight through multiple sources of thought and information, not simply those of the mass media.

• Learn how to identify the viewpoints embedded in news stories.

• Mentally rewrite (reconstruct) news stories through awareness of how they would be told from multiple perspectives.

• See news stories as one way of representing reality (as some blend of fact and interpretation).

• Assess news stories for their clarity, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, and significance.

• Notice contradictions and inconsistencies in the news (often in the same story).

• Notice the agenda and interests a story serves.

• Notice the facts covered and the facts ignored.

• Notice what is represented as fact that should be presented as debatable.

• Notice assumptions implicit in stories.

• Notice what is implied but not openly stated.

• Notice what implications are ignored and what are highlighted.

• Notice which points of view are systematically presented favorably and which unfavorably.

• Mentally correct stories that reflect bias toward the unusual, the dramatic, and the sensational by putting them into perspective or discounting them.

• Notice when social conventions and taboos are used, inappropriately, to define issues and problems as unethical.