"People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news." A. J. Liebling
Any media we consume must be thought through. Regardless of what some folks think, there is most often some sort of bias any media has. There is no such thing as a purely objective reporter. I could be wrong about this, but I do not think I am.
Everybody has a view they think is right. Reporters use particular words chosen for a particular purpose. Some words have a positive or negative connotation meant to get a rise from the reader. It is part of the process.
Our job as suggested above is to sift throught the material and try to be aware of how the author is using language to persuade us. We can be persuaded or not if the ideas are worth it or not.
Think about it.
What do you think?
Derrick
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I agree that most reporters do indeed have an opinion about what they are writing about. There are very few truly neutral articles written. The essence of opinion is found in the chosen words. Even my responses in my column reflect my own opinion. I try to be neutral on some subjects but find myself not doing so much of the time. The issue of abortion had my dander up and I wrote in that way.
This is absolutely true. I happen to be taking a cognitive psychology course right now and we just learned about the power of persuasion. It is part of an idea called the "misinformation effect." One of the ideas is that the way information is presented can effect how we think. For example: If I told you that there was a car accident and the two cars smashed into each other, you would likely say that the cars must have been going very fast. However, if I told you that the cars hit each other, you would likely give a lower speed estimate. The word "smashed" is strategically placed to lead you into an opinion about what happened. We see this in court rooms often. This is just one example of many. The same goes for any media. They are always strategically placing words and saying them a certain way to get us to think a certain way. We do need to be careful and think through what we read.
Post a Comment