When you purposely choose to receive all your news, history, and commentary from one source or bias; political or otherwise- You voluntarily give up your ability and right to think for yourself, and make reasonable decisions on your own.
I suppose I'm generally talking about political news here- It seems like a lot of people fall into this... on both the Left and the Right side of the spectrum.. hell, I did as well at a point in my life... and really, I still struggle with it a little bit. (we all do, I'd like to think)
Hey! It's analogy time!
I'd like to think that The News is a lot like a picture. I'll try and break it down, but It might not translate well: Lets say we have a picture of a Beach.. and this picture of the Beach will represent the news...
(cred)Here we have the whole news story (I mean obviously you could make the point that we still don't see the ENTIRE world around it, but for this visual this will do)... We have a clear view of the sky, the sand, and the ocean...
The problem is- this isn't how the news story is reported. One network might focus heavily on The Sky. They'll slant all their stories to really highlight the importance and greatness of the Sky, they will make sure to have commentators and pundits talk up high opinions of the Sky... using pathos is key. All while neglecting the Ocean and the Sand. When you get all your news and opinionated commentary, you no longer see the whole story for what it is, you get a skewed image- perhaps one that looks like this...
Another might focus heavily on the Sand... or Ocean.. You get the point.
What's the solution- Well there's a few... Two that come to mind are, Ignore (political) news all together- or- try your best to get all sides of the story, and use your best judgment based on the information you receive to make a quality decision.
Yes.
* I took this off facebook, mainly cause I didn't intend it to end up there: Plus I had a sense that pandoras box was starting to open, so yeah.
I'll let John Cleese take us out with the topic of "Extremism."
The problem is- this isn't how the news story is reported. One network might focus heavily on The Sky. They'll slant all their stories to really highlight the importance and greatness of the Sky, they will make sure to have commentators and pundits talk up high opinions of the Sky... using pathos is key. All while neglecting the Ocean and the Sand. When you get all your news and opinionated commentary, you no longer see the whole story for what it is, you get a skewed image- perhaps one that looks like this...
Another might focus heavily on the Sand... or Ocean.. You get the point.
What's the solution- Well there's a few... Two that come to mind are, Ignore (political) news all together- or- try your best to get all sides of the story, and use your best judgment based on the information you receive to make a quality decision.
"Is there a concern if people who were conservative, watched a conservative network- or people who were liberal watched a liberal network, that it would just reinforce" their chosen ignorance?
Yes.
* I took this off facebook, mainly cause I didn't intend it to end up there: Plus I had a sense that pandoras box was starting to open, so yeah.
I'll let John Cleese take us out with the topic of "Extremism."
2 comments:
an interesting article that reminded me of what you had to say:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/06/coburn-defends-pelosi-takes-swipe-at-fox/?fbid=_9lGnt7YJIs
Good for Coburn... I just saw this article that has a little deeper look into this
http://www.newsweek.com/id/236309
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