Another Media Trick To Watch and a Word to the Wise

How many issues can you name where everyone is in agreement? Nearly everything that matters has proponents and opponents. Argument is as American as pumpkin pie.

While flipping through headlines the other I saw this one: Push to oust judge over absentee vote ruling sparks outcry

It's really a perfect setup for a fight, isn't it? If you're a journalist on a slow news day all you need to pick any issue or action by a public official and add the words, sparks an outcry or creates an uproar or incites a furor.

Nearly anything can be turned into an argument. Check out this headline: Tom Brady called 'Racist' for winning Super Bowl during Black History Month. Who could have predicted that headline? It's almost as if the media's primary purpose is no longer to inform but to make people angry. 

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Here's an article that encourages writers to find ways to create controversy, or build on it, in order to corral eyeballs, get more readers. She begins by stating:

Many people want to avoid controversy, but "smart Publicity Hounds know controversy commands attention. And they use it a variety of ways to claim their time in the spotlight."

Make people angry. That's how you get readers. Carry that notion over into television and the film industry, and you have precisely what is going on today. 

Marshall McLuhan observed this more than 60 years ago. "The young today cannot follow narrative but they are alert to drama. They cannot bear description but they love landscape and action."

and...

Nobody can doubt that the entire range of applied science contributes to the very format of a newspaper. But the headline is a feature which began with the Napoleonic Wars. The headline is a primitive shout of rage, triumph, fear, or warning, and newspapers have thrived on wars ever since.

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Journalists on both Left and Right use the tactic. My hope is that we become more discerning as readers and consumers of media. 

The root of "discernment" is Discern. Discern means to perceive, find out, detect. We're to be alert detectives looking for clues as to why this story has been told and the spin has been put on it. 

The origin of the word conveys the meaning "distinguish (between) separate" things. Beneath that is the Latin discernere -- "to separate, set apart, divide, distinguish, sift."

In other words, separate gold from muck like a miner with his pan. Or separate fake news from real. Or recognize when we are being manipulated vs. being assisted. (Yes, news can be informative.)

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There are a gazillion things happening at any moment in time. When the media became our conduit through which we learn about the happenings in the world it also appointed itself as divine arbiter to dictate to us what we should be paying attention to, and how to interpret it.

As media consumers we need to get better at discerning the spin, differentiating between information and manipulation.

Use discernment. Don't just mindlessly accept what you see and hear. 

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Related Link

He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People