The Media

[Arcdelad]

Love it or hate it, the media paints a picture of things that we have to blindly trust becuase the physics of life (at this point) dont allow for critical analyzation of world events. Millions being slaughtered in Darfor in a quiet genocide? You can trust the media, or you can disbelieve the media and claim it isnt happening - for only a select few can this "fact" be imperitively challenged.

Allow me a tangent into the nature of reality for a sec...reality, as it related to you as an island (ie unaffected by the trappings of culture or group presence), relies upon the senses as an entry point. If you cannot touch, taste, smell, feel, or see - it simply does not exist. Its only through this sensory manipulation of the world around us that it comes into being as "reality". For another way to look at things, think about the age old question: "If a tree falls in a forest and noone hears it, does it make a sound?". If noone hears the crash or feels the thump, then arguably no - it doesnt make a sound. This is also where existential philosophy can be applied, which can argue that only the things you are currently sensing exist - meaning that the room you just left and can no longer apply any of the 5 senses too, no longer exists, and will only re-exist when you enter that room again.

All that, of course, assumes a person is isolated from all other people. Since our life as human beings is structured into a communal and cooperative environment, one is subject to collectivism. Now, my NEIGHBOR tells me that the tree fell and made a sound, becuase his or her senses observed it, and my collectivistic programming tells me to trust this person and I then assume that yes, the tree DID make a sound, even though I personally did not sense the occurance. In this way too, a lie can be as real as a truth. If we blindly accept others supposed realities, then someone who says a plane crashed and turned into a pile of purple bananas can inform our reality of an event.

College, training, or an innate skepticism are things that allow people within the construct of collectivism to question other peoples transferred reality. There are, of course, matters of opinion which are always debatable - which political party is the best, what sports team is the strongest etc etc etc...these are only opinionized reality though.

The distinction gets even more blurred when your inner network of people cant give you spoon fed versions of reality you dont experience - like global events for example. This is where we heavily rely on governments and the media - they use their globe spanning network to inform our realities well past the boundaries of what our senses can bring in. If the US government tells us Pearl Harbor was bombed, by golly we need to go nuke the s*** out of the japanese!

But...what if...those sources....are wrong? There have been tons of movies on this concept: Wag the Dog, Simone, Thirteenth Floor...all have some content about the media warping and misportraying a reality which isnt true, either through malicious or innocent motives.

Take today...for example:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/06/myanmar.cyclone/index.html

In Myanmar, a place I would imagine most of us arent in, never will be in, and never were in - a cyclone is destroying pretty much...everything and has killed roughly 22,000 people so far. Boy, thats more than a druid 6 second cyclone for sure! And they didnt even trinket out of it! (pause for the silence following grossly innapropriate humor).

If you read into the details, China, with their state run media, is reporting only 10,000 people dead - roughly 50% of the catastrophe.

So..we Americans see this on CNN or Fox and our reality becomes that 22,000 people are dead in Myanmar. The Chinese people read their countries news and its a much tamer and smaller disaster.

Who is right? Whos reality is correct? Noone reading this can emprically find out either way. What if both countries are full of crap and are only informing us flawed information to color our realities in a way suitable for their ends? If China can blindly accept their media fed realities, are we really any different?

What "realities" of ours are total bull****? We will never know...

[capnpop]

Not to be a jerk but some clarification should be noted:

China's state-run Xinhua news agency, quoting officials, reported a death toll of 10,000 alone in the township of Bogalay.

China is reporting 10,000 dead in one township (of presumably several).  The actual source of cnn is (likely)

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/06/content_8116709.htm

which shows a similar death toll (if not the same, didn't check).

[Arcdelad]

you are indeed a picker of nits.

[capnpop]

 

[Kothnok]

Good points.  Like when newspapers report that we should expect higher gas prices at the pump.  On the one hand it may indeed be newsworthy (less supply, higher demand), but on the other, some oil companies (if not all) have a standing policy to raise gas prices at the pump whenever the media predicts it will go up.  If everyone is expecting a price hike, who will complain when there is one? 

[Arcdelad]

yeah...thats a whole other dilemna involving the media...they may report consumers are edgy about buying things due to the economy which in turn actually MAKES some people edgy, which then pushes down the economy in some kind of weird self fulfilling prophesy...OR the media will report that X or Y story about a politician will hurt his campaign, when in fact its only that they mention it could hurt the campaign that it actually DOES hurt it...

[Nixphire]

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.