Anything for that Big Scoop

While reading Murphy, Ward and Donovan’s article, "Ethical Ideals in Journalism: Civic Uplift or Telling the Truth", the spiders began a-spinning their webs (of connection). Now, I’m already full aware that what we hear and see on the news is not a guaranteed truth, and throughout the household, the exclamation of ‘what a liar’ is a pretty common occurrence, usually made in the direction of a news anchor or journalist. I personally prefer trying to hear every side of everything, and at one point in my life, was plagued by a delusion of grandeur in which I would single-handedly revamp the journalism industry so no one would say the word ‘liar’ in regards to those people again. But as I grew older, that faded into the dust, because I figured out very soon that you can’t be on both sides of an issue and still expect to be published. This is because people hear what they want to hear, and most people in most situations aren’t going to look at evidence with an objective point of view. There really is no such thing as impartiality or unbiased views in anything, due to a phenomenon known as ‘confirmation bias’. We’re all guilty of it, even if we say we’re not and that we like to look at all sides of the issue (ha, ha jab at self). People like to hear things that reaffirm what they already believe to be true, and anything that goes against what we believe is subconsciously twisted so that it takes on a meaning that agrees with our beliefs. That’s what’s behind what Gans (2003) is talking about when he’s quoted on page 324, saying “Merely supplying them [citizens] with information does not make them into informed citizens. The people have to participate, for example, by wanting and using the information, perhaps by incorporating it into what they already know”. If you want to be published and if you want people to read your work, you don’t have much of a choice outside of taking a side. People who agree with your views will flock to and praise your posts and people who disagree will rant about it on their own blogs and leave nasty comments on your posts.

Personally, I think it’s weird to know that the people who are supposed to provide you with information are actively twisting it to fit their own biases, and then you, the viewer or listener, will then twist it even further to compliment your own. I don’t believe in truth in media at all, because it’s all designed to cater to someone’s point of view. There is no truth-telling when the truth being told has been turned into a lie of its own. Maybe this is just me being cynical beyond what my age should allow, but I don’t think even fact-checking can help with this. All facts were opinions once and in his article, “How Facts Backfire”, Joe Keohane states that, 

“Researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger" (2010)

This rejection of factual information is a phenomenon appropriately named ‘backfiring’, and it’s supposedly a natural defense against cognitive dissonance. In other words, we only accept facts that will make us more confident that we’re right, and like a bunch of self-righteous teenagers, we don’t want to listen to mom and dad and accept that we just might be wrong.