4.23.2006
The “Bigger Picture Tube:” Faux News is Nothing New
I don’t like Fox News that much, really I don’t. Mostly, I believe they are everything they say they aren’t, (namely: unfair, unbalanced, biased, spun, pro-Bush mouthpiece). Admittedly, Fox News really knows their target audience. They know exactly how they think, feel, what they believe, how they will react, and they deliver the just right mix. Even when one disagrees with Fox News, they play it to their advantage faster than one can say “Ann Coulter.” Be that as it may, I think we need to take a step back and look at this from the perspective of history, economics, and psychology. Fox isn’t the disease; it’s merely another symptom.
If history has taught us anything, it is that the elite of every age have managed to find some medium for shaping how people think, believe, and act. For a long time, organized religion was that medium. After the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation, literacy flourished like never before and books, pamphlets, leaflets, and eventually, newspapers, provided means by which people were “informed.” Early into the 20th Century, radio changed everything and paved the road for T.V. Never before had it been possible to send the same information instantaneously to so many people at once. If radio had a shortcoming, it was the lack of a visual. Mere voices and sounds coming out of a box allowed each listener to form their own associations and visuals, making it harder to form a consensus. Television changed all that. Now the voices and sounds came with a “ready-made” visual image, and visual stimuli can keep our attention, focus it, and better store the desired message into peoples' long-term memories. Television is just the latest in a long line of social institutions designed to distract and enthrall people into joining the mindless herd of irrational, consumer, meat puppets.
Economics teaches us that anything worth doing on as large a scale as television has become must be profitable, (or it would never have been invented in the first place). The vast majority of stations are owned by corporate conglomerates, who not only make money selling their various products, goods, and services, but they also sell advertising space to other corporations and make even more money. In an Information Age, data, secrets, knowledge, all are commodities to be hoarded, brokered, or doled out one bit at a time, dictated by precisely measured outcomes.
A little lesson in psychology teaches us the key to persuading the masses is as simple as appealing to their basic emotions. Whether one calls it advertising, propaganda, or psychological warfare, the basic premise doesn’t change: know your target audience, toy with their most basic emotions, and slowly “truth” becomes subjective and “reality” more pliable. The object is not only to make viewers susceptible to consumerism, but to also reinforce certain thoughts and feelings, and negating others. One such method is to repeat certain general assumptions over and over until they become “fact.” Another is to distract viewer attention away from one topic for something else (this method is particularly effective if it is tied to highly controversial and emotional content). The outright vilification of all things intellectual plays right into the hands of the “spin doctors,” by encouraging conformity of thinking, subduing curiosity, replacing individualism, deflecting criticism, and banishing skepticism, the people are all the more likely to accept whatever they are told without question. What so many have failed to realize is the vilification of intellectualism is a key trait of totalitarianism, not democracy.
What is “news” really? If we weren’t there to witness it, how do we determine whether it is any more reliable than rumors, speculation, gossip, or hearsay? The Bush administration has been caught funding “fake” newscasts to shape public perceptions, how hard would it really be for the “real” news to follow suit? If the victors write history, then perhaps news is merely history being written as it happens. However it is viewed, news remains a combination of carefully chosen words and carefully edited imagery with a purpose, not necessarily to inform, but rather, to reform, the thoughts, beliefs, and, ultimately, the actions, of its viewers.
©J.S.Brown 2004-2006
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If history has taught us anything, it is that the elite of every age have managed to find some medium for shaping how people think, believe, and act. For a long time, organized religion was that medium. After the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation, literacy flourished like never before and books, pamphlets, leaflets, and eventually, newspapers, provided means by which people were “informed.” Early into the 20th Century, radio changed everything and paved the road for T.V. Never before had it been possible to send the same information instantaneously to so many people at once. If radio had a shortcoming, it was the lack of a visual. Mere voices and sounds coming out of a box allowed each listener to form their own associations and visuals, making it harder to form a consensus. Television changed all that. Now the voices and sounds came with a “ready-made” visual image, and visual stimuli can keep our attention, focus it, and better store the desired message into peoples' long-term memories. Television is just the latest in a long line of social institutions designed to distract and enthrall people into joining the mindless herd of irrational, consumer, meat puppets.
Economics teaches us that anything worth doing on as large a scale as television has become must be profitable, (or it would never have been invented in the first place). The vast majority of stations are owned by corporate conglomerates, who not only make money selling their various products, goods, and services, but they also sell advertising space to other corporations and make even more money. In an Information Age, data, secrets, knowledge, all are commodities to be hoarded, brokered, or doled out one bit at a time, dictated by precisely measured outcomes.
A little lesson in psychology teaches us the key to persuading the masses is as simple as appealing to their basic emotions. Whether one calls it advertising, propaganda, or psychological warfare, the basic premise doesn’t change: know your target audience, toy with their most basic emotions, and slowly “truth” becomes subjective and “reality” more pliable. The object is not only to make viewers susceptible to consumerism, but to also reinforce certain thoughts and feelings, and negating others. One such method is to repeat certain general assumptions over and over until they become “fact.” Another is to distract viewer attention away from one topic for something else (this method is particularly effective if it is tied to highly controversial and emotional content). The outright vilification of all things intellectual plays right into the hands of the “spin doctors,” by encouraging conformity of thinking, subduing curiosity, replacing individualism, deflecting criticism, and banishing skepticism, the people are all the more likely to accept whatever they are told without question. What so many have failed to realize is the vilification of intellectualism is a key trait of totalitarianism, not democracy.
What is “news” really? If we weren’t there to witness it, how do we determine whether it is any more reliable than rumors, speculation, gossip, or hearsay? The Bush administration has been caught funding “fake” newscasts to shape public perceptions, how hard would it really be for the “real” news to follow suit? If the victors write history, then perhaps news is merely history being written as it happens. However it is viewed, news remains a combination of carefully chosen words and carefully edited imagery with a purpose, not necessarily to inform, but rather, to reform, the thoughts, beliefs, and, ultimately, the actions, of its viewers.
TANSTAAFL!
©J.S.Brown 2004-2006
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