Manufacturing Perception

Here's a popular opinion that I personally find challenging to deny these days: most news media prioritizes engagement over accuracy.

It is more profitable to be first and provocative than correct and nuanced.

Consider how breaking news stories often contain inaccuracies that are quietly corrected later, after the initial viral spread has already shaped public perception.

The Boston Marathon bombing coverage is a classic example, several innocent people were wrongly identified as suspects by overeager media outlets racing to be first.

The 24-Hour Vacuum

The part I don't get is why we collectively continue to accept this as normal. We've somehow normalized the 24-hour news cycle, which demands constant content even when there's nothing substantive to report.

This creates a vacuum that gets filled with speculation, punditry, and manufactured controversy.

Usually, an opinion is a perceived reality based on subjective impressions. Knowing that reality is complex and multifaceted, subjective impressions are more or less inevitable but should be recognized as incomplete.

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With regards to climate change, a casual viewer might get entirely different impressions of the scientific consensus depending on which network they watch, despite the underlying data being the same.

I don't think there's an objective way to consume information without some bias. Even choosing which stories deserve attention involves subjective judgment.

But let's say, I would prefer to know the truth as completely as possible. Am I better off collecting different viewpoints from various sources or just going directly to the primary sources and raw data?

Unfiltered Information

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, I've heard that many found themselves reading scientific papers directly instead of relying on media interpretations, as the latter were subjectively proven to be pure propaganda.

I appreciate this approach because it provides unfiltered information, although on the other side of the spectrum, it requires specialized knowledge most people don't have.

In reality, this is one of the issues I face whenever I'm trying to form an informed opinion on contentious topics.

I'm hardly ever content with surface appearances, although they serve as an initial framework to dig deeper into the underlying nuances.

It's very observable that headlines are designed to provoke emotion rather than convey information. Because "Scientists make breakthrough" definitely tells us nothing about the actual significance of the research.

Even so, one could make an argument that appearances are created as deliberate constructs to shape public perception.

This would align a bit with manufacturing consent theories. Noam Chomsky's work suggests that media functions as a system to inculcate beliefs that serve the interests of state and corporate power.

When you're trying to uncover truth, you can't risk intellectual complacency, even though such is a likely possibility.

It's exhausting to constantly question sources and cross-reference information, which is why many default to trusted outlets that align with their existing views.

There are certain ethical boundaries we don't cross, no matter the circumstances. Arguably, this is the nature of honest intellectual inquiry, in that it demands both openness and principles.

We must remain willing to change our minds when presented with new evidence while maintaining core values about truth and fairness.

Anyways, I wonder if the solution can happen through teaching better media literacy rather than expecting media itself to change. Because I'm quite sure the latter has no incentive to reform as long as the current model remains profitable.


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