Why does society easily buy into media rhetoric?

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PDXFonz

PDXFonz

I’m listening
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Many of us have our favorite media source, be it CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Etc... But why are we so quick to latch onto the information from those sources, often doing so without questioning its legitimacy.

I personally attribute it to our human instinct to trust. Do you think trusting is in our nature? A baby is born relying on, and trusting its parents to give it the proper nourishment it needs to survive. We are then sent to school to learn from some one who is being trusted to properly educate us, more often than not strengthening the instinct to trust.

This makes us more susceptible to the media's ploy of using ethos to imprison its viewers.

Anyone else ever thought about this?
 
Folks often pass by the empty cafe when the one across the street is filled with people
 
(Elitist rant)
Personally, I think that for whatever reason people don't delve into the source material anymore. We'll look at a 10-second clip on Facebook, or pay attention to something because Stewart/Maddow/O'Reilly put it up on the screen. How many people read the full-pagers in the WSJ, NYT or Post? (Granted, still a slant, but at least using good source material most of the time) Does anyone here (which I think, on the whole, is a more-informed subset than the rest of the populace, whatever your particular view) subscribe to Foreign Affairs or Foreign Policy magazine? The Economist? The New Yorker? Any Science Journals (I know we have some researcher in the house)?

If you ask the random dude on the street, I'm guessing you'll get fewer people who read "news" and more who get their news from whatever sound bite got clipped into a FB post.

/rant
 
BrianFromWA said:
(Elitist rant)
Personally, I think that for whatever reason people don't delve into the source material anymore. We'll look at a 10-second clip on Facebook, or pay attention to something because Stewart/Maddow/O'Reilly put it up on the screen. How many people read the full-pagers in the WSJ, NYT or Post? (Granted, still a slant, but at least using good source material most of the time) Does anyone here (which I think, on the whole, is a more-informed subset than the rest of the populace, whatever your particular view) subscribe to Foreign Affairs or Foreign Policy magazine? The Economist? The New Yorker? Any Science Journals (I know we have some researcher in the house)?

If you ask the random dude on the street, I'm guessing you'll get fewer people who read "news" and more who get their news from whatever sound bite got clipped into a FB post.

/rant
Click to expand...

Is it about the amount of material you read, or the credibility of the material you read. Is reading 10 pages of lies better than reading 1 sentence of truth?

I understand your point, and agree partially. I think its about actually analyzing the credibility of the source, not how much information you gain. I'd be willing to bet you could get just as much information on ebola in a paragraph excerpt from a university's medical journal as you would likely get from 3 pages of a generic media column.

I also completely agree about the 10 second clip theory, I call it "Vines disease".
 
I read the economist most often and the WSJ. Time magazine has become a joke..it's about as thick as a business card. Utne is not bad either. I think now that world events are broadcast in high def instantly, the age of the in depth journalist has sort of died off. I notice my son (23yrs old) and his friends never listen to complete albums by musicians, just the songs on their ipods or smart phones. Things are changing. We've entered the era where wars are streamed live with updates. All the enemy needs is a TV or computer to see what the game plan is
 
riverman said:
I read the economist most often and the WSJ. Time magazine has become a joke..it's about as thick as a business card. Utne is not bad either. I think now that world events are broadcast in high def instantly, the age of the in depth journalist has sort of died off. I notice my son (23yrs old) and his friends never listen to complete albums by musicians, just the songs on their ipods or smart phones. Things are changing. We've entered the era where wars are streamed live with updates. All the enemy needs is a TV or computer to see what the game plan is
Click to expand...

See this is what I don't think happens enough. Not enough people analyze the actual content they read before they side with it. Siding with, and quoting a source that has no credibility instantly means you as well have no credibility. It is the media's way of making the people powerless.
 
Fonzthecpt1 said:
See this is what I don't think happens enough. Not enough people analyze the actual content they read before they side with it. Siding with, and quoting a source that has no credibility instantly means you as well have no credibility. It is the media's way of making the people powerless.
Click to expand...

Sounds a lot like our Congress
 
riverman said:
Folks often pass by the empty cafe when the one across the street is filled with people
Click to expand...

So you think it is a group mentality kind of thing? That the comfort from togetherness is what drives us to take a side, or believe what we read is true?

That is an interesting thought, you would want to look for examples of family and friends agreeing on the same side of a topic. Could be an interesting study in there finding out what % of families take the same side of a subject. Would be even more interesting doing on studies on families where opinions change. IE: A kid raised in a heavily right wing dominated family grows up and sides with the democrats.
 
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I don't claim at all to be a sociologist, but anecdotal material from my (pretty varied) group of close-ish friends shows that it's a function of who you're around in your "formative years"-- whatever those are.

For instance, if you're homeschooled there's probably a pretty strong correlation to either follow in lock-step or totally rebel. But if you're a latchkey kid who only gets his info/worldview from schools, it's a function of whatever district you grow up in (metro Portland would be different than suburban Iowa, I'd imagine). If you get to college and are trained to look deeply into sources and research before forming an opinion, you'd probably be different than someone who had to make his subjective papers sound like his prof's to get decent grades.
 
Plus, I think there are just some people who are born followers, and some who are going to strike out on their own regardless of upbringing.
 
BrianFromWA said:
Plus, I think there are just some people who are born followers, and some who are going to strike out on their own regardless of upbringing.
Click to expand...

So then do you think that we require media to give those people something to swing at?

Would society be worse off without the media?
 
Because most people erroneously think the news is true.
 
There's been "yellow journalism" since at least 1898. :dunno:
 
I know it's a movie, but there was a decent line in Meet Joe Black

Meet Joe Black said:
Thank you, Drew. Yeah. I did enjoy -- or rather I was interested in meeting John Bontecou, yesterday. And -- impressive, I suppose. But... But, it did get me to thinking. See, I started in this business because this is what I wanted to do. I knew I wasn't going to write the great American novel, but I also knew there was more to life than buying something for a dollar and selling it for two. I'd hoped to create something, something which could be held to the highest standards. And what I realized was I wanted to give the news to the world, and I wanted to give it unvarnished. The more we all know about each other, the greater the chance we will survive.
Sure, I want to make a profit. You can't exist without one. But John Bontecou is all profit. Now if we give him license to absorb Parrish Communications, and he has his eye on a few others after us, in order to reach the world you will have to go through John Bontecou. And not only will you have to pay him to do this, far more important, you'll have to agree with him.

Reporting the news is a privilege and a responsibility, and it is not exploitable. Parrish Communications has earned this privilege. John Bontecou wants to buy it. As your Chairman, I urge you to agree this company is not for sale
Click to expand...
 
One thing is time. We just often don't have enough to analyze each topic that comes up so we tend to just go with the source that has been most entertaining. With the whole Ebola thing, that has been pretty important, so I have read/watched many different sources, but that's because I have time and interest. I don't care as much about the recent Canadian terror issue, so Ive basically gotten my information in small filtered bites.


The source that I think is total shit now is cnn. Fox is right wing, msnbc is leftist, but cnn is just dumbed down so second graders can understand. I'd rah r have a bent on facts than no facts in the first place.
 
Sensationalism sells. TV news programs at primetime are really targeting the elderly with cures for everything from a limp dick to herpes viral infections of the eye...I swear I heard that phrase everytime my wife turns on her news at 5. There are more drugs pedaled around the news than ever in history. When I heard nightly Cialis commercials for erectile disfunction a dozen times an hour, made me wonder if erectile disfunction came from worrying about erectile disfunction. It's snake oil in high def. People line up to buy all this bullshit so yeah, the media draws a crowd at the pharmacy, sells a lot of lottery tickets and hair products. I find media fasting good for the soul. At 5 when my wife is listening, I put on the headphones. I prefer to read the news or listen to the radio. I prefer BBC radio for world news. This way I can live in comfort knowing nothing about Lindsay Lohan or Kim Kardashian
 
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This story seems related, IMO.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/d...ternet-campaigns-blogs-drudge/article/2555270

So is this right leaning news site article true? It talks about trampling on the 1st amendment freedom of the press.

FWIW, I've been watching Al Jazeera 99% of the time for my news for several months now. I do think it's biased at times, but I also think it's more interesting than pure opinion dominated news or pretend news. It also covers a lot of world news, less oriented to the USA.
 
I love the local library and have to say I've never seen a young person pick up the Wall Street Journal or Register guard that's there but the elderly do. No doubt the net is where campaigns will be won or lost in the modern age. I like being able to choose to read things that interest me and not have to waste my time on stories that don't
 
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