Reading # 5 "Mass Communications"

Reading #5 Mass Media Communications

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ass communications, particularly in the modern technological age, are not grounded in truth.

“Truth” in this context is de ned by James Carey, author of Communication As Culture, as “no more and no less than the best idea we currently have about how to explain what is going on,”1 - not an interesting argument or a philosophical conclusion, but an honest sorting-out of information. Arguably, “journalistic truth” should be more than mere accuracy; it should be a disinterested pursuit of truth stripped of “any attached misinformation, disinformation, or selfpromoting information developed by a press focused on synthesis and veri cation.2

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f this ideal of truth existed in modern communications, people could trust their information sources, but in reality, modern forms of communication are not only biased, but in many cases, also untruthful. Therefore, a signi cant amount of misinformation is disseminated to the public. This problem actually makes citizens less informed and skeptical of all media sources except those that con rm their existing beliefs. The challenge becomes Carey, James W., Communication as Culture, Revised Edition, Routledge, 9/17/2008 pg 80 1

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, “Journalism’s First Obligation Is to Tell the Truth,” Nieman Reports, accessed February 6, 2022, http://www.nieman.harv ard.edu/reports/ article/102541 /JournalismsFirst-Obligation-Is-to-Tell-the-Truth.aspx 2

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not only who to believe, but what to believe. The credibility of the communicator and the content of the message are inextricably tied to the acceptance of controversial information.3 Although individuals are endowed with cognitive mechanisms designed to lter out misinformation, referred to as innate “epistemic vigilance”, it depends on two conditions to be e ective.

First, the evaluation of the source of the information and second, an evaluation of the arguments communicated. Both require a “stance of trust.”

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here exists today in America an almost constant battle over control of the political, religious, and economic templates of communication that guide the behavior of Americans and that act as an impediment to epistemic vigilance. Controlling communications in all forms within the culture is a key ingredient to achieving political, religious, and economic goals and Sperber, Dan, "Epistemic Vigilance, Mind & Language” 25, no. 4 (2010): 359-93

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objectives. Thus, our communication models have become social institutions for the promotion of particular attitudes, forms of address, tones and styles, which in turn have become embodied in our institutions and are then used to very powerful social e ect.4 These models also serve to promote the polarization of various cultural groups within society, because the communicated messages a rm the “prior stereotypes, prejudices and selective perceptions of the audience.”5 Societal cost is measured by the number of people who base their policy preferences on false, misleading, or unsubstantiated information that conforms to their political preference,6 or information that they believe to be true because they deem the source to be “reliable and trustworthy.” For example, take the phenomenon of cable television as an institution that promotes distinct values to an audience that seeks con rmation of their existing beliefs and opinions.

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any independent public opinion studies have shown that politically charged cable channel news

Carey, James W., Communication as Culture, Revised Edition, Routledge, 9/17/2008 pg 33 4

Carey, James W., Communication as Culture, Revised Edition, Routledge, 9/17/2008 pg 78 5

Brendan Nyhan and Jason Rei er, "When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions," Political Behavior 32.2 (2010): 303-30.

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is a major source of misinformation for Americans. A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation con rmed this view, saying “that people who trust Fox News Channel and other outlets that appeal to conservatives are more likely to believe COVID-19 falsehoods than those who go elsewhere for news”7.

Some popular cable channels primarily feature political themes that otherwise support the bias of the channel itself such as Fox News and MSNBC. Conservatives are more likely to watch Fox News than MSNBC, and contrarily a liberal is more likely to watch MSNBC than a Fox viewer. Based on a study by Pew Research Center conducted in October and November of 2019, 93% of U.S. adults who name Fox News as their main political news source identify as Republican and 95% who name MSNBC as their prime source identify as Democrats.8

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ut, this propensity for viewers to look for con rmation of their existing beliefs from corroborating sources goes well beyond cable news.

According to Pew Research Center only 22% of the New York Times readers were conservative while 36% were https://www.k .org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll- nding/k -covid-19-vaccine-monitormedia-and-misinformation/?utm_campaign=KFF-2021-pollingsurveys&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=2&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8WXj9clnoRyDlcjigvJHyQrJa Kco2lyihNorC12su1KiQpYIofbQOW_itAgABDWApKAeMXSB3yHieHRe3yVoheeTpYQ&utm_content=2&utm_source= hs_email 7

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/01/americans-main-sources-forpolitical-news-vary-by-party-and-age/ 8

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liberal and 35% identi ed as “moderate”. The polar ends of the Pew Research show 78% of Hannity viewers are conservative and 7% of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow viewers are conservative. The numbers show increased polarization when those surveyed were asked if they were a Republican or Democrat.9

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n Ohio State University study that observed 156 college students reading online magazine articles about current controversial issues found that students spent 36% more time reading articles with which they agreed. The study revealed “partisan selective exposure” according to Dr. Natalie Jomine Stroud, author of Niche News: The Politics of News Choice. In this comprehensive view of the extent to which partisanship in uences media selections, her studies explore behavior that leads individuals to select news sources that match their own views.10

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/09/27/section-4-demographics-andpolitical-views-of-news-audiences/ 9

https://academic.oup.com/joc/article-abstract/60/3/556/4098564

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ason Zweig, a senior writer for Money magazine, argued in 2009 and again in 2018 in the Wall Street Journal that investors in general have a strong con rmation bias seeking information to support whatever the investor wants to believe. He cites an analysis of psychological studies involving nearly 8,000 participants that shows that “people are twice as likely to seek information that con rms what they already believe as they are to consider evidence that would challenge those beliefs.”11 In the investment world, there is no shortage of information on regulated market instruments, be they stocks on an exchange, bonds freely traded, or contracts on commodity futures. Conventional wisdom suggests that any investor would want to have all the information available before risking his or her money, but Zweig in his Wall Street Journal article “How to Ignore the YesMan in Your Head” writes that this is not the case.

Professor of psychology Scott Lilienfeld at Emory University in Atlanta adds, “It’s simply easier to focus our attention on data that supports our hypothesis, rather than to seek out evidence that might disprove it.” It might be concluded that those distributing the news and commentary are in fact providing their audiences with exactly what they demand:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dear-investor-that-cocky-voice-in-your-head-iswrong-1535108459 11

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Con rmation of opinions already held by their listeners and viewers.12

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ommunication entails a risk of manipulation whereby misleading information is communicated for the purpose of bene ting the addressor, and communicated information involves ... the adaptive problem of dealing with a signi cant amount of false information.13 The epistemological inadequacy of all forms of widely transmitted information has clearly driven The Pew Research Journalism Project to develop nine ideal core principles for journalism: • (1) Journalism’s rm obligation is to the truth; • (2) Its rst loyalty is to citizens; • (3) Its essence is a discipline of veri cation; • (4) Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover; • (5) It must serve as an independent monitor of power; • (6) It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise; • (7) It must strive to make the signi cant interesting and relevant; • (8) It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional; 12

https://ballastpointventures.com/2009/11/its-easier-to-rationalize-than-to-be-rational/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 249939839_Dealing_with_contradiction_in_a_communicative_context_A_crosscultural_study 13

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• (9) Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.14

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hese ideas are rooted in the American ideal of a democracy that is based upon a free press.

Thomas Je erson must have envisioned a truthful press when he said, “Whenever the people are wellinformed, they can be trusted with their own government.” The context of Je erson’s view must have been ensconced in the idea that a free press disseminating information would be as close to true and factual as possible. But, Je erson’s faith in the concept of a free press would certainly be shaken by the state of our media today - media that includes free-form blogs and un-sourced inferences we now call news. Margaret Sullivan in the Public Editor’s Journal of The New York Times wrote a contemporary view that Je erson might have envisioned. She stated “that news organizations ought to go out of their way to state established truths when they can and not give equal weight to both sides,” and that there should be no “False Balance,” that is, giving equal weight and credit to a di erent point of view even though one is untrue. It is unlikely, however, that the motivations of mass communicators are going to change anytime soon. Therefore, a more promising solution to https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/1999/03/30/section-i-the-core-principles-ofjournalism/ 14

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ameliorate the current ood of misinformation probably rests with the development of methodologies that can help individuals use the epistemic vigilance they innately possess.

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istrust of the media and the view that it is biased is pervasive in American society. Based on a Gallup Poll in 2020, 33 percent of those polled did not trust mass media at all and an additional 27% not very much. Only 9% of U.S. adults trusted mass media “a great deal.”15 This negates the rst condition for epistemic vigilance, because to be e ective, a source must be considered trustworthy. But there is substantial disagreement on exactly which sources of information are trustworthy. All evidence supports the idea that the sources people consider to be trustworthy, too often, turn out to be only those they https://news.gallup.com/poll/321116/americans-remain-distrustful-mass-media.aspx

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already trust. Thus, the true evaluation of information is impeded by the biases, prejudices, and beliefs of the recipient. So to ask a politically conservative individual, for instance, to spend time watching MSNBC is a waste of time, because an individual who embraces a conservative political philosophy most likely will not see liberal leaning MSNBC as a viable and trustworthy source for information. To establish trust in the source of information, an understanding of people’s access to information becomes part of the evaluative process.

Television and print media aside, the most common source of information in American society today is the Internet.

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eople commonly believe that the Internet is a trustworthy source of information and you often hear people say, “I read it on the internet.” But it may well be that the degree of epistemic vigilance required to navigate the credibility of information found on the

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Internet may be even greater than what’s needed when navigating other media because the bias of the source is less apparent online. Much of the information individuals acquire today is through Internet search engines such as Google. "Most, if not all, search engines employ algorithms that produce pages ranked by relevance based on the number of links to them from still other web sites.16 The process leads the user to think that the top-ranked links are both the most relevant and the most worthy links to the subject search, when in-fact the top-ranked links represent only the most common sites viewed by others who conducted similar searches or used similar phrases in their search. In addition, reliance on information garnered from Internet search results may be illfounded, as there appears to be no evidence that individual users actually investigate the source of the information displayed by following up with a search on the author’s competency or credentials. All of which points toward a general lack of epistemic vigilance.

One can safely conclude that while people have access to more information than ever before in human history, the job of sorting out “truth” is more di cult than ever.

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Sperber, Dan "Epistemic Vigilance.," 359-93

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ecause people so frequently quote sources when talking about a particular subject, as a facilitator of

dialogue, it is important to understand that the sources someone quotes may in fact make the listener “turn them o ,” and never hear their argument, because the source they are quoting is not considered credible by the listener. Moreover, the speaker is passing on information about themselves when they quote a source. The listener can make some assumptions about the speaker’s political, religious or cultural beliefs based just on the sources the speaker uses, which may impede any productive discussion.

One solution is to ask participants in a dialogue to refrain from quoting sources and use “I” statements to articulate what they believe.

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Additional Reading “The Danger of Fake News in In aming or Suppressing Social Con ict” “how fake news can intensify conflict and suppress conversation about social issues”

Click here to read the article.

“Mass Communications” The fifth in a series of readings designed to start you thinking about various issues that press on how we facilitate civil discourse.

Adapted from “Transformation Through Dialogue” by Roger Doebke

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