Influencing Machine (book)

Transcription

If you ever wanted to know all the hows and whys behind our news media machine and wanted it explained in comic book form have I got the book for you. Hi My name is Emily and this is BlinkPopShift. This is The Influencing Machine. Brooke Gladstone on the Media. Brooke Gladstone, currently the the co host of NPR's On the Media, is a media analyst dejoure and this book is a prime example. The money, the politics, the bias, she's got it all. And trust me its anything but dry. She uses comic book stylings to expertly present the historical, psychological and sociological truths of how media influences society and vice versa. from Caesar's Acta Diurna, world's first daily news, to actuality of todays supposed internet filter bubbles. One of the best parts of the book points out the biases we should be aware of when watching any media. Not just the loudly touted liberal or conservative bias everyone is so fond of for a good old fashioned game of finger pointing but the actual biases that affect all media and all media consumers. Even us Youtubers. I hate to break it to you but there is no such thing as an objective point of view, and heres why. Commercial Bias I mean its called news for a reason, its new. We want to know what's happening and the more that breaking news label pops up the more current we feel. The problem with all this newness? It steamrolls context. Follow up stories don't drive the engine of new that media outlets are so dependent on. And if we are only focused on the newest part of a story we miss detailed analysis that could help us better understand the news. Understand... not just watch. And of course it works that way. All the incentives for media outlets is on getting and keeping people watching or clicking on a story. Page views people, google analytics, nielsen ratings, ad dollars. Theres no incentives for producing understanding. Bad News Bias Why is the news always filled with bad news? Common dinner foods that might kill you? The rising threat of some new teenage drug fad? The creeping horrors of communism, I mean socialism, I mean the welfare state? According to psychology today, research at Ohio State University has shown that we have a built in negativity bias. Our brains are more sensitive, and thus more reactive, to bad news. The bias, which can be detected even in very young children, means that our brains puts more energy into processing bad news to learn how to prevent future recurrences and keep us safe. Our brains simply care more about bad news and for media outlets caring means watching. There are no incentives for positivity. Status Quo Bias Because we take our current state as the reference point, any change from that current standard might be seen as a loss. Things are going okay right? Proposing drastic changes wont help the situation, let just continue on as we are. As Andrew Cline's Rhetorica, a site dedicated to unraveling the rhetorical cloak and dagger of news and politics, puts it "the news media believe "the system works." The press spends vast amounts of time in unquestioning coverage of the process of political campaigns (but less so on the process of governance). This bias ensures that alternate points of view about how government might run and what government might do are effectively ignored." Sure question the playas but don't change the game. There are no incentives for investigating the potentials of major change. Access Bias The news can only tell you about what they can actually access. From the battlefield to the hallowed halls of government journalists are corralled by those willing and able to give them access. And as you might guess such access is rarely free. But freedom of the press you wail. Ah yes but that legal protection given to the publishing of material does not obligate the military or congress or google for that matter to give open and restriction free access to journalists. Strings are often attached. Theres no incentive to allow full disclosure. Visual Bias Seeing is believing. Even though the Washington post first reported, and on the front page no less, stories of the torture of war prisoners months before we formally went to war in Iraq way back in 2002, it wasn't until April 28 2004 that torture caught everyones attention. What changed? Leaked photos of American soldiers cheerfully torturing detainees. It was the images and not the report of torture itself that got everyone to sit up and take note. Theres no rating boost like images and in the quest for the perfect picture news programs have been known to accidentally use images from realistic video games, like this shot of TV2 in Denmark which confused a shot of 1190's Damascus from Assassins Creed with real life modern day Syria. There is no incentive to care about text only reporting. Narrative Bias Dont you just love a good story? Stories are great. They have quirky characters and clear plot lines with beginnings, middles and ends. They have climax and resolution. We love them. But we might love them a little too much. Science stories explaining new discoveries get tacked on conclusions. War stories get tidied up and zoomed in until they are clear understandable, approachable stories. The facts are arranged to fit the narrative. As John put it in an early episode of Crash Course US history: There is no incentive for loose ends. Fairness Bias Joe from its ok to be smart posted a great example of this one recently. Between November of 2012 and December of 2013, 2258 peer reviewed climate change articles published by 9136 authors. Of those only 1 author, not even not article written with several collaborators, just one person rejected man made global warming. What does this have to do with bias? Well to be seen as fair and balanced the media presents both side of the story even when the sides are woefully disproportionate. Even if one side is woefully misrepresenting the fact or outright lying the media favors balance even if it distorts the truth. There is no incentive for actual balance only the appearance of it. And what do we do in the face of all these pervasive biases? Change the incentives of course! The internet for example is replacing our historical focus on objectivity with an ethic of transparency. Our general skepticism rewards transparency, so more people do it. If you want to learn more about incentives Extra Credits has a great three part series on the topic. Its mostly about political systems but I'm sure you can extrapolate. So what do you think? Can media biases be alleviated with the right incentives? And if you were going to implement a new incentive system to improve the news where would you start? I hope you will check out the Influencing Machine, I found it at my local library. Leave a comment below or catch me on Twitter @emilyeifler. And as always thank you for watching and get curious.