On what NOT to base your opinions!

As usual, these are my own opinions and mostly presented in a light-hearted manner. However, I actually think that this is a valid consideration and would like to know how others feel particularly if they disagree with me.

 

"Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one". Author Unknown.

 

That person was a genius for stating the obvious. Everybody has an opinion on everything. Those opinions are based on personal experiences and education. Experiences are the most important and verifiable sources of information on a private level. If you experienced it then it is a valid item to catalog away as a factoid to base an opinion. Education though, that's a whole other matter.

 

Depending on where you get your education you can either be intelligent or just smart.

 

Some learning makes you smart. you know things or at least you think you do. You are presented information in a repetitive manner and you file the factoid away for later retrieval and regurgitation. People who do this are good test takers. They see or hear a question that is familiar and they are able to select the appropriate answer.

 

This is not intelligence. To be intelligent means that you not only know a particular subject but that you understand it. You know where it came from, you know what it is, and you can extrapolate roughly where it will go.

 

Those who know their multiplication tables are smart. Those that understand geometry and how it is relevant are intelligent.

 

Learning math and other sciences is fairly straight forward, it's tangible for the most part. Other things aren't so straight forward, philosophy for example. Political ideals are a philosophy. They are a way of looking at the world within a set of semi-structured theories on how things work and people interact. Those that get an opportunity to exercise their political theories in real life soon learn the reason they are still theories, they hardly ever work perfectly.

 

Especially now.

 

Now, politics and news are entertainment. your major news outlests are NOT self-sustaining. they are sponsored in order to be able to continue to broadcast, for that they need to advertise. In order to advertise, the companies that pay for their air-time have to be comfortable that your show or network properly represents or can draw their intended customers. If the sponsors aren't happy, they pull their adds and consequently, their money. This makes sense and is how it should work.

 

News however wasn't meant to be entertainment. It was originally intended to present information to the public without regard to how entertaining that information might be. when I took some journalism classes I learned one thing very quickly, the information that we are given by ALL of the news outlets, with very few exceptions are two things: from a common source and manipulated. Most news outlets, including television, cable, newspapers, periodiclas and teh internet based services get their national and international stories from the Associated Press, commonly refered to as the "AP" or "AP Wire". The story written by a staff or freelance journalist is

“put on the wire”. It is then broadcast to subscribers of the AP’s services. The story is then taken from the printer by the subscribing outlet.

 

What’s supposed to happen is that the subscribers are supposed to be verifying this information or at least letting the listener, reader, and viewer know that it is unsubstantiated.

 

Here’s where things go horribly wrong. Because of competition there is an urgency to be among the first to run a story, especially those that have local interest or are of a hot topic. Because of that urgency and fear of being late in reporting, the stories are accepted as presented and presented with the journalist’s file photo and byline. You see it all the time in your local paper, the headline, the photo and the header of the correspondent, and then the text. Broadcast news is even worse. They seldom ever give credit to the original journalist because of time constraints. Some people have the idea that the Anchors are still investigative journalists, they are NOT. They have no clue most of the time where the hell the information came from that they are reading to the public.

 

They are the epitome of the talking-head. While they used to track down their own stories, they have since ascended to the position of news-anchor and are now simply reading print. Your mom could do the same job if you watched her while she read the paper to you.

 

In fact, let’s use your mom as an example. Sometimes, parents leave out bits of relevant information on a topic when you are young to protect you. Most of the time, they forget to fill in those blanks when you are old enough to understand them and you are left to stumble over it later. Suffice it to say that they read some stories out of that proverbial paper that they hope you will learn some kind of lesson from and they skip over other stories that they feel would lead you to a conclusion they may not agree with.

 

Well, I’m sorry to burst any bubble out their but the news outlets do the same thing. They ALL have an agenda. These are NOT independent little think tanks bringing you all of the news fit to print. These outlets are businesses, owned by corporations or individuals who have their own beliefs and wishes for the world. Turner Broadcasting, Time-Warner, etc. all have their beliefs that are aimed at benefitting them and they want you to share those beliefs because it makes them a profit.

 

Bottom line is: We no longer are presented NEWS. What we are presented with on a daily basis has a closer relationship to propaganda.

 

One of the basic lessons I was instructed with in journalism classes was how to “present” information so that the reader understands it. You consider your demographic, its mean education level, social environment, geographical interests, etc. You wouldn’t write a story for a mid-west audience the same way you would write an article in New England. They have a differing sensibility and there HAS to be translation. That is unavoidable. You write to your audience.

 

Let us take that to the next step. The presentation is used to manipulate information to convey the message you want. If ALL of the information is either contradictory or difficult to comprehend when taken as a whole you leave out parts of the message so that the total is cohesive and easily digested.

 

If you were to give the exact same set of facts and video images and photographs of a single event to PETA and the North American Hunting Club, you would get two entirely different stories. Both organizations have an agenda they wish to promote. They would each include the parts of the story which present their agendas and leave out the parts that would tend to disagree with it. If there are parts to the story which cannot be excluded then the grammar and wording of the text is arranged to convey a “mood”. Anybody that has taken a Creative Writing class knows exactly what I’m talking about.

 

The manipulation of information and the use of language to convey a thought are acceptable as long as the thought conveyed is within the spirit of the incident. But, to manipulate or present information to make it appear different from how it occurred is unethical. Attorneys in a court-room both present the same information but they each present the information in a way to promote two opposed outcomes. Both of which would be believable if you were only told one side.

 

Well, that’s what you get with “the news”, one-side of an issue presented with the sole purpose of manipulating your ideals on that topic to direct you to a predetermined conclusion.

 

This practice is obviously un-ethical but it is UNIVERSAL. It has been done as long as people have represented organized concerns. However, when citizens were intelligent enough to realize it, they could safeguard themselves with the knowledge that the information was always suspect until confirmed somehow. Now however, people aren’t “intelligent”, we’re only smart. We are trained in academia to blindly accept the information given to us as fact to “make the grade”. No creative discourse to debate relevant known materials in order to reach an understanding of the information presented. 

 

We aren’t asking questions anymore and we should be. We are only window shopping and hoping that the pretty clothes fit.

 

We should be more wary, we should be more intelligent.

 

More to follow. I promise, I WILL eventually piss you off, either at me or in general. But, I hope that it will at least get you to think.