Fox your brain

[Lt Belenko]

War? Which war?

The one on drugs? Or the one on poverty? Hunger, maybe? Christmas (filthy heathens)? Science? What about the unexpected?

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Which is lucky, really, since it means that BS and lying is acceptable. In Costard's world, at least.

That would be Freedonia agin Sylvania.

[ASL Veteran]

Yes, if I rely on Fox for all my news I will eventually start to believe Fox-ey things. Several dictatorships successfully rely on this mechanic. Will I buy their baloney hook, line and sinker? Gosh, I hope not. But there be plenty who will.

This is of course not exclusive to Fox. But they do seem to be in a league of their own in regards to the deliberately mis-informing their viewers.

btw

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-20-2010/bernie-goldberg-fires-back

Teehee.

So what is the ultimate objective of Fox News then? What is the Fox News 'agenda'?

[ASL Veteran]

Alright Elmar, so you think that you need to be protected from the Fox News agenda (whatever that is) by having Fox News taken off the air. So Elmar, do you watch Fox News every night?

If you don't watch Fox News every night, or even any night, then Fox News hasn't been very effective in brainwashing you have they?

If you do watch Fox News every night and you need Fox News taken off the air to protect yourself from their brainwashing, then either you don't know how to use a remote control or you don't have any other news options available. I find both of those options to be unlikely.

So, somebody help me out here. Why do you suppose someone like Elmar might want to take Fox News off the air?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Why are you asking me all these question instead of saying that a deliberate mis-information campaign by any news organization is wrong?

I no longer watch Fox news, I didn't do it much in the first place so I adjusted my cable package accordingly.

[dieseltaylor]

ASL - surely we are not talking about agendas? Is that piece on the tennesee ACLU a true representation of the letter or a manipulative selection and lies.

I have no problem with a program representing a viewpoint provided it does not misrepresent what the subject has actually said. Honest dealing is the basis of a discussion.

[Affentitten]

The conjecture over Fox News' agenda (ie. Murdoch) is that be supporting the conservative viewpoint they hope to secure continuity of conservative administrations. These are more friendly to big business and have been helpful in Murdoch's case over things like media ownership and concentration laws.

[Lt Belenko]

FOX failed to "secure continuity of conservative administrations" in 2008. That year there was ABC, CBS, NPR, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC networks all leaning opposite of FOX. In Nov. 2010 more people viewed election results on FOX than all the others combined. And during those results they had a broad spectrum of analysts\commentators while the other guys went with their usual crew of left leaning guys. Fair and Balanced.

I've heard of no direct benefits Murdoch received during the Bush Administration. And he surely would receive none from from 2008 till 2010.

However, GE owns NBC and is in on MSNBC. Those two stations are slanted as far left as Fox is right. And GE has received multiple hundreds of million dollar contracts between 2008 and 2010. Any connection?

I guess Rupert isn't doing a very good job with his agenda; no contracts and failed to "secure continuity of conservative administrations".

[Affentitten]

FOX failed to "secure continuity of conservative administrations" in 2008. That year there was ABC, CBS, NPR, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC networks all leaning opposite of FOX.

Rather an obtuse rebuttal. Not even Fox could save the GOP at that stage.

I've heard of no direct benefits Murdoch received during the Bush Administration.

Are you kidding? Perhaps you need to go and read up on the history of cross-media ownership laws.

And he surely would receive none from from 2008 till 2010.

What do you mean by this? That because his preferred party is not in power he's going to just STFU and cross his fingers that they will get in next time?

However, GE owns NBC and is in on MSNBC. Those two stations are slanted as far left as Fox is right.

Apparently not. The evidence in the surveys that the OP was based around do not indicate that the bias is equal, and in the case of NBC this bias is a misperception. However, if you have evidence to the contrary, put it up here.

And GE has received multiple hundreds of million dollar contracts between 2008 and 2010. Any connection?

GE has received $$trillions of government contracts over deacdes across all administrations.

I guess Rupert isn't doing a very good job with his agenda; no contracts and failed to "secure continuity of conservative administrations".

An asinine conclusion to a set of asinine points.

Murdoch may or may not be doing a great job. He's not infallible. Indeed, his mis-read of the WWW business model is legendary and getting worse. However, he has managed to grow his cross-platform owenership hugely in the USA, particularly under the GWB administration. About 1 in 5 Americans gets their news content from a News Ltd organ. That's a hell of a lot of clout.

[costard]

War? Which war?

The one on drugs? Or the one on poverty? Hunger, maybe? Christmas (filthy heathens)? Science? What about the unexpected?

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Which is lucky, really, since it means that BS and lying is acceptable. In Costard's world, at least.

I don't think I made a statement regarding the acceptability of lying and BS: I identified a circumstance where such behaviour was a little easier to defend.

The main points are the consequences of indulging in such behaviour (any discrete information system suffers through providing crap information), and the fact that Fox can hardly make a claim to being part of "the free press".

If I had invested in Fox, I'd be concerned that the earnings were taking a hit because Fox doesn't have access to the Wikileaks documents (and is unwilling, because of it's editorial alliances, to publish material from them).

[ironbar]

Elmar, you couldn't have picked a better Daily Show clip; John Stewart has been the most vociferous commentator on the these 'news' networks edging in on his turf. Twisting and stretching, coverage, viewpoint, and spin on issues and presenting them as the word. Sadly you would think other news organizations would be the most vocal, however they leave that to the late night comedians and occasionally their own spin doctors.

As for the NBC bias,

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664.aspx

and MSNBC

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1983901,00.html

but, I don't think anyone who has watched Keith Olberman's show was left in any doubt from the first moment ( it's a damned funny show- especially the daily 'Worst person in the world segment'). And as a disclaimer, I think NBC really delivers the best news product- but I think the idea of a completely impartial news organization is an impossibility. The very choice of what to cover and not cover (it would be impossible to cover everything) relies on the bias of the members of the organization.

I must question the survey in the OP; it was good of the authors to extend the survey to the 'Birthers', after all lunatics deserve to be heard as well, but I think that skewed the results a bit. Selective sampling I believe it is called. Now if you care to argue that the birthers aren't lunatics, (just google LTC Terrance Larkin) that will be an interesting point for sure.

When discussing Murdoch's big stick, I must say it doesn't seem too well organized. While the Faux News Network is rabidly right wing, their local affiliates, especially here in Chattanooga, didn't apparently get the right marching orders. When our little tree hugger club (Save Our Cumberland Mountains, just in case you want to kick in a few bucks) wants to get someone in front of a TV camera, the Fox affiliate is usually the first to return the call.

I'd be cautious about giving them too much credit for political success in the US. While some see Bush's reelection as a triumph of Karl Rove/Fox News, this blue dog Democrat thinks it had more to do with Terry Mcauliffe's flawed "Battle ground strategy," and a candidate who was capable and experienced but too stiff to be an effective communicator outside of his comfort zone.

Something I find interesting is how offended everybody is by O'Reilly, Beck, and Hannity- people who really qualify as commentators (Hey it's an opinion, everybody has one , just like,,,) . The Fox morning newscast (6am to 9am eastern) is really the worst offender in terms of disinformation. With Karl Rove making regular appearances, the morning cast is very politically laden. The day time news is generally pretty benign, cutting away to local affiliates for live feed on stories that might not be national in importance, but keep in line with Fox's tabloidish approach. Of course the evenings are the province of the indignation meisters, replete with their schtick. And that's what it is, schtick, their performance to keep their contracts and little bennies rolling in.

Caveat Emptor, is just as true in TV news as it is in buying a used car. Or taking an op ed piece written to motivate the party faithful to cough up more money because, "Look at what we are up against, the omnipotent evil Fox news," and making a scientific treatise out of it. Politics is politics.

[JonS]

I identified a circumstance where such behaviour was a little easier to defend.

Perhaps, but as I pointed out; Eastasia has always been at war with Oceania. Your 'circumstance' boils down to "only on days ending in a 'y'."

[Michael Emrys]

Perhaps, but as I pointed out; Eastasia has always been at war with Oceania.

How do you figure? I know you, Jon, well enough to presume that you have something in mind, but this one I don't get. "Always" covers a lot of time.

Michael

[costard]

Perhaps, but as I pointed out; Eastasia has always been at war with Oceania. Your 'circumstance' boils down to "only on days ending in a 'y'."

And Christianity has always warred with the heathen, the Muslim and the Jew. And itself. I guess, for the sake of this argument, I'd define a war as a circumstance where a tax benefit accrues to someone willing to go kill someone else.

It's only where popular opinion matters that you get the problem of freedom of the press arising, else the lies just pass on in the lukewarmth of the moment. The critical nature of the information, when it means people getting killed (or not), defines the moral defensibility of the lie, according to you.

[JonS]

How do you figure? ... "Always" covers a lot of time.

It's meant to. There is always some enemy, some 'other' that can be pointed to to justify anything. There's the witches, the Indians, the Irish, the Germans, the Commies, the Arabs, the Muslims, the Mexicans, and on and on and on.

The nebulous concept of neverending 'war' (especially wars against ideas) should never be justification for giving up the things that makes fighting for worthwhile in the first place. Precisely because it's so open ended.

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-foxnews-20101217,0,6952663.story

oo er!

[Affentitten]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-foxnews-20101217,0,6952663.story

oo er!

Actually if Fox are going to demand that their reporters mention that climate warming data is "controversial", then they should really also mention that 9/11-al Qaeda is controversial, since there are a few 'experts' out there who beleive it was perpetrated by the US government. Fair's fair.

[Michael Emrys]

Actually if Fox are going to demand that their reporters mention that climate warming data is "controversial", then they should really also mention that 9/11-al Qaeda is controversial, since there are a few 'experts' out there who beleive it was perpetrated by the US government. Fair's fair.

Indeed. Fox's choices of which nutcases to support tips their hand and gives the lie to their motto.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

It's meant to. There is always some enemy, some 'other' that can be pointed to to justify anything. There's the witches, the Indians, the Irish, the Germans, the Commies, the Arabs, the Muslims, the Mexicans, and on and on and on.

The nebulous concept of neverending 'war' (especially wars against ideas) should never be justification for giving up the things that makes fighting for worthwhile in the first place. Precisely because it's so open ended.

Yeah, okay. I accept that. I just wondered if you had something more specific in mind since you mentioned East Asia vs. Oceania.

Michael

[JonS]

East Asia vs. Oceania.

It's a reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four.

[Michael Emrys]

It's a reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Yeah, recognized that too (eventually). At first I thought you were talking about some real conflict that hadn't gotten reported over here (well it's possible ).

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

Get them young and they are yours for life ....

with exceptions of Battlefront readers

Are We Too Dumb for Democracy? The Logic Behind Self-Delusion

A recent cognitive study, as reported by the Boston Globe, concluded that:

Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even

stronger

.

In light of these findings, researchers concluded that a defense mechanism, which they labeled “backfire”, was preventing individuals from producing pure rational thought. The result is a self-delusion that appears so regularly in normal thinking that we fail to detect it in ourselves, and often in others: When faced with facts that do not fit seamlessly into our individual belief systems, our minds automatically reject (or backfire) the presented facts. The result of backfire is that we become even more entrenched in our beliefs, even if those beliefs are totally or partially false.

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” said Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher of the Michigan study. The occurrence of backfire, he noted, is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

The conclusion made here is this: facts often do not determine our beliefs, but rather our beliefs (usually non-rational beliefs) determine the facts that we accept. As the Boston Globe article notes:

In reality, we often base our opinions on our

beliefs

, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information. And then we vote.

Despite this finding, Nyhan claims that the underlying cause of backfire is unclear. “It’s very much up in the air,” he says. And on how our society is going to counter this phenomena, Nyhan is even less certain.

These latter unanswered questions are expected in any field of research, since every field has its own limitations. Yet here the field of psychoanalysis can offer a completion of the picture.

Disavowal and Backfire: One and the Same

In an article by psychoanalyst Rex Butler, Butler independently comes to the same conclusion as the Michigan Study researchers. In regards to facts and their relationship to belief systems (or ideologies), Butler says that:

there is no necessary relationship between reality and its symbolization … Our descriptions do not naturally and immutably refer to things, but … things in retrospect begin to resemble their description. Thus, in the analysis of ideology, it is not simply a matter of seeing which account of reality best matches the ‘facts’, with the one that is closest being the least biased and therefore the best. As soon as the facts are determined, we have already – whether we know it or not – made our choice; we are already within one ideological system or another. The real dispute has already taken place over what is to count as the facts, which facts are relevant, and so on.

This places the field of psychoanalysis on the same footing as that of cognitive science, in regards to this matter. But where cognitive studies end, with Nyhan’s question about the cause of backfire, psychoanalysis picks up and provides a possible answer. In fact, psychoanalysts have been publishing work on backfire for decades; only psychoanalysis refers to backfire by another name: “disavowal”. Indeed, these two terms refer to one and the same phenomena.

The basic explanation for the underlying cause of disavowal/backfire goes as follows.

“Liberals” and “conservatives” espouse antithetical belief systems, both of which are based on different non-rational “moral values.” This is a fact that cognitive linguist George Lakoff has often

which incidentally brings in yet another field of study that supports the existence of the disavowal/backfire mechanism.

In accordance with these different non-rational belief systems, any individual’s ideology tends to function also as a ‘filtering system’, accepting facts that seamlessly fit into the framework of that ideology, while dismissing facts that do not fit.

When an individual—whether a “liberal”, “conservative”, or any other potential ideology—is challenged with facts that conflict with his/her ideology, the tendency is for that individual to experience feelings of anxiety, dread, and frustration. This is because our ideologies function, like a lynch pin, to hold our psychologies together, in order to avoid, as Nyhan puts it, “cognitive dissonance”. In other words, when our lynch pins are disturbed, our psychologies are shaken.

Psychoanalysts explain that, when this cognitive dissonance does occur, the result is to ‘externalize’ the sudden negative feelings outward, in the form of anger or resentment, and then to ‘project’ this anger onto the person that initially presented the set of backfired facts to begin with. (Although, sometimes this anger is ‘introjected’ inward, in the form of self-punishment or self-loathing.)

This non-rational eruption of anger or resentment is what psychoanalysts call “de-sublimation”. And it is at the point of de-sublimation, when the disavowal/backfire mechanism is triggered as a defense against the cognitive dissonance.

Hence, here is what mentally occurs next, in a matter of seconds:

In order to regain psychological equilibrium, the mind disavows the toxic facts that initially clashed with the individuals own ideology, non-rationally deeming the facts to be false—without assessing the validity of the facts.

The final step occurs when the person, who offered the toxic facts, is then non-rationally demonized. The person, here, becomes tainted as a ‘phobic object’ in the mind of the de-sublimated individual. Hence, the other person also becomes perceived to be as toxic as the disavowed facts, themselves.

At this point, ad hominem attacks are often fired at the source of the toxic facts. For example: ‘stupid liberal’ or ‘stupid conservative’, if in a political context. Or, ‘blasphemer’ or ‘heretic’, if in a religious context. At this point, according to psychoanalysis, psychological equilibrium is regained. The status quo of the individual’s ideology is reinforced to guard against future experiences of de-sublimation.

Why Do Different Ideologies Exist?

This all begs the obvious question about the existence of differing ideologies between people. Why do they exist? And how are they constituted differently? George Lakoff

(which are supported strongly by psychoanalysis), that human beings are not born already believing an ideology. Rather people are socialized into an ideology during their childhood formative years. The main agents which prescribe the ideology are the parental authority figures surrounding the child, who rear him, from infantile dependency on the parent-figures, into an independent adult. The parental values of how the child should be an independent and responsible adult, in regards to his relations between his self and others, later informs that child’s ideology as an adult.

Lakoff shows that two dominant parenting types exist, which can determine the child’s adult ideology. Individuals reared under the “Strict Parent” model tend to grow-up as political conservatives, while those raised under a “Nurturing Parent” model tend to become political liberals. His most influential book on these matters, “Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think”, was published in 1996.

Of course, peoples’ minds can fundamentally change, along with their ideological values. But short of a concerted effort by an individual to change, through one form of therapy or another, that change is mostly fostered by traumatic or long-endured life experiences.

Yet many minds remain rock solid for life, beliefs included. As psychiatrist Scott Peck sees it, “Only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.”

Thus to answer Nyahan’s question—how can society counter the negative effects of backfire?—it seems only one answer is viable. Society will need to adopt the truths uncovered by cognitive science and psychoanalysis. And society will have to use those truths to inform their overall cultural practices and values. Short of that, Peck’s “fortunate few” will remain the only individuals among us who resist self-delusion.

Stephen Dufrechou is Editor of Opinion and Analysis for News Junkie Post.

http://www.alternet.org/story/149262/are_we_too_dumb_for_democracy_the_logic_behind_self-delusion?page=entire

To be honest I fear society is - unless action is taken to shape how news is provided, and even then. : (

[Michael Emrys]

To be honest I fear society is...

Is what? If there is a complete thought there, I confess I missed it. Help?

Michael

[Vanir Ausf B]

unless action is taken to shape how news is provided

I would rather have the media free to tell lies than appoint the government as the final arbiter of truth.

Besides, the article you just quoted seems to suggest this thread is much ado about nothing. FOX News caters to a particular audience. It does not create that audience.

[dieseltaylor]

ME - is too stupid for democracy

Well at least a first past the post system riddled with pork.

VAB - I agree the government especially is not to be trusted. The relevance to Fox was the finding that people reject what is not already in their mind-set. However the research did not explore the possibility of education. Educating people not to accept assertions without proof, educating them to lies dammed lies and statistics, educating them to what happens in other democracies.

I wonder how much coverage there was in the US that an elected UK MP is being forced to stand-down and the election re-run because he lied about his opponent. Shocking stuff. But I would submit a very significant action. Lying is not right.

[Michael Emrys]

ME - is too stupid for democracy

Yeah. I reluctantly reached the same conclusion. I keep hoping to be shown that I'm wrong, but it hasn't happened yet. Just like a train wreck where the cars keep rolling to and falling off the washed out bridge, the electorate keeps putting the worst scoundrels and liars in office and leaves them there, until yet more outrageous scoundrels arrive on the scene. If there is humor to be found here, at the moment it escapes me.

Michael