In this video, Charles Wiley explains the important role the media plays in our society to a student audience at UC Berkley. I think its important enough to know how important that I'm going to transcribe his description word for word so those who cannot view the video can get that message. Wiley- "The news media is the most powerful organization in our society The news media is more powerful than the president or Congress or anybody else. The news media decides what you think about. They decide what you think about, what you talk to your friends, your fellow workers, your fellow students about. The news media decide what problems we're going to try to solve, the order in which we try to solve them. Not only do they decide the agenda and the priorities, but they decide, to a great extent also what is the framework to work within which we're going to hold the public discussion about the problems."
He goes on to define two kinds of reporters. The Objective reporter and the Advocate journalist. The objective reporter is trying to inform you. The advocate journalist is trying to influence you. There is a tremendous amount of advocacy reporting going on in the United States.
Journalistic integrity has been thrown out the window. The only value left for the profession as an industry is, 'Do Not Lie' and that owing only to the immediate consequence of losing your job.
I have struggled with honesty. I had such a secretive life prior to becoming a Christian that lies were first nature to me. I would avoid blame at all costs and seek any avenue of convenience as long as I could avoid blame and condemnation. Suffice it to say, I know the subtleties of lying. It was a hard job overcoming this practice and once I learned the cost vs. benefit, I concluded the benefit far outweighs the cost. But it required work. I had to break patterns and habits and face consequences at the same time. Through commitment to God, I did break them but it wasn't until the hardest part was done that I began to see the benefits.
A long term study was done with a class of kindergartners where the kids were all given cookies and told they could eat them now but if they waited a while they would get another cookie. Of those who held out, the study concludes, as adults they proved to be more integritous and honest and had achieved much higher goals and many were known for their philanthropy. On the other hand, those who held out less than a few minutes turned out to be criminals and very dishonest. The study goes on to explain the consistent gradations between the two extremes. So in psychological terms, I was getting negative feedback in the form of consequences immediately like the kindergarten kid in the psychology study was suffering the unmet desire but the promised extra cookie for me was the benefit of social trust if I waited.
The last vestige of those habits and patterns was the practice of lying by omission. You can speak a lie designed to misinform. Everybody recognizes this as a lie. While everybody recognizes and condemns it, many still continue the practice. That is hipocrisy but we know how to deal with that. You can also withhold all or portions of the storyline which allow the uninformed to draw the wrong conclusions. The intent is the same and the results are often far more effective in convincing your audience but many do not consider this lying. Its still a lie, you just didn't have to form the new story. Well you do, but its a convoluted means of getting the recipient to invent for themselves a storyline or conclusion you desire them to believe. In advocate journalism, there is a slight bend in this practice. The self aware advocate uses this practice in full awareness that he is attempting to mislead his audience. These are more and more numerous today. But there is another kind of advocate I call the believer. He is purposeful in his use of this tactic, but he doesn't believe he is misleading his audience and the result is often far subtler. He believes he is telling them the truth without the muddling details which confuse the important conclusions we need to draw from his story. This is the same means by which we dillude ourselves. We begin to internally 'edit' what we observe. Part of this process includes assuming excuses for your favored subject and assuming evil motivations for your disfavored subject, 'writing' them into the narrative.
I am often accused of this in the commentary on my articles, but guess who makes these charges. There is a verse in the Bible which explains who is able to correct this assumption narrative. The blows of a friend are more faithful the the kisses of an enemy. So let me encourage my 'friends' to please deliver blows to my articles and especially my dialogue in the comments. I am not likely to accept the criticism of my enemies unless the criticism points to a glaring inaccuracy. I mean, I try but the hardest part of recovering from a lying habit is this tendency to dillude one's own narrative. (How's that for brutal honesty? I'm sure I've just opened myself to being dismissed out of hand by my opponents. But then, any use of this will only point to their denial of their own self dellusions. Folks, everybody has them because everybody lies, but as a recovering liar I am accutely aware of this in myself)
These days, I am passionate about the consequences of lies. I understand there is evil in the world and in no way do I expect this world to suddenly eliminate the evil of dishonesty and thereby usher in an utopia. However, an industry we rely on more than any other has been largely taken over by lying advocates and the document which governs us all protects their abuse as one of our highest ideals. This is a conundrum. How do we protect the Constitution from the Constitution. The only answer is personal integrity and responsibility to be informed. Each of us have to be concerned about the power of this industry and each individual hold them accountable by rejecting their influence. This is a difficult task and not one to be taken lightly. Unfortunately, its not likely to be taken at all by the majority of our citizens and that means we are doomed as a culture and a nation. Freedom is not free and every citizen must pay the price of eternal vigilance in order to maintain it.
I'm writing this on inauguration day because of my observation of the information industry and their performance over the course of the presidential election. At no point through the entire cycle did the press perform their self described 'watchdog' service with regard to our current president. Instead, they acted to counter the criticism of their candidate in the new media upstart on the internet. Some of the old media's strongest critics began to refer to them as the right arm of the Democrat National Committee. Their reporting of the 'dirt' on President Obama was naught unless that dirt had already made it into the national discourse via the new media and then we of the opposition were left perplexed with all the techniques I've described above and more, much of it glaring advocacy. We were not perplexed by their efforts for long, but we were, and are perplexed even now at the absolute ignorance of the general populace. Intelligent, learned people could not identify the vice presidential candidate for the Democrats. They could not name a single accomplishment or identify one promise aside from the campaign slogan for 'change' in their candidate. Most telling, they could not identify any of the controversial figures in their candidate's past. This in no way reflects on President Obama but it is an indictment against the voters of our Democratic Republic who are passionately, emotionally invested but do not care enough to know what matters. The habit of relying on the news industry for their information has created a vacuum for responsible Democratic elections which advocates have joyously filled with irresponsible Democratic influence.
