Trust nothing if there are no boxes on your roof Yeah, the title is a bit deceptive, and I apologize for that. I just couldn't find a better way to say it, but this text from Shakespeare's Hamlet just kills me:
"Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love."
You see, one of my projects is about the gap between the media and the audience's understanding of the media's reality. In essence, my project is about doubting just about everything you hear and read. I know we have to trust something in our lives. Otherwise we'd be running around in paranoia, but we really need to be more critical of how information is passed on to us.
For example, this article by the Guardian covering the protests on Donald Trump's inauguration day talks about how several journalists were arrested during the proceedings. Now, journalists are unjustly arrested during these events all the time. They shouldn't be, but they are. But my problem with this article is that there's no reporting that shows if, in fact, these journalists were actually activists posing as journalists and engaging in riotous activity (thus making legit journalists look bad - and yes, this also happens all the time, especially in today's social media world). We don't know that they were or not. Of course, it's better to assume they weren't until proven otherwise. However, this article is complete crap and should be heavily criticized because it uses the emotion of those who merely state that journalists should not be arrested. It uses no evidence with regards to these specific journalists and what they might have done (which is probably nothing, but that's not the point!).
The point is that if I report that inflation was at 5% and then go out and ask people how inflation affects them, then I'm creating an emotional response - inappropriately so. Now, if the government or banks estimated that inflation should have been 5.5% then I've turned a potential good-news story into a negative story, very likely with the intent of politically motivating the reader. This is wrong, and that's what the Guardian article is doing. We may not know what the Guardian's agenda really is, but we can see that it is attempting to emotionally sway it's readers to be in favor or against something, probably something quite specific that probably has nothing to do with journalists. In fact, it may be quite anti-Trump. Whether you agree with the politics or not is completely irrelevant. If a newspaper wants credibility then it doesn't do this kind of reporting. Instead, it can have the same effect with a much better presentation of facts.
Now why does this Shakespeare quote kill me? I want to cut off the last line. I know it's contextual to the plot of the play, but the first three lines work wonderfully well in contemporary media criticism. Trust nothing. Go with what you think is right, but trust nothing.
"Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;"
"Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love."
You see, one of my projects is about the gap between the media and the audience's understanding of the media's reality. In essence, my project is about doubting just about everything you hear and read. I know we have to trust something in our lives. Otherwise we'd be running around in paranoia, but we really need to be more critical of how information is passed on to us.
For example, this article by the Guardian covering the protests on Donald Trump's inauguration day talks about how several journalists were arrested during the proceedings. Now, journalists are unjustly arrested during these events all the time. They shouldn't be, but they are. But my problem with this article is that there's no reporting that shows if, in fact, these journalists were actually activists posing as journalists and engaging in riotous activity (thus making legit journalists look bad - and yes, this also happens all the time, especially in today's social media world). We don't know that they were or not. Of course, it's better to assume they weren't until proven otherwise. However, this article is complete crap and should be heavily criticized because it uses the emotion of those who merely state that journalists should not be arrested. It uses no evidence with regards to these specific journalists and what they might have done (which is probably nothing, but that's not the point!).
The point is that if I report that inflation was at 5% and then go out and ask people how inflation affects them, then I'm creating an emotional response - inappropriately so. Now, if the government or banks estimated that inflation should have been 5.5% then I've turned a potential good-news story into a negative story, very likely with the intent of politically motivating the reader. This is wrong, and that's what the Guardian article is doing. We may not know what the Guardian's agenda really is, but we can see that it is attempting to emotionally sway it's readers to be in favor or against something, probably something quite specific that probably has nothing to do with journalists. In fact, it may be quite anti-Trump. Whether you agree with the politics or not is completely irrelevant. If a newspaper wants credibility then it doesn't do this kind of reporting. Instead, it can have the same effect with a much better presentation of facts.
Now why does this Shakespeare quote kill me? I want to cut off the last line. I know it's contextual to the plot of the play, but the first three lines work wonderfully well in contemporary media criticism. Trust nothing. Go with what you think is right, but trust nothing.
"Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;"
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