Bias Propaganda and Tendentious Media
06 February 2019
Eddy Jackson
A significant feature of today’s zeitgeist is divided contentious national identities.
HYPOTHESIS
Popular media communications such as newspapers, social media, and interest groups control, operate and are established only to show, endorse, and present their highly selective, compartmentalised views of the world.
The title of this speech, bias, propaganda, and tendentious media, now needs another ominous noun to elucidate the meaning of these words and their implications, indoctrination.
KEY QUESTIONS
Ask yourself questions about the meaning, the influence, and power of these concepts.
Are you aware of the processes involved?
What is the impact, effect and outcomes for you, your community, and society?
Where and how does it start?
How does this happen?
What are the strategies to counter bias, propaganda, tendentious tweets, and indoctrination?
The language and cultures of the democratic free world facilitate these concerns. For totalitarian states, these concepts are the de facto modus operandi.
Now, let’s examine the meaning of these words.
DEFINITIONS
Bias
Inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair.
A concentration on or interest in one particular area or subject.
Propaganda
Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.
The dissemination of propaganda as a political strategy.
Tendentious
Expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view, especially a controversial one.
Indoctrination
The process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.
Newspapers
Now put these words into context by reviewing the great British tradition embedded into the fabric of the nations daily lives, the nasty and vicious morning newspapers.
Due to current online trends, this excludes millennials and the snowflake generation.
Compared to The Chinese People’s Daily, or the Russian Pravda, does The Times and The Daily Telegraph produce a balanced, independent, impartial news, views, comments, and features?
Journalists
Let's dig down and look at the heritage and pedigree of established, long-serving well-known journalists: Janet Daly, Isabelle Oakenshott, Polly Toynbee,
Quentin Letts, Charles Moore, and Tim Montgomerie.
What does that say about their newspaper’s ethos, culture, and viewpoints?
What was the message of the British twentieth-century newspapers? The Daily Record, The Sketch, The Express, The Mirror, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The People, and The News of The World?
Whom did they represent? Who owned this media?
Do you like to be well-informed, have educated insights, and be knowledgeable?
Generations of post-war baby boomers have been brought up reading newspapers. Here, the reader's diet will have consisted of what?
Imagine a young person delivering newspapers in this era. While they posted and read the headlines, the leading features would immediately provide detailed insights containing bias, propaganda, and tendentious media. The reader brings their own interpretations, values, and beliefs. Are they informed?
The Newspaper business model is not sustainable today. A digital, virtual world driven by sounds, images, and video content has attracted new audiences.
Twenty-first Century
Today we live in very different times? Things have evolved, and technology has led to new ways of communicating.
However, the same issues of bias, propaganda and tendentious media are still all pervasive. Interesting?
What has happened?
Online media displaying bias, propaganda, and tendentious clickbait
Today the use of online media for using, displaying and manipulating bias, propaganda, tendentious tweets, and propaganda is a well-recognised phenomenon.
The ubiquitous echo chambers of the internets social media apps have taken these issues to a higher and a new level.
News Verification
Responsible media organisations have teams and systems in place to verify the authenticity of facts. They verify the accuracy and honesty of the news.
In the United States the American Press Institute, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies and other news consortiums, like the BBC in the UK, now have strong systems in place to fact check and ensure the authenticity of media.
Can you think of major incidents, events, and scenarios where this has occurred?
For example, immediately after the US president gave a speech on the proposed wall along the Mexican border, news anchors scrambled to fact-check Trump’s prime-time television address.
The Financial Times featured the real reasons for Donald Trump lies at https://on.ft.com/2scILQG
The president’s greatest ambitions are neither financial nor political; - they’re psychological, writes Stephen Grosz.
The Washington Post’s Fact Checker estimates that during the two years of his presidency Trump has told some 7,600 lies
Grosz’s view is that Trump may abuse the truth, so we take notice of him, think about him, become emotionally involved with him. Because he’s in no one’s heart, he wants to be in all our minds. More and more, he is convinced that his greatest ambitions are neither financial nor political — they’re psychological. He wants us never to take our eyes off him. A psychic imperialist, he aims to colonise our minds. He wants to dominate the external and internal landscape.
Moments after President Trump concluded his Oval Office remarks on border security on Tuesday, the NBC anchor Chuck Todd came on the air with a blunt assessment.
“He made a lot of dubious claims,”
Mr Todd informed millions of viewers
after the network’s scheduled program
The decision by major broadcast networks to carry Mr Trump’s address live set off a fierce debate over journalistic responsibility in an age of unusual mendacity (Mendacity = Untruthfulness) in politics. Anchors responded by delivering a tough-minded assessment of his nine-minute remarks, reeling off several immediate correctives to some of his misleading claims.
Summary
What are the answers and solutions to my concerns:
- Supporting and using independent, high-quality media delivering in-depth, impartial reporting, g. The London Review of Books.
- Using news verification organisations for checking facts.
- Providing high standards of education for overcoming ignorance and low levels of literacy.
- Governments creating and enforcing laws for preventing hate, bigotry, and sectarianism.
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