A popular argument over dinners and drinks and putts is: How the media slant the news. Everyone starts with an agreement the media do; but not everyone agrees in which direction: Right or Left.
Short of fists, one way to settle this is to tally up how the media use key words. Say like torture. A new study from Harvard's J. F. Kennedy School of Government reports that the four leading US newspapers consistently describe water-boarding as torture when it occurs in foreign nations. Not so after it was justified by the Bush administration in 2004.
From 1930 to 2004 the "NY Times" called it torture in 44 of 54 articles while the "LA Times" did so in 26 of 27 articles. However, beginning in 2004, the "NY Times" labeled it torture in only 2 of 143 articles while the "LA Times" did so in only 3 of 63.
The study raises questions: Do patterns like this represent a kind of state-run media? Or are the media simply reflecting national policy? Or are the media essentially placating the paying public? Unfortunately, there is no known tally that can be used to definitively answer such questions, because every writer and reader uses and hears words relative to their own body of life-experience. In effect, it's all relative...!
Something like so many other phenomena in our lives. Take for example a recent phone-call from a long ago, far away friend. Thirty years had slipped away since we last spoke, and yet her voice conjured up instant memories and affections and images. No way for science to measure or quantify this relative emotion. Oh, evolutionary biologists may try to isolate some gene or two that will reduce this little whiff of magic into a code.......but my thought is forget your codes, forget your quantifications, and simply taste a moment in time which is entirely relative and subjective to the two of us!
Editors should not fall back upon this small indulgence, but there is a vast difference between torture and love on the scale of human emotions. One demands precision; the other, simply permission.
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Now this is very revealing....
ReplyDeleteThis boils down which Countries Newspapers you are reading at the time, Jack. The actions of 'our' Police or Security Services, if reported, are always working for the 'good' of the people. [for 'people', read those in power], and their actions are without doubt all within the law. We of course do not use torture, but need to get information, so 'forcefull' measures are used..after all, if we don't get information, then innocent people may be killed...but torture...never!
ReplyDeleteNow, the same story in another Countries Newspaper, will say torture was used.
Our freedome fighters, are somebody elses terrorists..Its all subject to the 'side' we are on. From my experience, ALL Countries use Torture, though maybe not torture to the death of the suspect, [only the other side do that]...but if the person dies...would we ever be told ? I doubt it, unless there is a 'whistle blower' involved, and then every method is used to destroy the credibility of the person who 'let the cat out of the bag', and, I am thinking of one case in the UK, when there is a 'suggestion' that a scientist was killed by the security services to silence him, but we all know 'that he killed himself', or so investigations into the case have shown, and reported to the public by TV News, and Newspapers....so it 'must' be true.....
Its not just the editors of TV News, or Newspapers working to the wishes of the owners of the TV or Newspapers, but what the Government want. At one time we used to have a 'D' notice on reports, which meant that they could not be reported, but nowadays, other method's are used....We all have blood on our hands, but ignore it....
Alfie ~ The blood is surely on everyone's hands -- including we the gullible public who tend to go for the sensational over the informational. Lately there isn't much difference between the world of journalism and the world of entertainment.
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