9/30/2004

What to Believe?

I took a survey of films class, to fulfill a general requirement, and in that class I learned some things about how directors use camera angles, different types of lenses, and the actors positions in the seen to let the viewers see what the director wants them to see. Thus making the audience think and believe what the director wants them to think and believe.

As I watch the news, I see things that are happening throughout the world and also right here in the United States. I see a sixty minutes broadcast turn up papers on the president of the United States of American that basically says he tried to dodge the war in Vietnam, going against many things that he stands for and basically depicting him as a coward. After further investigation that turned out to be false and those papers were not authentic. We all know that the news, just like any other television program requires viewers. If there was no viewers there would be no television. Do we really know how much the news is "fudged", just a little, to get the latest breaking news?

4 comments:

Ernie said...

The news media and all media for that matter do make mistakes from time to time. I, like Joe, was rather upset with Dan Rather this past week for his major blunder concerning President Bush's past Air National Guard record. Clearly, there is left-wing out there in the media that is trying to discredit Bush at any cost. We, hopefully as registered and informed voters, need to discern from what is correct and uncorrect. I personally am sick of hearing and seeing the ad's that are trying to discredit both Bush and Kerry and want to hear about the issues facing American's now and not 25 years ago.

Dr. Tufte said...

I have two thoughts here.

First, any history expert will tell you that elections are a lot cleaner than they used to be (for example, one 19th century campaign featured the slogan "Ma, Ma, where's Pa?" because one of the candidates was rumored to have abandoned a bastard child).

Second, you know what an economist says to all this? Markets can solve almost all problems. I don't have any problem with biased media outlets. I have a problem with biased media outlets that have some sort of market power that they don't deserve. We used to be very badly in this situation, and we are evolving away from it (things are getting better not worse). We used to have 3 networks because that is what the government said we should have. That alone gave them market power. Along with that there was a perception and expectation that they were neutral. The difference to an economist is that we tend to view that market structure as one that is likely to lead to corruption (due to the lack of free entry and exit). In the 1960s the networks were even accused of being too conservative because they didn't adequately cover the evolving protest movement. Another part of the unusual arrangement of market power in those days was a rule that said that the news had to provide equal time to differing viewpoints. No one could afford to provide that unless they were big, and even then it was limited to the two major parties. Congress relaxed that rule in the mid-80s and (politically oriented) talk radio blossomed. The message there is that those shows that are popular are an indicator of what people want to hear. And now we have blogs.

What this all has in common is that we are moving from an oligopoly (with legalized collusion) to perfect competition in news provision. That will make news cheaper and easier to get, but also put you in the tougher position of probably having to get multiple opinions on different issues.

Jordan said...

Dr. Tufte said:

"What this all has in common is that we are moving from an oligopoly (with legalized collusion) to perfect competition in news provision."

I think that the media, for a long time, could very easily shape people's opinions by skewing the news they reported. But now, with the internet, it's getting easier to find the "true" story. The media will have to take more responsibility for the accuracy of their coverage. If not, they won't last in a growing competitive market.

Dr. Tufte said...

I think we're already seeing this with the collapse of newspapers and network news.