2008 Woodie Awards
The media presents soapbox and spin
Brendan Hoole
Issue date: 4/8/04 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 1
Soap Boxes and Silence: Where is the News?
In today's world of MSNBC, CNN and Fox News, the sound bite has become critical ground on which to plant one's soapbox. Often, it is a leader telling us he didn't have an inappropriate relationship, taxes would not be increased, and that we would whip the terrorists.
As savvy media consumers, today's college students realize that most sound bites are little more than rhetoric, appealing to our base instincts of pride, entitlement, and justification. What the spin and rhetoric amount to is at best fodder for the nightly news and at worst blatant disinformation aimed at the American public.
Sound bites become tougher to decode when their claims are laced with statistical support. This is a point not lost on the leaders of our nation. In 1998 then Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey said, "The murder rate in Holland is double that in the United States ... That's drugs." This would be an interesting piece of statistical information, if it were true. The actual Dutch homicide rate was 1.8 per 100,000 people. The rate within the United States was four times that at the time the comment was made.
Entirely false information pales in comparison to the defining silence created when the media underreport an issue. During the 1990's there were 522 articles published in the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Time that mentioned Agent Orange and Vietnam together. Only eleven of these articles mentioned the impact chemicals had on the Vietnamese people and their environment. Three articles characterized Agent Orange as a "chemical weapon" or "chemical warfare" and only two articles suggested that use of Agent Orange might constitute a war crime. History has shown that this quality of reporting is insufficient and negligent.
Statistics become extremely dangerous when used amongst peers. While many of us may not listen to General McCaffrey on a regular basis we might listen to a friend who does. If I told ten of my friends what General McCaffrey said, I predict I could get seven of them to believe me. Those seven people might tell seven more people, and so on. What results is an exponentially growing lie about our nation's efforts to explain the harm drugs do. Similarly, a lot of people read at least one of the five media outlets mentioned above. The information made available to these readers is not worthy of someone who is actively seeking the truth.
The real problem is not just the issue of drugs in America or American foreign policy, but how we perceive our national endeavors, as well as other issues of the day. My advice is to seek out real news in places where soapboxes and spin don't travel. The Associated Press (www.ap.org) and Kyodo News (home.kyodo.co.jp) are good places to find news that has not been put through a filter of governmental and economic interest. If you are the one out of every five people that get their news online maybe having msn.com, as your home page is a bad idea.
In today's world of MSNBC, CNN and Fox News, the sound bite has become critical ground on which to plant one's soapbox. Often, it is a leader telling us he didn't have an inappropriate relationship, taxes would not be increased, and that we would whip the terrorists.
As savvy media consumers, today's college students realize that most sound bites are little more than rhetoric, appealing to our base instincts of pride, entitlement, and justification. What the spin and rhetoric amount to is at best fodder for the nightly news and at worst blatant disinformation aimed at the American public.
Sound bites become tougher to decode when their claims are laced with statistical support. This is a point not lost on the leaders of our nation. In 1998 then Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey said, "The murder rate in Holland is double that in the United States ... That's drugs." This would be an interesting piece of statistical information, if it were true. The actual Dutch homicide rate was 1.8 per 100,000 people. The rate within the United States was four times that at the time the comment was made.
Entirely false information pales in comparison to the defining silence created when the media underreport an issue. During the 1990's there were 522 articles published in the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Time that mentioned Agent Orange and Vietnam together. Only eleven of these articles mentioned the impact chemicals had on the Vietnamese people and their environment. Three articles characterized Agent Orange as a "chemical weapon" or "chemical warfare" and only two articles suggested that use of Agent Orange might constitute a war crime. History has shown that this quality of reporting is insufficient and negligent.
Statistics become extremely dangerous when used amongst peers. While many of us may not listen to General McCaffrey on a regular basis we might listen to a friend who does. If I told ten of my friends what General McCaffrey said, I predict I could get seven of them to believe me. Those seven people might tell seven more people, and so on. What results is an exponentially growing lie about our nation's efforts to explain the harm drugs do. Similarly, a lot of people read at least one of the five media outlets mentioned above. The information made available to these readers is not worthy of someone who is actively seeking the truth.
The real problem is not just the issue of drugs in America or American foreign policy, but how we perceive our national endeavors, as well as other issues of the day. My advice is to seek out real news in places where soapboxes and spin don't travel. The Associated Press (www.ap.org) and Kyodo News (home.kyodo.co.jp) are good places to find news that has not been put through a filter of governmental and economic interest. If you are the one out of every five people that get their news online maybe having msn.com, as your home page is a bad idea.