In the last article we discussed the tools for advertising and how
they help create the thoughts, feelings, or needs that help the target
audience accept an idea. The best advertising, even though it may seem
useless, is the commercial where one doesn't understand what was being
marketed, because the person actually believes that she came up with the
idea herself. This is done by distracting the person and bypassing the
part of the brain that monitors and examines the messages through
distraction, intensity and repetition. We also briefly discussed
Narrative criticism and how we can examine the news more closely if we
look at is as literature, with each segment arranged in the order to
place us in the right mindset to receive the information that follows.
In
this article will show you how to explore this order and its effects.
We can start on the micro level by just observing one show. This can be
done by watching any news program, but it is even better to do this
with a channel like CNN or Fox, because they have news going twenty four
hours a day. If we can start with one of the news programs on these
channels, we can see how it works, and then branch out farther to the
rest of the news. All that we need to do is either to really pay
attention, or write down what we hear.
Here are some suggestions
for doing this. Look at the first segment. Try to summarize what the
story was about, and write down your conclusion in one sentence or less.
Also, write down your thoughts and feelings. There are often so many
commercials that you can do this. Do the same thing for each segment.
If you watch the same program for a week and keep notes on thoughts,
conclusions and so on, you will notice a pattern. It is similar to the
concept of foreshadowing in biblical study.
This concept basically
says that all of the Hebrew Scripture, or Old Testament to some, was a
preview of the Greek Scripture, or New Testament. The theory is that
you find spiritual truths in the New Testament that was already well
known and pre-shadowed the actual events that were supposed to happen in
actuality in the New Testament. In many of these segments, overtime,
you will find thoughts, ideas and conclusions presented as facts, that
will serve to prepare you to receive other similar conclusions as a
great awakening of your own idea. You may actually hear so many
conclusions and see so many of these foreshadows, that you will think
that you have made the decisions about the later situations by yourself,
just like the way commercials work. Next try this watching several
programs on the same channel. Below is an example of deeply exploring a
news broadcast.
I saw an interview on the Fox channel last week
about the Homeland Security Chief that was leaving his post after
several years. It ended up being an interview about terrorists in Iraq
and the success of the U.S. military. It sounded like two different
conversations. His questions were very surface and leading, but the
interviewee was very good at spinning and providing the answers for the
questions that put forth his agenda. The interviewee ended up saying
that terrorists come from people who are poor and dissempowered, with
very little opportunity. With the help of the interviewer and cues from
him, he said that they are looking for self esteem and greatness, so
they are blowing themselves up to be someone big in their communities.
When
asked how the U.S. would help deal with terrorism later, he said that
the U.S. would provide economic and educational opportunities for these
poor people, so they would have hope. In the first part of the
interview we see a group of people just seeking self glory, with no real
reason to be suicide bombers. This is the idea that we are supposed to
hold onto. But the answer to how to help them goes much deeper. Had
the interviewer been a real one, and not so eager to lead him to the
first conclusion, he would have asked, "Well, is it not possible that
these people are doing terrorist acts because they are in a situation
where there isn't any hope?" or saying, "Maybe they are doing this
because they don't have any hope anyway, so they are trying to at least
give their lives to relieve everyone else from oppression." He could
have asked anything that would go deeper, instead, he went along with
the first assessment and even repeated it back to make sure we all heard
it. This is bad news, but good propaganda. It stops us from
identifying with the terrorists and makes them look like bad people,
pathetic people who would kill others just for their own glory, or
losers.
If we write down conclusions like these and look at them,
we can see what types of stereotypes we are being fed. As we recognize
them we can understand how they influence us, and permit the media and
others to lead us to believe negative, or positive beliefs about certain
people. This in turn, in a democratic society, shapes our thoughts,
opinions, and who and what we support when we go to the polls. It is
important, therefor, to know what is being presented on the news daily.
After really observing for several years and writing down our
conclusions and observations, or just remembering them, we will begin to
see a bigger pattern that can span months, or even years. When we can
see this, we can see clearly how the news is really shaping us. One way
of freeing ourselves from this process is by destroying the
stereotypes. How? By identifying with the target group instead of
separating from it. We can know more about terrorism by asking, "What
would have to happen to me to make me be willing to do terrorist acts?
What is happening to them? Who is doing it?" Those three simple
questions can bring home much truth, understanding, and break the
conditioning. And they can be applied to any of the many offenses
committed by humanity that we see on news programs everyday.
In
our next article we will discuss comparing the reports that we see on
different news channels, in newsprint, and on radio. We will look for
the big story, and see how familiar the wording and conclusions are. We
will then look at the agenda of the newsgroup to see if we can predict
what will happen on the next broadcast. This is a lot of fun. Through
this process we will discover how we can find the main narrative: the
covert narrative underneath everything that we read, see and hear in the
news. This is not about conspiracy, it is about the systemic effect
that makes the media, like many other institution, behave a certain way
and think that they are doing something good by doing so
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