Alex O'Neal:

Re: polls and the poor job of the media. Speaking of the 70% in late 2003 who still believed there was a Saddam-9/11 link, Greenwald writes: "That heinous fact, by itself, should have provoked a major crisis in political journalism -- a desperate effort to find out what went so fundamentally wrong." Even worse are the poll results from Zogby that found that as recently as 2006, 46% of Americans still clung to that belief.

The problem is that most people are lazy thinkers. The idea that gets in first with the most is the one they stick with, and it takes a lot to dislodge it. This places even more responsibility on the shoulders of those purporting to report reality.

This is a claim without empirical foundation, and a symptom of mental laziness itself. Of course it has some validity. But PIPA showed that watching FOX News and supporting Bush were two powerful indicators of believing this and other lies about Iraq. Data aren't available, but it seems a good bet that rightwing authoritarianism was a powerful indicator as well--both directly and via FOX watching and support of Bush.

Additionally, it's been noted that top Bush officials repeatedly linked the two--not by saying they were connected, but by mentioning them in the same breath as if they were connected. This, in turn, is particularly effective in fooling people who think associatively--and, indeed, lack the capacity to do otherwise. (This lack of cognitive capacity is quite different from "laziness.")

Of course, no one has done the hard work of separating out all these effects, seeing how much they explain, and how much more needs explaining. But two things are certain--it's a very serious problem, and the press is has its head buried in the sand so deep that it can see the sunrise in China.

A person can lose their credibility instantly by saying what they really think, even if what they really think is the result of careful and objective reasoning based on facts that have some claim to reliability, that are verifiable for instance.

That seems to be what this entire discussion is about: the presence or absence of facts and objectivity in media reporting. You know, that thing that journalists are supposed to do: get the facts, corroborate the facts, find the story behind the facts and report it objectively. Journalism 101.

When I look at the MSM news over the past fifteen to twenty years, what I see is a gradual movement away from news reporting and in the direction of propaganda. Now that's the word that will get you laughed out of the room by the MSM. The use of that one word, propaganda, when applied to the MSM, can cause a person to be dismissed out of hand as a nutjob. Perhaps it is because the word elicits so many associations, from early 20th century communist revolutions, to nationalism and world wars, to tinfoil hat secret plans and clever tricks of every type. It's a 20th century word, a "1984" word. It would be quaint if it weren't such a cliche.

To think to apply the word propaganda to the MSM is, on the face of it, ludicrous. That would be saying that many of talking heads in the media are propagandists. That they do what they do to serve an agenda, political, corporatist, whatever.

But that's what I really think.

Discussions, like the one you are having today with one of the movers and shakers in the MSM, make clear the distinction between propaganda and news. I, for my part, tinfoil hat and all, think it is critically important to make the distinction, if but for one reason - propaganda and news serve two entirely different purposes.

Propaganda is intended to influence people's opinions and behaviors. It starts from a desire for a specific outcome. That desire is the primary goal. For a propagandist, facts are useful only insofar as they serve that goal. This means that generalizations, stereotyping, sloganeering, truisms and every form of logical fallacy are acceptable tools in the toolbox of propaganda.

Propaganda works best when it is based on truisms. And that is why news is fundamentally different from propaganda. News works best when it is based on truth represented in the form of facts.

Rather than argue the distinction between truth and truisms I would simply ask a person if they would rather go to war (conventional, nuclear or biological) based on truisms or truth. Would that person rather make decisions about the future ecology of the planet based on truisms or truth?

We live in precarious times. The difference between truth and truisms is often the difference between life and death. That's not propaganda. That's a fact.

I got one of those "blue-physical-memory-dumps" 'hit' me again. Overmanned.

Asp Trader. He had me think about this: Diogenes's of Sinope, on the Black Sea, was a leading exponent of the Cynic (kylon), "the dog."---which taught at the end of Life, Virtue was measured. Look at the front Page of Salon, and there is no need to 'sneak' in here via the back swinging-door. See the lady holding the fair scales and balance.

Diogenes, who was nicknamed the "dog," was in accord with nature.

O, maybe the breakdown-web-page I've had, is just the condition called, 'ataraxia?'

That meant imperturbability. That's a fun word for some soul food. Let's all say that together now...Imperturbability. Words are fun to say. 'Fuuunnn.'

Occasionally, the foment in our times may toss a unpredicted 'swerve' pitch. Just-Look, it's a atom ball that's pitched in a grand slam fashion into a Universe that will forever be HERE in parallel lines through perfect endless space.....(*) What a 'swerve' ball pitch, ash Trader's? Thanks.

But...Diogenes wrote: "A wise man can be infallible, and we are all wise/fools, same-same, and prone to error."

Not sure about the connection between my statement and your follow-up, because I agree with you that watching Fox, etc., is a predictor of viewpoint. But this is because of how the brain works.

You complain of my statement that most people are lazy thinkers, This is a claim without empirical foundation, and a symptom of mental laziness itself. Of course it has some validity.

Actually, my degree ( summa cum laude) is in cognitive science; my phrasing was a shorthand way of describing what I've read and observed in my own research. I don't think it gets more empirical.

The scariest example I read was of a study that found only one in twenty people were likely to see an alternative viewpoint. It inventoried participants about their views on a broad variety of subjects, as well as other tests to try to reduce pre-programming. Subjects were then presented with either written or video-taped discussions on some of the topics inventoried. Both written and spoken versions were carefully tailored to include an equal number of statements on opposing sides of the topic. The subjects were then re-inventoried.

Regardless of which side they represented themselves as supporting, most people (about 95%) came away more strongly believing their original view. Despite the balanced presentation, only 5% came away thinking the other side might have a useful view. Different possibilities exist for why this is; one I think is possible is that we are pattern makers, and we tend to first try to make things fit in existing patterns before we adjust or make new ones. Simple conservation of mental energy, in other words—an attempt to incorporate new thoughts with our existing understanding of the world.

Sadly, this was in 1998 and I don't recall the name of the researchers in question; I tried to google it and failed. I did, however, find the statement below. From an online NYU version of a 2006 paper (http://homepages.nyu.edu/~el322/downloads/Azi-Levon-Exposure-OppViews.pdf):

It is fairly well established by now that intentionality drives segmentation and generates few, if any, contacts with dissimilar people. When users efficiently choose their communicative environment, they tend to build echo chambers as drivers of homogeneity become then dominant.

So you see it makes perfect sense that those with a particular view go to a place that supports that view. The issue is not simply Fox making Foxbots with a specific view, it's Foxbots making Fox a success as well.

We have to figure out how to remind people to think for themselves, and that's quite a challenge.