{"id":3552,"date":"2011-03-07T10:16:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-07T10:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/03\/the-press-doesnt-get-facts.html"},"modified":"2011-03-07T10:16:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-07T10:16:00","slug":"the-press-doesnt-get-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/03\/the-press-doesnt-get-facts.html","title":{"rendered":"The Press doesn’t get facts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019ve blogged many times on the flagrant advocacy that are our modern propaganda ministries disguised as news outlets.\u00a0 One of my biggest peeves is that we haven\u2019t learned one of the most crucial lessons of the 20th century \u2013 that the ability to brainwash the masses through global institutional communications is one of the most powerful weapons ever invented by man.\u00a0 Not nuclear or biological weapons.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 It\u2019s the ability to use mass media to sway opinion, even if it is toward opinions based on lies, falsehoods, and evil.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Much of the time the problems are based on pure propaganda.\u00a0 Deliberate suppressing of truth, manipulating of truth, twisting of truth, and just ignoring truth in order to advance an agenda.\u00a0 A great example of that was\u00a0a previous post\u2019s<\/a> story of a woman who decided to abandon her family to focus on herself.\u00a0 The author, all awash in admiration for this brave woman\u2019s priorities, probably realized that deep down it\u2019s a pretty deplorable thing to walk out on one\u2019s family.\u00a0 So rather than wrestle with the ethical implications, the Shine<\/em> journalist decides to place it against the hypocrisy of our age where, apparently, men are able to abandon their families to indulge in a lifetime of self focus and nobody cares.\u00a0 Except, or course, that\u2019s a lie.\u00a0 If a man were to divorce wife and abandon kids with the excuse that he wants to focus on himself, he\u2019s pretty much toast in the public mindset.\u00a0 Certainly he\u2019s done for in any feminist outlets.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So that\u2019s a great case where the media loves to make a quick false\u00a0statement as if it\u2019s simply common knowledge, then move on in the hope that nobody pays attention.\u00a0 This happens with the hope that somehow, it just seeps into our collective consciousness. <\/p>\n

Of course beyond the obvious agendas, biases, prejudice, bigotry, and beliefs that cause so much just suspicion of the media, are the cases where they just get information wrong.\u00a0 I remember when I was in middle school.\u00a0 A local family was traveling in a small plane to Florida when they crashed.\u00a0 All were killed.\u00a0 It was pretty big in our school.\u00a0 We even had a memorial\u00a0in our gymnasium \u2013 a rare thing back then.\u00a0 The Columbus news channel that reported it said that a family from Marion, Ohio was killed.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t from Marion.\u00a0 They were from Mt. Gilead.\u00a0 Just north of Edison to be exact.\u00a0 Even then, I thought, \u201cHow could they get such an easily verifiable fact wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, nothing has really changed.\u00a0 In this piece<\/a> on the ever reliable NPR, we are introduced to Jose Gomez,\u00a0Los Angeles\u2019s new Archbishop.\u00a0 This is the opening sentence:<\/p>\n

\u201cJose Gomez, the first Latino archbishop in the U.S., takes the helm of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angles on Sunday.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem?\u00a0 Jose Gomez is not the first Latino archbishop in the U.S.\u00a0 That would be\u00a0Robert Sanchez, a priest of Santa Fe who was made archbishop there in 1974.\u00a0 He was later forced to resign.\u00a0 Five years later, Patricio Flores became archbishop of the San Antonio archdiocese in 1979. I know, it seems picky.\u00a0 But facts are facts.\u00a0 We are supposed to trust the media to tell us what is happening in the world.\u00a0 To know what is going on.\u00a0 To know this and not that is the solution we should pursue.\u00a0 It\u2019s tough enough when every fibre of our being screams that they are not being truthful, that they are manipulating data to advance agendas.\u00a0 But when you realize that even if they were being truthful, such flagrant and easily remedied factual errors occur, even the most trusting reader and viewer has to approach any media story with a certain level of caution.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve blogged many times on the flagrant advocacy that are our modern propaganda ministries disguised as news outlets.\u00a0 One of my biggest peeves is that we haven\u2019t learned one of the most crucial lessons of the 20th century \u2013 that the ability to brainwash the masses through global institutional communications is one of the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Press doesn't get facts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've blogged many times on the flagrant advocacy that are our modern propaganda ministries disguised as news outlets.  One of my biggest peeves is\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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