unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation Review

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unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation ReviewAt least I think it's a great book, but now I'm not so sure. The authors, Brooks Jackson, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson have done such an outstanding job of showing me why I bought the electric scissors I didn't need and how I was focusing so much on watching the healthy people on the television doing Tai Chi in the park, I completely overlooked the possible side effects of the drug the commercial was pedaling. Now that I've listened and found out that it may lead to complete loss of body hair, tailbone growth, swelling of the lips and tongue, excessive weight gain, webbed feet, tooth loss, emesis and leprosy, I've stopped taking the drug.
Starting out with the first snake oil salesman making outrageous claims, to political advertisements by republicans and democrats, by Bush and Kerry, we learn that virtually none of them can be trusted because they appeal to our biases, our perception, our experiences, and cynicism with words that are open to interpretation such as clinically tested, larger, better, more people trust or use..., on average, and other caveats that deserve closer scrutiny. (I've also added to the list: "Read with an open mind," and "Only for those who can be objective").
If that isn't bad enough, the authors show us how our personal experiences and eyewitness accounts can be manipulated by others and by our own biases. For example, when subjects were shown two lines of differing lengths, they often reported that the shorter one was longer, once they learned that everyone else (supposedly) had selected the shorter line. An even better one is the neighboring review: One, who has made his conservative feelings clear, felt that there was more "left favoring" bias to this book. A commenter said that he felt there was more "right-favoring" bias. This is a classic recommendation for the book.
The most fascinating thing I took from this short paperback is that people will cling to their beliefs more tenaciously in the face of overwhelming evidence that reveals their position is incorrect or invalid, that people will short-circuit their own brains and readily accept as fact that which conforms to their own beliefs, and that we must learn to question bias, sources, evidence, and our cynicism before parting with our money or accepting information as knowledge or fact.
So, I can guarantee that you will be 100% satisfied as were the people in my survey who read this book compared with another. Two out of three found this not only a better read, but reported that it killed the germs that cause bad breath, took inches off their waistline, and removed wrinkles. So, what are you waiting for? Get started today. Start reading. After all, you have everything to lose!
Guaranteed! Or, my name isn't Axel Schnookenhoffer!
unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation Overview

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Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Studies in Communication, Media, and Public Opinion) Review

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Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Studies in Communication, Media, and Public Opinion) ReviewRobert Entman, Professor of communication and political science at North Carolina State University, has produced a fascinating study of the US media, which is applicable to Britain's media too. Their ruling assumption is that the US state is innocent and benign.
In Chapter Two, he compares the media handling of two similar events: Korean Air Lines 007, shot down by a Soviet jet in 1983, and Iran Air Flight 655, shot down by a US ship in 1988. The first was judged as a murderous attack, `wanton, brutal and deliberate', proof of Soviet moral bankruptcy, portrayed with pictures of the dead and much empathy, outrage and generalisation. The second was seen as a tragic accident, `understandable, mistaken and justified', a technical glitch, described in the passive voice, in abstract language, with no pictures, no generalisation and no blame.
In Chapter Three, Entman looks at the media treatment of the US attacks on Grenada, Libya and Panama. The media presented coherently only the administration's view. Typically, CBS's anchor Dan Rather said they were "not sure exactly what was happening but knowing the teams. It was the US against Qaddafi". Entman concludes, "The analysis demonstrates how journalists served as more or less loyal conduits of U.S. government propaganda in wartime." It seems that the first rule of the US state's news management is `lie early and lie often'.
In Chapter Four, Entman examines the media's `great debate' about the war on Iraq, which, it appears, was between those who wanted war at once and those who wanted war later. 71% of the Americans who appeared on camera were pro-war, just 3% against.
Entman shows how the state portrays the enemy as a threat, then uses a brief `wave of patriotism' to rubbish dissent. The state pretends that it is responding to public opinion, and claims that the media reflect public opinion: both notions support the ruling pretence that the public governs. In Chapter Six, Entman disproves all these myths by showing how the US state, with media assistance, beat back the hugely popular movement for a nuclear freeze.Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Studies in Communication, Media, and Public Opinion) Overview

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The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America Review

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The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America Review"A celebrity is a person who is well-known for their well-knownness" -- an observation from this book that is one of the most often quoted bits of wisdom on the subject of celebrity, and deservedly so. But this is just one of many quotable observations made by Boorstin in this prescient, clear-eyed look at the beginning of the post-modern world. Written in 1962, this book has been mined by writers on modern society of every stripe: French postmods (who don't credit Boorstin), Neil Postman (who does). Though it suffers a bit from the outdated examples used to elucidate his points about the "Graphic Revolution" -- his line in the sand between the modern and pre-modern -- the book is so cogently argued that it rarely matters.
His main thematic device is to dichotomize pre-modern and modern/postmodern categories. For instance, in discussing celebrity he notes that the precursor of the celebrity was the hero. He explains the difference by saying that the hero was "folk" based, while the celebrity is "mass" based. George Washington was raised to the level of hero by the people for his deeds, his fame embroidered by them, cherry trees invented for him to chop down. On the other hand, celebrities -- the Gabor sisters to use one of his examples -- were celebrities before they even starred in movies. They were created by astute publicists and through their own knack of getting into the paper.
He actually starts his discussion about how the image has come to be substituted for ideals in his first chapter on the gathering and dissemination of the news. He notes the rise of the pseudo-event, e.g., the press conference, the press leak, the crafty reporter calling sources and playing their quotes off of each other until the reporter arrives at something he can call news. He notes that newpapers actually used to contain reportage on events, things that had actually happened that were not designed to be covered by the media. Crimes, he notes in his summary, are the almost the only kind of real news left. (This before the era of copycat murders).
A brilliant, insightful diagnosis of our image-laden world that still holds up after 40 years. The only thing that's changed perhaps is how accustomed we've gotten to the image and the extent to which we're now sold on authenticity by marketers. His discussion of Barnum as the precursor to advertising is worth the price of the book. His sections on public opinion polling, on public relations, on advertising are dead on, too. He also takes on the sociologists of the time for their "nodal" thinking, their bland concepts such as "status anxiety." No one is spared.
The twist the postmods put on Boorstin's observations is that they say they take delight in the artificiality of the image, the bricolage, the spectacle, etc. (A postmod may be best known for their too-knowing knowingness and celebration of deception). But Boorstin is actually concerned about the destabilizing effects of the acceptance of the standard of "credibility" (which has supplanted "truth"). Too, he's worried that the American image we project is not based on ideas or ideals, but only things, only images. He says at one point that folks in the developing world prefer not to be hammered with the look of all things American, that it makes us look shallow as compared to those societies which are based on ideas (like Communism was -- ironically enough because it was founded on materialism). And though our images and our things apparently won out over Communism, there is still something pertinent about this observation. Pragmatism may have saved us from the ravages of idealism that gave rise to facist movements in Europe, but it spared us so that we could look empty-headed, only interested in moving ahead, unquestioningly.The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America Overview

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