Hello guys, today I welcome a very special guest and we bring to you a collaboration.
He shares insightful animations on various topics, so make sure to check out his channel
afterwards.
Before we begin I'll let him introduce himself for you.
Hey everyone.
I'm Thought Monkey and I'm excited to have worked with The Journey on this video.
Every step was an insightful experience and it really helped me to expand my ideas and
thoughts on this topic.
Today we're going to be talking about why the news has little to do with the news.
The news these days is filled with sensational headlines meant to constantly grab our attention.
But why?
Shouldn't the news just be a report on significant events that have an effect on our lives?
Why are we flooded with "breaking news," and trending tweets that don't matter?
There are two events that are covered in the news world – those that happen spontaneously
and those that are what the author Daniel Boorstin call "pseudo-events."
Spontaneous events are events that happen by themselves – things like a local Earthquake
or terrorist attack – in other words they are rare but important enough that the news
will cover them because they are noteworthy enough.
Pseudo-events however are planned, man-made, and mostly predictions of probabilities that
may or may not occur.
They are mostly used in self-interest as a way to grab attention and gain coverage.
For example there might be a hotel that wants more business.
So they hire a PR firm that tells them to set up a celebration of their 13th anniversary.
They form a committee of rich people, plan the event and hire photographers and journalists
to report on it.
If this were a truly an important event it would all happen on its own.
There'd be no need to hire photographers and reporters because they'd be there naturally.
In other words the power to make an event reportable is really based on the power to
make an experience.
A false report like this hotel anniversary affects people's perception of reality – of
what actually is important and what is not.
But before the 20th century people didn't expect exciting news every single day.
It was ok if the news was boring or the paper wasn't even published that day because nothing
may have happened that was noteworthy.
Nowadays we expect sensational news daily or even hourly.
And the journalist is expected to find a story where there is no story.
There is increased demand for illusion, which has resulted in a change in how the news is
delivered, but also a change in what we expect from the news.
The news is now a business and if we didn't create and implement pseudo-events, thousands
would be out of work.
Fake news has become the norm and has been propagated even more with the invention of
television.
TV has made it easy to deliver constant news to millions of people.
This has increased the media's ability to feed its audience content, while at the same
time financially supporting itself.
There is surely benefit in watching certain TV shows like documentaries.
Nonetheless, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argues that most of
what's on TV actually attacks literacy and critical thinking instead of promoting it.
Most of the programs and news we watch, are rarely informative or thought-provoking, the
focus is only to amuse.
We may think of TV as a evolution of journalism.
But it's not.
The automobile, a continuation of the horse.
Electricity replaced candles.
TV however, is not in the slightest the subsequent of typography and the written paper, but merely
that of the telegraph and photography.
Just think about it.
When you watch TV you are actually watching moving images.
The average TV shot is 3.5 seconds so the eye never gets to rest and always has something
new to see accompanied by complementing sounds.
It has nothing to do with sharing information.
They need your attention so they could put food on the table.
Welcome to the age of show business.
Notice when people are talking on TV there often is no time for them to stop and think.
That would be seen as boring or awkward.
But this is a natural part of how we communicate with one another.
If we were to watch people on TV have real discussions, we would be bored for the most
part.
No one wants to watch someone think or fumble over their words.
An example would be modern political debates; each person is required to make a list of
ideas before the show, rehearse, and is then granted a limited time to convey them, a threshold.
Now, how in hell can a politician introduce his campaign in less than three minutes, let
alone another one be able to criticize him in two minutes?
Same goes for the so-called intellectual shows where the author is questioned not about the
actual ideas in his book, but on surface-matters like his childhood, how inspiration came to
him, or about his family.
More often the show lingers around the hot journalist asking the questions and the excellent
camera positioning.
The problem isn't that TV entertains us.
It's that it presents almost all subject matter in an entertaining way.
As Wilson Bryan Key put it: "even the killings are funny.
" Wonder why would they broadcast a war or a terrorist attack if the viewer has no say
in it, and can't do anything about it?
For them it is no different than airing an action movie, both add up in entertainment.
The News is on four times a night, has attractive anchors on it that talk with a weird news
accent, engaging in friendly banter, and constantly flood you with sensational headlines that
hook you by telling you part of a story, then say "find out more after these commercials"
or "make sure to join us tomorrow".
What for?
The violence broadcasted in a single report is enough for a whole month of restless sleep.
Still, we do accept the news anchor's invitation because we realize consciously or subconsciously
that what we're watching is by no means of serious nature.
There's no conspiracy here.
It's just an understanding that good TV means exciting pictures, music, people, and
stories that grab attention.
It has nothing to do with treating today's global concerns.
On the contrary, everything is distorted and served in a way to stimulate, and of course,
help the business of news get paid.
On TV, with their frequent bloody arguments and contentions, the role of politicians and
thinkers became more so that of actors in a film rather than thought-provokers.
Postman says that today's American culture is best symbolized by Las Vegas – a place
entirely devoted to constant entertainment, such is the case for American media.
And sadly, the mediums through which information is shared often will reflect the intellectual
level of a whole culture, provided the person maintains regular exposure.
Keep in mind both of the previous books were written long before what we know as the internet
today was accessible to billions of people.
TV is slowly being put out of business by the internet.
Of course, with this comes pros and cons.
Today, and especially in terms of political matters, blogs are the new medium.
And they're often driven to cover content by what's trending on Twitter or Facebook
or whatever is going to sell the most clicks or get the most views.
Remember that the media has an incentive to capture your attention because it makes its
money off advertising.
If no one watches or reads their content – they don't make money.
The author Ryan Holiday is an expert at figuring out what people will click on.
According to what he wrote in his book "Trust Me I'm Lying", manipulating the media
and scamming your way into the headlines is easier than you might think.
It starts with bloggers who will do anything for traffic because first that's how they
make their money and second they are paid very little.
For example to make $60,000 a blogger needs to get 1.8 million views a month.
How do they do that?
They often use click bait headlines, cover fake stories, sell sensationalism, sex, scandal
or hatred, or just make up stuff by going on craigslist and look under the section about
what people are complaining about today.
Some may even be driven to pay people for comments and pageviews.
In one example of how desperate bloggers are for content that will give them traffic – Holiday
made a fake memo, sent it out to a bunch of bloggers as if he were an employee leaking
that memo from his boss.
What happens next?
It's common that bloggers don't check their sources and still write about it on
their blogs.
It starts getting traffic and begins to trend.
The mainstream media then picks up on it and see that there are enough bloggers writing
about it that they believe it's credible.
They then talk about it on the news with their accents and seconds later millions upon millions
of people in the U.S. believe whatever it is they just heard.
In addition, today's blogs also help make history, and can be the cause of someone's
unfounded fame or imminent death in vain.
Ryan brings up the case of Tim Pawlenty.
The guy had no campaign and wasn't even a recognized figure in the elections of 2012.
He made it quickly to the top and nearly became president of the United States.
How come?
Well he simply hired a reporter from the blog "politico" to follow him from one city to
another with a camera and a laptop, documenting his non-campaign.
From there came the snowball effect.
Major blogs like "The New york Times" often sponsor and get their article ideas
from smaller ones like "Politico," and since any news is better than no news in terms
of views - what happened was "The New York Times" covered "Politico" covering Pawlenty.
Much like a ponzi scheme.
The guy went from zero to hero with just a few clicks and a camera.
Some say it's crazy to think that the media manipulates us.
But if you just start to notice how much of the news is filled with "pseudo-events,"
and how TV is filled with imagery and sounds that hook your constant attention, and how
what's trending on the internet often makes it onto the nightly news, you'll begin to
realize just how infected our media is.
Most of us don't think twice about this kind of stuff – but that might just be because
when "we play by their rules long enough - it becomes our game."
Thanks for watching guys.
You can support us by a simple like, share, or comment and ensure to check out Thought
Monkey's channel by clicking the link you see on the video or in the description box
below.
Until next time.
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