Trans Fatty Acids
13-06-2008, 23:35
So the silliest thing I've heard this week is some Fox News anchor called Obama's little fist-dap before his St. Paul speech a "terrorist fist jab". The anchor, E.D. Hill, made a non-apology apology four days later, that she hadn't personally thought that, she was only repeating someone else's (laughably idiotic) line:
"I apologise because unfortunately, some thought I personally had characterised it inappropriately. I regret that. It was not my intention. And I certainly didn't mean to associate the word 'terrorist' in any way with Senator Obama and his wife,"
Link to a Guardian article on the whole non-fratz (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/13/television.barackobama?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront)
I thought it was simply another case of cable news insulting its audience's intelligence, but my husband thought it was a bit more sinister -- that putting the words "terrorist" and "Obama" near each other, no matter how patently ridiculous the context, was a kind of crude subliminal messaging to associate the two, and that therefore the non-apology was not only a non-apology, but more of the same.
My immediate reaction was that this line of thinking was a bit paranoid, that most people are pay attention to context rather than specific wording, but then I was reading the following memo from the National Counterterrorism Center, excerpted in Harper's Magazine:
Avoid Negation, Such As "We are not at war with Islam": Sadly, studies show that people tend to forget the negative part of a statement, so that when you say, for instance, "I do not hate them," the words that get remembered are "hate" and "them."
Do you think people really have their opinions formed this way, by listening to less than half of a sentence and picking out words that fit their half-formed preconceptions?
And if they do, does that place a responsibility on news organizations to choose their words even more carefully, because even referencing someone else's terms reinforces them? Is any mention of propaganda potentially a continuation of the same propaganda?
It seems like some news organizations are already careful with the more obvious stuff, such as movement names -- the news will refer to "abortion-rights" and "anti-abortion" rather than the non-neutral terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life". Is that enough?
And yes, it should be obvious to all that I'm a horrible incurable blue-state liberal (who else reads Harper's?) I am hoping that this won't be a US election thread. I'm particularly interested to know if people have noticed other non-election-related examples of what I will call "unintentional psy-ops" or "unintentional propaganda" -- or, if you doubt there's anything unintentional about it, "indirect psy-ops" -- in your country's news media or elsewhere.
"I apologise because unfortunately, some thought I personally had characterised it inappropriately. I regret that. It was not my intention. And I certainly didn't mean to associate the word 'terrorist' in any way with Senator Obama and his wife,"
Link to a Guardian article on the whole non-fratz (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/13/television.barackobama?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront)
I thought it was simply another case of cable news insulting its audience's intelligence, but my husband thought it was a bit more sinister -- that putting the words "terrorist" and "Obama" near each other, no matter how patently ridiculous the context, was a kind of crude subliminal messaging to associate the two, and that therefore the non-apology was not only a non-apology, but more of the same.
My immediate reaction was that this line of thinking was a bit paranoid, that most people are pay attention to context rather than specific wording, but then I was reading the following memo from the National Counterterrorism Center, excerpted in Harper's Magazine:
Avoid Negation, Such As "We are not at war with Islam": Sadly, studies show that people tend to forget the negative part of a statement, so that when you say, for instance, "I do not hate them," the words that get remembered are "hate" and "them."
Do you think people really have their opinions formed this way, by listening to less than half of a sentence and picking out words that fit their half-formed preconceptions?
And if they do, does that place a responsibility on news organizations to choose their words even more carefully, because even referencing someone else's terms reinforces them? Is any mention of propaganda potentially a continuation of the same propaganda?
It seems like some news organizations are already careful with the more obvious stuff, such as movement names -- the news will refer to "abortion-rights" and "anti-abortion" rather than the non-neutral terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life". Is that enough?
And yes, it should be obvious to all that I'm a horrible incurable blue-state liberal (who else reads Harper's?) I am hoping that this won't be a US election thread. I'm particularly interested to know if people have noticed other non-election-related examples of what I will call "unintentional psy-ops" or "unintentional propaganda" -- or, if you doubt there's anything unintentional about it, "indirect psy-ops" -- in your country's news media or elsewhere.