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I’m gonna explain best way possible, and for what I’ve studied at college, how media manipulates EVERYTHING and how you can find reliable information.
I’m gonna explain best way possible, and for what I’ve studied at college, how media manipulates EVERYTHING and how you can find reliable information.
Before I start, I wanna let clear this isn’t a perfect science. I’ll try to give you some tips and perspective but it’s not perfect.
Let’s begin saying the media (newspapers, magazines...every platform that lives from sharing information) need customers, readers, a target/public.
This public needs to be attracted to the content, so, let me ask you a simple first question: you think people will be attracted to read an article about something that seems boring or normal?
Or they will rather read something that seems juicy, with drama? Of course we’ll all read something that seems rare, drama and morbidity will always have an appeal.
That said, here’s where the media has to manipulate information.
Clarification: this doesn’t mean they lie, that’s illegal and they could be sued (it happened). But you can tell the same tale from different perspectives and different ways.
Clarification: this doesn’t mean they lie, that’s illegal and they could be sued (it happened). But you can tell the same tale from different perspectives and different ways.
The problem comes when everyone can write an article in some blog or local magazine. How do we know the information is reliable? Cause you read it in a magazine?
The easiest way to verify media manipulates everything is to see the same event/new in 2 different platforms. You’ll see it seems they’re saying 2 complete different things.
If it’s just an event, why there’s such difference? There’s where media manipulation comes in: every magazine and every media has a different target, and a different way to approach to them.
A newspaper can be more targeted to old people with certain political ideas and another newspaper could be targeted to young people who have different values. They don’t use the same way to communicate.
We know, more or less, how media manipulates everything. Now, how do we double check it? How do we know what information I can trust?
We should start asking what’s the source. It’s not the same to have an statement from the victim of an abuse than from a friend of hers, for example. We gotta approach as much as possible to the direct source.
If we can’t contact the proper source of the event, we gotta check who shared the information. A friend? The cousin of a friend of the source?
Then you gotta dig deeper, try to find information about that same thing from different places or sources (it’s basically what a judge does, think about it).
Once you have all the information as possible, don’t jump to conclusions. There’s no such thing as “the truth”, there’s only different realities.
Check all the information you got and try to be objective, check every possible option about the scenario you’re being told to check the accuracy of that reality.
*Note: the fact “you saw it in an article” doesn’t make it reliable information. As I said, anyone can write an article. You gotta check who wrote it. Is it a person with a formal education about it? What are his/her basis?
Check if that person actually works in a professional communication brand or is just a hobby, there’s a HUGE difference. Someone who works, for example, in BBC, will have better grounds talking about something.
This leads me to the famous gossip magazines. As I said, they can’t lie cause that’s illegal. Yet that doesn’t mean they can exaggerate or give “their theories” about something (like a couple who’s about to break up cause they saw x thing in the streets and thought it).
Basically it’s almost impossible to know 100% what’s happening in someone’s life, you only see what they saw; so these gossip magazines work is already conditioned.
A paparazzi needs gossip to live. If they don’t have a gossip, they create it. It’s easy to give different meanings and speculate about the slightest thing, that’s what they do. Please, be careful.
My main point is: there’s no perfect and 100% accurate information in the media. Unless you get it straight from the main source of the event, it will be always twisted somehow.
I don’t wanna extend myself too long, I think I made my point clear. Now I’ll let you some theories that reinforce and help to explain what I told you.
If you have any doubt, dm me. It’s a very complicated topic to explain and I summarized as much as possible.
Spiral of Silence:
Black Sheep Effect:
And to finish this thread: ALWAYS ask yourself why you’ve seen X article or post about something at that time? Who’s sending that message and what could be the goal of it? Think about it.
Thanks for arriving here (if you did). Dm me if you have any doubt.
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