In a coincidence about a half hour ago-- I was reading info from a thoughtful writer concerning Arsenal FC (my fave soccer) club. There have been years of bickering between two sides of fans split over decisions of the team to spend/not spend more freely on talent for many years now. (AFC is a good-to-very good team, whose manager has been in place for 20yrs-- which will likely never occur again in any pro sport. So there are entrenched differences among its’ fans.)
An excerpt on the thought processes of (UK soccer) readers-- and why (US) MSM delivers the product they do:
Then we had the excellent analysis by Dr Drew Gray, head of history at the University of Northampton, which showed how newspapers have developed into products that have moved further and further into the propagation of myths in the desperate search for readership, and how this has continued into radio, TV, and of course the internet.
In short, making up stories that give instant answers and which instantly appeal to readers is cheaper than researching the truth, and gets more readership than the truth, because we all appear to have a desire for the sensational, the easy to understand, and stuff that knocks the powerful.
Put those first two points together, and the last thing the media is going to do is say, “actually this is rather complex”. Try that as a commentator, and you don’t get interviewed. Say, “Arsenal get the most injuries and it is all Wenger’s fault” and you’ll get coverage in the paper every time, and the myths will be continued.
Thus the media build on what seems to be natural inclinations inside most of us to look for simplistic explanations and simplistic solutions, and we have an ability to believe in them even when they are wrong, and repeatedly shown to be wrong.
But this situation has become more and more exacerbated by Twitter which builds specifically on these false desires within all of us: the desire to have simple answers which can be expressed very quickly.
Stefan Stieglitz, professor of professional communication in electronic media at the University of Duisburg-Essen hit on the point when he was quoted in the Guardian saying, “If people get new information that is in contrast to what they believe then they tend to neglect this new information for as long as possible.”
The media laps it up – it is cheap and a way to survive, and telling people that, “it’s much more complex than that,” is rarely a way to win friends. But there is something worse than that going on.
For what struck me as I started to write this series of articles, I found that many readers genuinely didn’t understand what I meant by things like “research”, “evidence” and “logical deduction” and I was taken aback by this.
If so inclined to read the article for context:
http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/55087?
It’s a simple equation that suffices for the masses-- but seems to really piss-off those of us who regard researching technicalities as a basis for believing what we’re told by media.
jw1