Is It All Bad News, or Is All the News Just Bad?
A short drink from the online firehose of material masquerading as “news” indicates that we live in a bountiful golden era of false information, misleading half-truths, and fallacies of all sorts (fallacy: a mistaken belief based on unsound arguments and/or faulty information).
Perhaps it has ever been thus, but I remember the heady optimism of the early days of social media, when we were assured that this transformative new medium would democratize information sharing, allow the “truth” to escape the clutches of the corporate news combines, and generally make the world a better, more transparent, place. And how welcome this was given the consolidation of ownership, selective coverage, partisanship, and limited accountability of mainstream media operators.
And the rise of social media certainly has been transformational, swinging the pendulum from a limited number of closely controlled messages to a chaotic cacophony of voices. For, as it turns out, what social media truly excels at is promoting polarization by destroying the middle-ground, fueling paranoia, rewarding incendiary bad behavior, and dragging everyone down into the rabbit holes of their own obsessions. Talk about unintended consequences; the road to hell is truly paved with good intentions.
How does social media accomplish all this? Through the mysteries of the “algorithm,” of course, the shadowy set of behind-the-scenes search instructions and data profiles that feeds you more of what it thinks you want with an ever-narrowing and precise focus.
I am by no means a philosopher, but I do have a hazy recollection from schooling past that the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle identified three primary means of human persuasion:
Logos – Appealing to the audience’s sense of reason and logic
Ethos – Appealing to the audience’s sense of respect for the speaker’s position or character
Pathos – Appealing to the audience’s sense of emotion
What best feeds the beast today is not a balanced diet of thoughtful analysis and reasoned commentary but rather fodder that exploits one or more of the following popular fallacies:
Confirmation Bias: The fallacy of searching out and selecting evidence that confirms one’s own standpoint and beliefs. Social media algorithms that create a near-perfect echo chamber have greatly increased the prevalence of this delusionary bias. (Logos)
The Big Lie: The fallacy created by repeating as often as possible a bald-faced lie or deceptive half-truth in as many different forums and in as many different ways as possible until it “moves the needle” to become part of the daily discourse, where even skeptics acknowledge it, while others give it credence. Brought to a sharp point in George Orwell’s Animal Farm and copied by many other lesser lights. (Ethos/Logos)
Scapegoating: The fallacy that whenever something goes wrong – irrespective of whether it occurred by chance, self-infliction, or through the malfeasance of others – there is always someone else to blame (an “other”), displaying an alarming absence of self-awareness. (Pathos)
Availability Bias: The fallacy of giving undue weight of importance to immediately available information and minimizing the value of more difficult to access data. Particularly effective in a world spoon fed by self-reinforcing news feeds where “Do your own research!” really means descending into a downward spiral of your own obsessions. (Logos)
Ad Hominem Argument: The fallacy of trying to refute or disprove an argument simply by attacking the intelligence, morals, education, qualifications, intentions, reputation, or personal character of the person promoting the argument, ignoring entirely its actual content. A timeless classic. (Ethos)
False Equivalency: The fallacy of “teaching the controversy” by presenting an issue in a way that makes it seems like both sides carry equal weight or significance when in fact a consensus or much stronger argument supports just one side. A favorite tactic of media that finds value in ratcheting up the tension. (Logos)
Reductionism: The fallacy of deceiving an audience by giving overly simplified and superficial answers to complex questions, especially appealing to those feeling overwhelmed by the complexities of modern life and searching for basic truths. (Logos)
Affective Fallacy: The fallacy of reinforcing the notion that one’s feelings and emotions are innate and self-validating, thus immune to external challenge or criticism "I feel it, thus it must be true.” It confuses respectful and reasoned refutation with disrespectful and hostile attack. A “snowflake” trigger mechanism. (Pathos)
Fundamental Attribution Error: The fallacy of overemphasizing personal characteristics and ignoring situational factors while judging the behavior of others, generally accompanied with not holding oneself to the same standard; others do bad things because they are bad people, while we do similar things due only to situational factors. (Ethos)
I am not saying that everything related to news and current affairs suffers from one of the above fallacies, after all there are so many other factors hard at work: Alternative Facts, Default Bias, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, etc.
Even without the specter of Generative AI reaching its full potential and automating the entire sorry process, a disturbing amount of what we read today consciously pushes “narratives” rooted in one or more of the above fallacies, so that even when it is not all bad news from an events perspective, so much news is just plain bad from a clarity, balance, and informational perspective. Except for this article of course, which is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me, Aristotle ;)