Why are so many bad things happening around the world? When we look out and see all the violence and conflict and protesting and hatred, it seems like civilization itself is teetering on the edge of destruction.
But I say, this view of the world is contrived. It’s a structural distortion of reality.
The more we buy into this structural distortion, the more we buy into a lie that undermines our outlook on life and our sense of well-being. So if we’re to live happy and healthy lives, we need to shed light on this lie as soon as possible.
This lie comes from media bias.
Ahh, yes, of course, we think, political and ideological bias like this stuff:
- “Newsrooms are filled with liberal bias, because 93% of reporters vote Democrat,” writes UCLA political science professor Tim Groseclose.
- “Fox News is Faux News,” say liberals who like to describe conservative media as deeply biased and prone to exaggerating the truth.
- Conservatives fight back and bash CNN as a “Fake News” channel.
These political bias issues are interesting, but they aren’t my focus here. There’s another sort of bias that isn’t political at all, but rather, psychological. It’s much more subtle than political bias, and I believe it’s much more powerful because it lives unchecked.
This hidden bias is about how bad the world seems to those who watch the news.
Last night a friend of mine and I got to talking about Egypt. “I went there a couple years ago and was pleasantly surprised,” she said. “It’s a much more peaceful place than the media make it out to be. People are really friendly, and the streets aren’t filled with crime and chaos like the news media portrays it.”
“I’ve heard others say that about other places too,” I replied, “and my experience has been the same. Take Mexico for example. I’ve done business down there for years now, and it is much safer than most Americans believe. I speak with people who won’t travel to Mexico because they imagine it brimming with Cartel violence. It’s not that at all. It’s a peaceful place. I’ve been going there for years and never see the things they report in the news.”
Why does this happen? Why are people pleasantly surprised when they go to places that seem so bad in the media? I don’t believe its a media conspiracy. I believe reporters are mostly honest citizens who call it the way they see it. Many of them are crusaders for justice, trying to make the world a better place, and they’re just reporting what they see.
My problem isn’t with the reporters, or the news they report, as much as with the nature of mass media itself, and how it’s very essence and structure creates a systematic distortion of reality for everyone who watches it.
What’s that distortion? I’ll explain it in the next post.