True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society

[progressoid]

Psychologists have long known that humans have a remarkable ability to tune out facts that don't jibe with pre-existing beliefs. Farhad Manjoo, author of True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, says the natural draw toward "truthiness" has run amok in the modern media age.

The Convenient Untruths
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BROOKE GLADSTONE: And you give a couple of great examples of how this plays out in the modern media world – the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which worked very hard to change the nation's understanding of John Kerry's war record.

FARHAD MANJOO: Right. They went through this very circuitous path. They held a press conference. Big newspapers and big network news outlets came. And everyone ignored what they had to say because it was apparent to these journalists that the evidence that this group had didn't really stand up.

So they went to basically every talk radio outlet in the country and they popularized their message on the Web. And they started to attract donors, which was pivotal for them because then they could run TV ads and those TV ads then sort of got amplified through the cable news and then eventually made it to, you know, network news.

And lots of newspapers and legitimate journalistic outfits ran dozens of pieces basically debunking the Swift Boat Veterans, but the people on the right, and, to some extent, people in the center who listen to people on the right, didn't have much exposure to those facts.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, you show how false facts on both the right and the left make their way through partisan echo chambers, but you do suggest that conservatives have a different relationship with their media.

FARHAD MANJOO: Right. People have studied how conservative blogs, for instance, link to each other and how liberal blogs link to each other, and they found that the people on the right generally have a tighter network and are more likely to indulge in only those sources.

And this has been a longstanding pattern where psychologists have noticed that people on the right are more efficient at filtering out things that kind of don't really support their views.
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Read or listen to the interview here: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/04/04/04

[progressoid]

1. .

Good Morning :kick:

[trotsky]

2. It's all about what people WANT to be true.

Happens in politics, happens in science, happens in everything. Interesting link!