Next Yon Installment

Was reviewing the results of the Watcher's Council over at the Glittering Eye. In an earlier post about msm bias and hysteria, I concentrated on public issues the media was actively trying to influence.

The news talkers suffer from urgency inflation. They must show that the merely problematic is a disaster. Anything unexpected is a "setback." A setback, then, is a "problem." A problem, as stated, has become a disaster. For example, the storm named "Katrina" was a disaster. But, while the response to it was organizationally difficult, there was plenty of heroism to go around. The storm was the disaster, not the response! But a "problem" can draw a bigger audience than a "setback" can. A disaster draws more viewers to the advertising platform than a "problem" does.

The are other kinds of manipulation. One is the media trying to play down or ignore the plain truth, such as with heroism or success in the Iraq war. I was reminded of this in the most recent M. Yon report, Death or Glory Part II of IV: Into the Desert With the Queen’s Royal Lancers Armed with plenty of great pictures, his commentary is just great.

Despite the British press reports that make their own soldiers out to be cowering on bases in Basra, truck after truck of them here were in high spirits. News flash: Those reports are false. Derelict media coverage is another aspect of this war British and American soldiers share, and it rankles here in the southern part of Iraq as deeply as it does everywhere else. Practically no one writes about the Brits down here. Important pages in history remain unwritten, while policy decisions are based on the public perception that all is lost here. That this public perception is based on what I have called “The Green Gator Phenomenon” is an irony that is noted, but not appreciated.

He adds to the subject of bias by acknowledging psychological/emotional baggage, or "truths" we carry around with us. Things we "know" are true, but are not true in fact. His example is of a person, who standing right next to an alligator (all of which are black when wet and gray when dry,) will often say, even insist, that the gator is green, because that is the color popular culture assigns to the animal. Micheal Yon convincingly demonstrates the importance of the phenomenon in understanding the public perception of the Iraq conflict.
As far as "public perception" goes he's correct of course. But the gator did not convince "perception" - the media did.
Mr Yon's article is accompanied with plentiful pictures and deserves not only attention, but our gratitude.

espresso beans tothe glittering eye