Defense Paper
Content
Miller 1
David Miller
Professor Elizabeth Caruso
UWRT 1103
7 November 2015
Article Defense
Lying is as old as language itself. An overused quote, yes, but one that could not be more true.
The simple fact of the matter is that lies and, in a larger capacity, half-lies are littered throughout
everyone's lies, from the workplace to the home environment. One area that is often perceived to
contain falsities is the media, particularly large media outlets such as a newspaper company. This is
why I decided that I would write a satirical news article for my genretized product.
Before any decision could be made on which genre I would convey my message through, more
information on the subject had to be gathered. One particular source was very helpful in determining
my choice: “Methods of Media Manipulation” by Michael Parenti in the Humanist. This particular
article details several different methods that news outlets use to “help” the public see the “correct” side
of a story. This article, along with information I had obtained during earlier research, helped paint the
picture of media companies that do not “lie” but rather use a variety of methods and techniques that
seem minuscule but help sway public opinion in their favor; such methods as omission of details and
labeling. However, that only dealt with the producers of different media mediums, not the consumers.
Viewers, readers and listeners to different forms of media that utilize some of the techniques
above actually contribute to the spread of misinformation. This was evident from earlier research as
well as an editorial written by Brian Southwell and Emily Thorson entitled “The Prevalence,
Consequence, and Remedy of Misinformation in Mass Media Systems" which was printed in the
Journal of Communication. What I learned from both is that the majority of people are more willing to
accept information which confirms their beliefs or values than that which is skeptical toward them.
Miller 2
Basically, people are more likely to believe a favorable lie than a harmful truth. An earlier source
coined the appropriate phrase “selective exposure” (Mooney) to describe this effect.
I knew that I would need to bring awareness to both the techniques that slip under the radar of
most people as well as “selective exposure.” However, any attempt to bring awareness to a flaw in the
reader or listener would certainly be very counterproductive due to “selective exposure”: people would
not like being criticized for potentially accepting questionable information because it reflects poorly on
themselves. Based on “selective exposure”, they would reject, or at least be very hostile toward, any
source that criticized them and awareness would not be raised. Therefore I needed to find a platform
that would allow me to bring up both of my intended topics without people viewing it as criticism. This
led me to think of one medium that many people purposefully degrade themselves in: comedy.
Comedy can be a very successful platform for providing insights and opinions on certain issues,
especially controversial ones. As long as people believe a statement is part of the act, they will not
question or reject it. Rather they will openly hear it so that they can understand the joke or punch line
that is likely to follow. Comedy has often been used to raise, or lower, depending on the issue,
awareness of certain issues without offending the public as much as an informed news article might.
Popular, and very successful, examples of entities that employ this strategy include The Onion and
Comedy Central. I drew a lot of inspiration from The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart because they often criticized television networks, namely Fox News, through the same medium
(they were both presented as news programs and my product would be mainly directed at printed
material). A satirical article about “selective exposure” and the methods commonly used to bend the
truth that also incorporates some of those same techniques itself could be very informative while also
not being a turn off to readers for being critical.
I tried to use different common media tactics used to bend the truth. The first instance of one of
these methods is in the title. A common trick used by newspapers and other printed articles is to have a
Miller 3
misleading title. Journalists will write headlines or titles that they can truthfully say are fact but suggest
something very different either due to a popular belief or public perception of situation. Misleading
headlines have been shown to affect memory as well as “reasoning and behavioral intentions” (Ecker).
In my news article, I use the title “Public has misplaced belief that media lies all the time.” This
statement in and of itself is one hundred percent true: the media does not lie every single time.
However, because the public's common sense tells them that the media cannot possible be distorting the
facts in every single story, they assume that the author of the headline is aware of that and therefore
there is some other meaning to this headline. As demonstrated, this can be a very effective technique. I
also chose to include in parentheses that “we don't lie all the time” to help set the tone as a satirical
piece and bring awareness to the misguided headline.
In the body of the article, I applied some more misleading tactics, including labeling and
framing. Labeling is when journalists and reporters “seek to predetermine our perception of a subject
with a positive or negative label” (Parenti). For example, in my article I compare the producers of a
documentary, Outfoxed, which is very critical of Fox News, to terrorists. This immediately will jump
out at people because terrorist is a “buzz” word, so to speak. It carries all kinds of negative feelings and
connotations. By comparing the producers to one, I seek to discredit their work and try to persuade
people to be skeptical of their ideas (given the satirical tone of the article, I actually intended to
commend their work through sarcasm). The other technique, framing, deals more with how a story is
delivered than its content, such as position on the front page, length of a television segment, tone, types
of photographs and almost every other aspect involved in the story's format (Parenti). Another possible
way to incorporate framing, and the method that I used, is to make statements that seem credible but
when further examined are far from it. I use framing by stating in my opening paragraph that some
anonymous sources have said that the media has never and will never lie to the public. Because I
maintain their anonymity and do not go into detail about why they might be right or wrong, they
Miller 4
probably should not be considered reliable sources. However, sources seems to be another “buzz” word
for the public and one that may sway many to simply accept my statement as fact. Besides these two, I
also introduce, without using, some other common tactics to misinform the public like false balancing,
which is not digging into both sides of a story equally, and attack and destroy, where the media
attempts to completely discredit a source or individual who is hurting their agenda as shown by the
Mercury News example.. The example I give for false balancing is the Fox News program Crossfire: in
this so-called news debate show, the producers have chosen a younger, better-looking man to support
the Republicans and an older, less dominant personality to represent the Democrats.
These “tactics” are very important to bring awareness to, but the satirical side of the piece is
very important at conveying a message as well. As stated earlier, the satire was mainly included to help
me bring awareness to the public's flaw: “selective exposure” (Mooney). Before I divulged on the topic
in the piece, I wanted to build up the satire so there would be no doubting the sarcastic nature of the
article. Some ways I tried to attain this end were including an error about “feeding” the public news
instead of “giving” it to them, a mistake that in any normal newspaper would be fixed on the computer.
I also included fake sections of my newspaper that included a parenthetical alternative to the category's
name that highlighted the lack of seriousness. For instance, I wrote politics and then included in
parentheses the word “lies”. Using these devices as well as several other obvious ones, I made sure no
one could mistake my article for being serious. After achieving that goal, my angle of attack was to
jokingly poke at fun at the fact that Americans are allowed to believe whatever they want and hopefully
the sarcastic tone would reflect that the audience should be very careful to not conform to this idea. I
also included two examples of controversial decisions, one each made by the Republicans and
Democrats, to hopefully eliminate any perception that my article was inherently liberal or conservative
and at least remove selective exposure based on political beliefs from any readers of my piece.
The final genretized product, a satirical news article that aimed to shine light on the methods
Miller 5
used to bend the truth without the public knowing, as well as bringing awareness to everybody's
subconscious desire to accepting information that affirms their beliefs, was created successfully. While
there are not many flashy statistics or interesting stories, the ordering, structure and tone of the piece
helps bring awareness to a variety of different issues that contribute to misinformation in the
mainstream media. There is no guarantee that this article would persuade anybody to look at
themselves or different news stories differently, however, I feel that the successful implementation of
the different layers of the article will optimize the chances of bringing awareness to such an overlooked
topic.
Miller 6
Works Cited (New)
Ecker, Ullrich K. H, Stephan Lewandowsky, Ee P. Chang, and Rekha Pillai. "The Effects of Subtle
Misinformation in News Headlines." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. 20.4
(2014): 323-335. Print.
Greenwald, Robert, Douglas Cheek, Walter Cronkite, Jeff Cohen, Robert W. McChesney, Chellie
Pingree, Jane Abramowitz, and Chris Gordon. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.
New York: Carolina Productions [for] Disinformation Co, 2004.
Parenti, Michael. "Methods of Media Manipulation."Humanist July 1997: 5+. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.
Southwell, Brian G., and Emily A. Thorson. "The Prevalence, Consequence, and Remedy of
Misinformation in Mass Media Systems."Journal of Communication (2015): 589-95. Print.
Miller 7
Works Cited (Original)
“Accuracy in the Media: Misinformation, Mistakes, and Misleading in American and Other Media.”
Air University. Air University, 6 April 2005. Web. 20 Sept. 2015.
<http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/state/media_accuracy.htm>.
Charles. “Why does mainstream media lie?” Yahoo Answers. Yahoo, 23 Feb. 2013. Web. 22 Sept.
2015. <https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130223125647AA3ogu4>.
Feldman, Josh. “Brian Williams in 2007: ‘I Looked Down the Tube’ of RPG in Iraq.” MediaIte. 7 Feb.
2015. Web. 25 Sept. 2015. <http://www.mediaite.com/online/brian-williams-in-2007-i-lookeddown-the-tube-of-rpg-in-iraq/>.
Mooney, Chris. “The Science of Fox News: Why Its Viewers are the Most Misinformed.” Alternet.org.
Alternet, 8 April 2012. Web. 21 Sept. 2015. <https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?
qid=20130223125647AA3ogu4>.
Phillips, Brad. “A Brief and Incomplete History of Media Mistakes.” Mrmediatraining.com. Mr. Media
Training, 17 April 2013. Web. 22 Sept. 2015.
“Remember This!” Brain Games. National Geographic, 2011. Netflix.
Shah, Anup. “Media and Advertising.” Global Issues. Global Issues, 4 March 2012. Web. 18 Sept.
2015. <http://www.globalissues.org/article/160/media-and-advertising#Politicalinfluence>.
Silverman, Craig. “The best (and worst) media errors and corrections of 2012.” Poynter. Poynter, 12
Dec. 2012. Web. 17 Sept. 2015. <http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/197279/the-best-andworst-media-errors-and-corrections-of-2012/>.
Smith, Jeffrey. “Monsanto Forced Fox TV to Censor Coverage of Dangerous Milk Drug.” Huffington
Post. Huffington Post, 19 Jan. 2011. Web. 19 Sept. 2015.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/monsanto-forced-fox-tv-to_b_186428.html>.
David Miller
Professor Elizabeth Caruso
UWRT 1103
7 November 2015
Article Defense
Lying is as old as language itself. An overused quote, yes, but one that could not be more true.
The simple fact of the matter is that lies and, in a larger capacity, half-lies are littered throughout
everyone's lies, from the workplace to the home environment. One area that is often perceived to
contain falsities is the media, particularly large media outlets such as a newspaper company. This is
why I decided that I would write a satirical news article for my genretized product.
Before any decision could be made on which genre I would convey my message through, more
information on the subject had to be gathered. One particular source was very helpful in determining
my choice: “Methods of Media Manipulation” by Michael Parenti in the Humanist. This particular
article details several different methods that news outlets use to “help” the public see the “correct” side
of a story. This article, along with information I had obtained during earlier research, helped paint the
picture of media companies that do not “lie” but rather use a variety of methods and techniques that
seem minuscule but help sway public opinion in their favor; such methods as omission of details and
labeling. However, that only dealt with the producers of different media mediums, not the consumers.
Viewers, readers and listeners to different forms of media that utilize some of the techniques
above actually contribute to the spread of misinformation. This was evident from earlier research as
well as an editorial written by Brian Southwell and Emily Thorson entitled “The Prevalence,
Consequence, and Remedy of Misinformation in Mass Media Systems" which was printed in the
Journal of Communication. What I learned from both is that the majority of people are more willing to
accept information which confirms their beliefs or values than that which is skeptical toward them.
Miller 2
Basically, people are more likely to believe a favorable lie than a harmful truth. An earlier source
coined the appropriate phrase “selective exposure” (Mooney) to describe this effect.
I knew that I would need to bring awareness to both the techniques that slip under the radar of
most people as well as “selective exposure.” However, any attempt to bring awareness to a flaw in the
reader or listener would certainly be very counterproductive due to “selective exposure”: people would
not like being criticized for potentially accepting questionable information because it reflects poorly on
themselves. Based on “selective exposure”, they would reject, or at least be very hostile toward, any
source that criticized them and awareness would not be raised. Therefore I needed to find a platform
that would allow me to bring up both of my intended topics without people viewing it as criticism. This
led me to think of one medium that many people purposefully degrade themselves in: comedy.
Comedy can be a very successful platform for providing insights and opinions on certain issues,
especially controversial ones. As long as people believe a statement is part of the act, they will not
question or reject it. Rather they will openly hear it so that they can understand the joke or punch line
that is likely to follow. Comedy has often been used to raise, or lower, depending on the issue,
awareness of certain issues without offending the public as much as an informed news article might.
Popular, and very successful, examples of entities that employ this strategy include The Onion and
Comedy Central. I drew a lot of inspiration from The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart because they often criticized television networks, namely Fox News, through the same medium
(they were both presented as news programs and my product would be mainly directed at printed
material). A satirical article about “selective exposure” and the methods commonly used to bend the
truth that also incorporates some of those same techniques itself could be very informative while also
not being a turn off to readers for being critical.
I tried to use different common media tactics used to bend the truth. The first instance of one of
these methods is in the title. A common trick used by newspapers and other printed articles is to have a
Miller 3
misleading title. Journalists will write headlines or titles that they can truthfully say are fact but suggest
something very different either due to a popular belief or public perception of situation. Misleading
headlines have been shown to affect memory as well as “reasoning and behavioral intentions” (Ecker).
In my news article, I use the title “Public has misplaced belief that media lies all the time.” This
statement in and of itself is one hundred percent true: the media does not lie every single time.
However, because the public's common sense tells them that the media cannot possible be distorting the
facts in every single story, they assume that the author of the headline is aware of that and therefore
there is some other meaning to this headline. As demonstrated, this can be a very effective technique. I
also chose to include in parentheses that “we don't lie all the time” to help set the tone as a satirical
piece and bring awareness to the misguided headline.
In the body of the article, I applied some more misleading tactics, including labeling and
framing. Labeling is when journalists and reporters “seek to predetermine our perception of a subject
with a positive or negative label” (Parenti). For example, in my article I compare the producers of a
documentary, Outfoxed, which is very critical of Fox News, to terrorists. This immediately will jump
out at people because terrorist is a “buzz” word, so to speak. It carries all kinds of negative feelings and
connotations. By comparing the producers to one, I seek to discredit their work and try to persuade
people to be skeptical of their ideas (given the satirical tone of the article, I actually intended to
commend their work through sarcasm). The other technique, framing, deals more with how a story is
delivered than its content, such as position on the front page, length of a television segment, tone, types
of photographs and almost every other aspect involved in the story's format (Parenti). Another possible
way to incorporate framing, and the method that I used, is to make statements that seem credible but
when further examined are far from it. I use framing by stating in my opening paragraph that some
anonymous sources have said that the media has never and will never lie to the public. Because I
maintain their anonymity and do not go into detail about why they might be right or wrong, they
Miller 4
probably should not be considered reliable sources. However, sources seems to be another “buzz” word
for the public and one that may sway many to simply accept my statement as fact. Besides these two, I
also introduce, without using, some other common tactics to misinform the public like false balancing,
which is not digging into both sides of a story equally, and attack and destroy, where the media
attempts to completely discredit a source or individual who is hurting their agenda as shown by the
Mercury News example.. The example I give for false balancing is the Fox News program Crossfire: in
this so-called news debate show, the producers have chosen a younger, better-looking man to support
the Republicans and an older, less dominant personality to represent the Democrats.
These “tactics” are very important to bring awareness to, but the satirical side of the piece is
very important at conveying a message as well. As stated earlier, the satire was mainly included to help
me bring awareness to the public's flaw: “selective exposure” (Mooney). Before I divulged on the topic
in the piece, I wanted to build up the satire so there would be no doubting the sarcastic nature of the
article. Some ways I tried to attain this end were including an error about “feeding” the public news
instead of “giving” it to them, a mistake that in any normal newspaper would be fixed on the computer.
I also included fake sections of my newspaper that included a parenthetical alternative to the category's
name that highlighted the lack of seriousness. For instance, I wrote politics and then included in
parentheses the word “lies”. Using these devices as well as several other obvious ones, I made sure no
one could mistake my article for being serious. After achieving that goal, my angle of attack was to
jokingly poke at fun at the fact that Americans are allowed to believe whatever they want and hopefully
the sarcastic tone would reflect that the audience should be very careful to not conform to this idea. I
also included two examples of controversial decisions, one each made by the Republicans and
Democrats, to hopefully eliminate any perception that my article was inherently liberal or conservative
and at least remove selective exposure based on political beliefs from any readers of my piece.
The final genretized product, a satirical news article that aimed to shine light on the methods
Miller 5
used to bend the truth without the public knowing, as well as bringing awareness to everybody's
subconscious desire to accepting information that affirms their beliefs, was created successfully. While
there are not many flashy statistics or interesting stories, the ordering, structure and tone of the piece
helps bring awareness to a variety of different issues that contribute to misinformation in the
mainstream media. There is no guarantee that this article would persuade anybody to look at
themselves or different news stories differently, however, I feel that the successful implementation of
the different layers of the article will optimize the chances of bringing awareness to such an overlooked
topic.
Miller 6
Works Cited (New)
Ecker, Ullrich K. H, Stephan Lewandowsky, Ee P. Chang, and Rekha Pillai. "The Effects of Subtle
Misinformation in News Headlines." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. 20.4
(2014): 323-335. Print.
Greenwald, Robert, Douglas Cheek, Walter Cronkite, Jeff Cohen, Robert W. McChesney, Chellie
Pingree, Jane Abramowitz, and Chris Gordon. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.
New York: Carolina Productions [for] Disinformation Co, 2004.
Parenti, Michael. "Methods of Media Manipulation."Humanist July 1997: 5+. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.
Southwell, Brian G., and Emily A. Thorson. "The Prevalence, Consequence, and Remedy of
Misinformation in Mass Media Systems."Journal of Communication (2015): 589-95. Print.
Miller 7
Works Cited (Original)
“Accuracy in the Media: Misinformation, Mistakes, and Misleading in American and Other Media.”
Air University. Air University, 6 April 2005. Web. 20 Sept. 2015.
<http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/state/media_accuracy.htm>.
Charles. “Why does mainstream media lie?” Yahoo Answers. Yahoo, 23 Feb. 2013. Web. 22 Sept.
2015. <https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130223125647AA3ogu4>.
Feldman, Josh. “Brian Williams in 2007: ‘I Looked Down the Tube’ of RPG in Iraq.” MediaIte. 7 Feb.
2015. Web. 25 Sept. 2015. <http://www.mediaite.com/online/brian-williams-in-2007-i-lookeddown-the-tube-of-rpg-in-iraq/>.
Mooney, Chris. “The Science of Fox News: Why Its Viewers are the Most Misinformed.” Alternet.org.
Alternet, 8 April 2012. Web. 21 Sept. 2015. <https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?
qid=20130223125647AA3ogu4>.
Phillips, Brad. “A Brief and Incomplete History of Media Mistakes.” Mrmediatraining.com. Mr. Media
Training, 17 April 2013. Web. 22 Sept. 2015.
“Remember This!” Brain Games. National Geographic, 2011. Netflix.
Shah, Anup. “Media and Advertising.” Global Issues. Global Issues, 4 March 2012. Web. 18 Sept.
2015. <http://www.globalissues.org/article/160/media-and-advertising#Politicalinfluence>.
Silverman, Craig. “The best (and worst) media errors and corrections of 2012.” Poynter. Poynter, 12
Dec. 2012. Web. 17 Sept. 2015. <http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/197279/the-best-andworst-media-errors-and-corrections-of-2012/>.
Smith, Jeffrey. “Monsanto Forced Fox TV to Censor Coverage of Dangerous Milk Drug.” Huffington
Post. Huffington Post, 19 Jan. 2011. Web. 19 Sept. 2015.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/monsanto-forced-fox-tv-to_b_186428.html>.
