“In this age of massive manipulation and disinformation, criticism is the only way we have of taking something seriously” (Scholes, 86).
         The news media is the single largest source of information in American’s lives today. The internet brings updated news 24 hours a day, and can be delivered right to your e-mail box. Television stations such as CNN (as well as CNN Headline News) and Fox News Network are among those that deliver news to your television set 24 hours a day, as well as having companion websites. In many homes, televisions are set to news programs during the pre-dinner hour (5 p.m. to 6 p.m.) and blare news constantly through 7 p.m. Then, at 10 p.m., they are again set to news programs. During prime time television shows, news anchors deliver enticing teasers, in hopes that you will watch their news program. In many homes, due to the arrival of 24 hour news channels such as those previously mentioned, the news is turned on as long as the television is. Is it healthy to watch so much news? How much information broadcast is actually misinformation?
         One thing to keep in mind is that news is a part of the television industry. Ratings are the all-important marker that determines how much the network can charge for advertising during a time slot. This breeds competition between the four major networks (that run news programs): NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox. These networks have access to most of the same information, although periodically one may have an exclusive, or first crack at a major story. With the same events to cover, the four networks must somehow try to capture your attention away from the others. This is where teasers, little bits of information virtually guaranteed to make you want to know the full story, come into play. Unless you have never watched television, you have certainly heard the teasers. A common teaser may sound like this: “Residents of Anytown have been afraid something like this would happen—and now it has. More at 11.” This leaves the viewer virtually screaming for more information. In a culture driven by ratings, that of television, the less information given during a teaser, the better.
          Another idea to keep in mind is that the word “news” is the plural form of the word “new.” Some people believe it is an acronym for North, East, West, South, and while that may be a newer, alternative, concept, consider this: the word “news” in French is les nouvelles, the plural form of nouvelle, or new. This is repeated in other European languages as well (nuevas in Spanish, for example); it is not merely an aberration. What this means is that something is news because it is new, uncommon, or recent. The SARS virus and Mad Cow Disease made headlines frequently because they were new, as did HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. Now you generally don’t hear about AIDS unless a new treatment is available or a famous person is diagnosed. News programs don’t comment on the many thousands of robberies and burglaries in New York City or Los Angeles; they occur frequently. They only become noteworthy if something unusual happens, such as a murder in connection with the crime. When something new or uncommon does occur, which is actually fairly common in itself, news reporters have a technique they love to use; one which is almost guaranteed to make viewers think in the direction the newscaster wants them to think: statistics. News programs rely on statistics to capture a viewer’s attention and/or frighten them.
          However, when you carefully examine the numbers involved, they are not all that frightening. In his book, Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things, Barry Glassner, a sociologist, discusses an incident from the early 1990s. The New York Times presented what their reporter called a “major new trend” developing nationally, elder dumping—the abandonment of elderly people in a public place, usually a hospital’s emergency room (47). It affected approximately 70,000 elderly US citizens—those aged 65 years or older. With an elder population of 33.2 million (in 1994), the estimated 70,000 affected only 0.21% of the population. That number is high due to the dubious methods used in obtaining the number (47). The reporter sent a survey to less than 200 emergency physicians nationally. Of those, less than half responded. The reporter then multiplied the average number of people the physicians reported as being “dumped” by the total number of physicians surveyed, including those that did not respond (47).
         For a more recent example of the abuse of statistics, let’s look at the SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) “epidemic”: as of 31 July 2003, 8098 people had been infected and 774 people had died worldwide (“Summary”). These figures translate to 9.6% of those infected died, but a mere 119 millionths of a percent (0.000119%) of the world’s population was affected, thus the panic inspired by the disease was highly disproportionate (“Summary”). Why was the panic so disproportionate? The media used scare tactics, such as pictures of little girls wearing face masks during ballet class, to make us believe that because of this relatively minor illness the end of the world was nigh.
     Why would the media want to scare us so badly? Are they sadists who enjoy tormenting the multitudes? No. The answer comes back to competition and ratings. There is a saying in the news industry, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Just as sex sells in the movie and music industry (as well as most others), murder and mayhem sell in the news. The famous line, “Stay tuned for more following the break,” is invariably preceded by some frightening, gruesome teaser, often ending with the phrase “You could be next” or “It could happen to you.” Those in the know are aware that those teasers will often keep you from turning to their competitors for information. They know this because they are aware of how communication affects viewers.
         In his book Fear Less, Gavin de Becker gives readers a rundown of what he titles “The Newsspeak of Fear” (159). This includes a list of often deliberately misleading words and phrases used frequently by newscasters. One phrase he identifies is “an alarming percentage” (164). There are many ways to look at percentages; we will examine two of them. One way, the most common, is accepting the number at face value, and not considering the other half of this equation--the number not provided. Most viewers will simply accept the percentage provided, and forget that, because a percent is a figure out of 100, there is another number involved. The number not given may be the more telling number. If we apply this to the percentages that I cited above, we arrive at the following: if 0.21% of elderly people are abandoned yearly, then 99.79% are not. In regards to SARS: if the mortality rate is 9.6%, then 90.4% actually survive the disease. Furthermore, 99.999881% of the world’s population was not even infected!
          In his essay What is a Word, Dan Shaw points out that if a word can have any meanings in addition to the intended meaning, someone will interpret it incorrectly (3). Newscasters deliberately use easily misinterpreted words precisely because they are easily misinterpreted. After September 11, 2001, newscasters frequently use the phrase “Our Nation’s,” as in a possible threat to our nation’s water supplies/roadways/airlines… (de Becker, 161). As Mr. de Becker points out, due to the sheer size of our nation, nothing can pose a threat to “all of any system in our society at the same time” (161). For example, look at the drinking water system in the U.S. Municipalities do not all share one common source for drinking water. Some rely on homeowner’s to maintain private wells, others share a large reservoir with neighboring communities, but there is a limit as to how many communities may share one reservoir, depending on the number of people using the resource. For another example, look at out roadways, and highway system. There are thousands of roadways, between county roads, state routes and highways, and freeways and interstates. No bomb yet developed could possibly destroy all roadways nationwide, or even in most states. But, in order to grab and maintain our attention, newscasters will use that phrase, even though the “national” threat may be as minor as someone’s car leaking gasoline into the local creek.
         In Of Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, Nietzsche states that “every concept originates through our equating what is unequal” (46). What this means is that the sign, or word in this case, can never actually be equal to the idea, or concept, it expresses. As an example, when a newscaster includes the words as many as in a story, many people assume that the number of those affected is at the high end of the scale used. If a reporter states “Experts warn that as many as 25,000 people may be affected…” the actual number affected is somewhere between zero and, in this case, 25,000 (164). The concept for as many as is frequently interpreted as a maximum, or a whole number, as opposed to a range of numbers starting at zero. Because of this, people frequently do arrive at the newscaster’s desired conclusion. What if, hoping to influence viewers or lend credibility to a story, the news reports inflated the number affected by one hundred, or even one hundred thousand? Is this what Nietzsche would call a lie? Due to the complexities of human nature, there is no simple answer. Humans may interpret information in a variety of ways, always believing the way they are interpreting something is correct. To a person who accepts the statistic in accordance with the news reporters’ desires, the statistic is the truth. To them, it is not an interpretation, as it would be for someone who interprets the statistic as a part of an equation, as in the examples given previously.
         What Robert Scholes is saying in On Reading a Video Text is that the media manipulates information to influence our thought process. They may also use disinformation—deliberately misleading information—to the same purpose. He states that criticism is “the only way we have of taking something seriously” (86). In order to be sure that we are getting true and correct information—in order to take it seriously—we need to critically examine the information presented, in part by using methods I have discussed, and only then can we determine its veracity.
          “The word is the ideological phenomenon par excellence” (Volosinov, 13). The word is what is used by almost everyone to communicate their various ideologies, especially the news media. One could argue, quite reasonably, that the news is an ideology. The American Heritage Dictionary lists one definition of ideology as “The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture” (“Ideology”). One could say, again quite reasonably, that this definition fits a lot of information that the news presents to us. Not so much the crimes (although it is possible here too), but the wars, politics, and other world affairs. For example, at the start of the second invasion of Iraq, you heard a lot about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; because that is the ideology the President was pushing. None of the 4 major networks questioned the integrity of the information being presented (or critically examining it), they simply presented it. To find critical examination of the information in question, one had to search the internet before landing on a website such as move-on.org or salon.com—or any other of hundreds, perhaps thousands of similar sites—which present an additional side to the stories covered by major media outlets or go to the Associated Press’s or Knight-Ridder’s websites, which provide a more balanced story than television news outlets.
         The news media uses communication to influence Americans. Disinformation, statistics, exaggerations, catch phrases such as as many as, and teasers like “Could you be the next victim of (insert a person/place/event here)….?” are used regularly to capture and hold your attention. Because of these methods, it could be said the news media abuses communication to influence Americans.