Category: Social Issues

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Identifying Media Manipulation in the Political Arena

By Hannah Pennell

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

“The press is protected [by the First Amendment] not for its own sake but to enable a free political system to operate. In the end, the concern is not for the reporter or the editor but for the citizen critics of the government.” -Anthony Lewis, New York Times

Given the current political unrest of our country, many Americans have finally found it necessary to engage the political machinations of the American system. One of the main tools that enables us to do this is mass media. We have seen the media continue to fail in its job of enabling “the public to assert meaningful control over the political process by providing them with information needed for the intelligent discharge of political responsibilities.” Instead we have seen our media “inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and state.” It is for these exact reasons that I began to realize my own need for a framework to siphon media messages I receive. I needed a framework to identify lies, assist me in researching answers and enable me to craft ethical responses. These guidelines will help you hold the media to a higher ethical standard.

Sweeping Claims and Generalizations vs. Specific Facts and Incidents

In a click driven world, the media is constantly pushed to out sensationalize their previous work. This is why it is not an uncommon practice for the most extreme headline to be chosen to drive engagement. I find it important to not just look at the headline, but to examine the underlying story from all angles.

Headlines are often crafted with bias, keep this in mind when you read the article. Take note of sweeping claims and generalizations that allow the reader to do the least amount of mental processing and file characters within the story into “us” and “them” categories. 

Check the sources. Are there sources? Note their credibility in other contexts.

Offering some, but not ALL of the information

For any topic of news, I make sure to check news outlets that are right, left and moderate. I am then able to weigh out what common facts were listed and from those facts I am then able to form opinions more of my own making. Oftentimes news articles will leave out facts that are not supportive of their biased claims.

As Karl Popper noted, “ Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem it was intended to solve.”

Benefit of the Doubt – Innocent Until Proven Guilty

In a country whose judicial system is supposed to be founded on the idea of “innocent until proven guilty” the media does a great job of throwing the first stone. A clue I often use to tell me how ethical and unbiased a piece will be is their framing of guilt versus innocence. How quickly do they cast the victim and villain roles? The media should present evidence but make no assumptions of guilt, nor cast the villain. An ethical society should be able to draw these conclusions for themselves with regard to personal failings and criminal guilt will be determined by trial in a court of law.

Advocating Only for the Powerful

Articles can often seem to have a bend in favor of a particular person or party. If the goal of the media is to allow society “meaningful control over the political process” it should be using its voice to challenge power and highlight marginalized groups. Power is often central to political stories. When reading, I ask myself the question, “Who is seeking power here?” Asking this will allow you to see more clearly who, among the players, the media is trying to win power for.

Ad Hominem Attacks

“An ad hominem (Latin for ‘to the man’ or ‘to the person’), short for argumentum ad hominem, means responding to arguments by attacking a person’s character, rather than to the content of their arguments. When used inappropriately, it is a fallacy in which a claim or argument is dismissed on the basis of some irrelevant fact of supposition about the author or the person being criticized.”

Whenever you read pieces that attack a player out of context and do not seek to first address the ideas in question, it should cause you to pause. Often times personal attacks, name calling or labeling are lazy arguments and a way for the news media outlet to get out of presenting the associated ideas. This robs the public of yet another chance to form their opinions on fact and can often manipulate the public into believing a false narrative.

Confusion, Emotions, and the Importance of Taking Your Time

“The public is exposed to powerful persuasive messages from above and is unable to communicate meaningfully through the media in response to those messages….Leaders have usurped enormous amounts of political power and reduced popular control over the political system by using the media to generate support, compliance, and just plain confusion among the public.”

You are allowed to be wrong. You are allowed to seek truth. If you need to form an opinion on something, take your time and research. News can often have a heavy emotional push that drives hasty action. Take time to form your thoughts, direct your course and always be ready to readjust. I see this as an ethical duty. We are in many ways responsible for the influence we have on others and their opinions. If we seek to form a society that enables all humans to flourish, we should be trying our hardest to seek truth and to guide others toward it as well. Your words and what you do with the words of the media matter. Every time we enter into discourse we are shaping each other and society, for better or worse.

Resources:

W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion, 2d ed. (New York: Longman, 1988), pp.178-79

E.S. Herman, N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), pp. 298

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Beauty, Imagination and the Pursuit of Justice

Norman Rockwell’s painting “The Problem We All Live With” depicting Ruby Bridges – the first black child to attend an all white elementary school in the South. Image from the website of the Norman Rockwell Museum.

Art has been used for centuries to point to the world we deeply desire and to the worlds we deeply don’t.

People often equate art with beauty and beauty in its variety of forms often moves us towards justice.

Beauty is universal. At any given moment in your life you have access to a form of beauty. It could be the love of a family member, a stunning sunset, a color, a meal, a painting, a speech, any small thing you observe during the course of your day. It is this exact universality of beauty that moves us to recognize justice should also be universal. Society should have equal access to justice in the same way we all have equal access to beauty. Beyond its universality, the experience of beauty alone causes a “radical decentering”. This de-centering allows humans to no longer see themselves as the focus of their surroundings and allows them to begin to see the inequalities around them.

This piece is an homage to the Civil Rights Movement, based on the “I am a Man” march that took place on South Main. Marcel Lovelace modernizes history with bright colors and a graffiti-style.

Part of creating a more just society is visualizing a more just society. This can take the form of seeing things you no longer want to be a part of your society as well as seeing the things you do. In this way visual representation is pivotal to establishing a more just society. As humans we naturally emulate, desire to reproduce, and partake in the beauty we see around us. What better way for us to learn how a person should be treated or esteemed, than by seeing it in action? We use representational justice to achieve societal justice.

A pivotal part of our society’s work for human equality in the United States has been the use of images. Art and images help us to respect the full spectrum of human life. Indeed, art often puts to us the choice to keep a limited view of humanity or embrace a more expanded version. America’s progress requires images, requires art, because of the way it conjures our imagination about what a society could be.

Holding hands during Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights’ Rally in 1963

“The endeavor to to affirm the dignity of human life cannot be waged without pictures, without representational justice.” -Sarah Lewis

Resources:

Lewis, S. E. (2016, Summer). Vision and Justice. Aperture, 223, pp.11-14

Scarry, E. (1999). On Beauty and Being Just. Harvard University Press.

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When Evaluating the Death Penalty, You Must Count All of the Victims

When it comes to the death penalty, we talk about the life of the perpetrator but oftentimes we don’t count the rest of the lives at stake. These peripheral victims stand to lose a lot if the death penalty is not abolished.

Studies have shown that one of the most compelling arguments against the death penalty is that there are innocent people convicted and killed. These are the truest victims of a practice that harms everyone it touches. The below article examines the other victims that we don’t always count.

1. The Families of the Victims

Often times the victims’ families suffer a disempowering path to “justice”. Against the popular narrative, a lot of family members feel that the death penalty does not provide justice or closure for either side. “For many families, execution has simply meant reliving the horrific event year after year, decade after decade, through the slow process of carrying out the death penalty.” They are revictimized for imaging a different path to justice, one that rethinks our punitive justice system and favors a restorative approach. “Many crime victims feel that execution circumvents true justice. These survivors would rather see the offender take responsibility for what they caused rather than just terminating their lives.” 

The death penalty gives victims’ families a figment of justice. One death can never equal out another or take away the pain of that loss. The execution leaves in its wake more wounded victims in the form of the executed’s family members. “Many of those who have healed best have not sought the death penalty, but found closure in forgiveness and restorative justice, or even in life in prison for the killer.”

 For more on what restorative justice could look like for all parties please read Shane Claiborne’s book Executing Mercy.

2. The Innocent Victims

“Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it’s a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.” 
― John Grisham

The fact that there are innocent men incarcerated for crimes they have not committed should cause us to reconsider the death penalty for any man. “For every nine executions there has been one exoneration. And for every hundred people condemned to die, four are likely innocent.” Those stats are some of the most convincing for me against the death penalty. Better every man convicted serve life, then one more innocent man be killed.

3. The Executioners and Correctional Staff

It is clear that the cost on the correctional staff is vast. Our system is set up to place separation between correctional staff and inmates, but oftentimes years long relationships are formed between these individuals who are later killed in close proximity. “A 2016 documentary, ‘There Will Be No Stay,‘  portrays the trauma experienced by correctional staff that carried out executions. “Execution team members experienced acute post-traumatic stress disorder…Others suffered from similar nightmares, insomnia and addiction.”

4. Society and Our Country as Whole

There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.” 
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Use of the death penalty says a lot of about the type of place a country that uses it aspires to be. Currently the U.S. ranks towards the top along with Syria, China and Vietnam. It conveys a lack value for human life and a clear misunderstanding of the cycle of violence. For a country to place value on human life, they need to understand that all human life is included. Executing perpetrators robs victims of the opportunity to experience restorative justice and true forgiveness. Both are essential to human flourishing. The death penalty ultimately costs every party involved so much. Anger may say that an eye for an eye is the path to justice, but the only justice worth having is laced with repentance, mercy and forgiveness. Pursuing this kind of justice is the path to true human flourishing.

“The death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?” 
― Bryan Stevenson

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Changing My Mind on the Death Penalty

I didn’t always believe eradicating the death penalty was something essential to the flourishing of human society, but what I have shared below helped change my mind.

I’ve seen A LOT of crime television in my day. I remember watching episodes till the end and what I thought was righteous anger would well up in me as some of these perpetrators were given the death penalty. I would think to myself, “Good. Justice was served, they got what they deserved.” What eventually altered my mind about the death penalty a few years later was a journey through numerous books, one month on jury duty, and being clearly presented with facts about the effects of the death penalty on the victims’ families, correctional staff and society. I’d like to share with you some of things I’ve found helpful in examining the death penalty in the hopes that you will see the death penalty as a practice that harms everyone it touches.

1. Shane Claiborne’s Book Executing Grace

When it comes to the death penalty, I expected this book to talk about cost and death count, I even assumed it would talk about the wrongfully convicted, but I was very surprised to hear about the peripheral victims. The victims we don’t often think of are the family members and the correctional staff. When it comes to family members, this book does a great job or showing that “Many of those who have healed best have not sought the death penalty, but found closure in forgiveness and restorative justice, or even in life in prison for the killer.” Secondly it addresses the psychological toll on the correctional staff and executioners. The book shares a story from a prison warden who oversaw 5 executions and speaks about the toll on his employees and his own mental health. He remarked that, “killing someone, even a murderer, also kills some of the good in you.”

2. The Innocence Project

More often than we want to recognize, some innocent defendants have been convicted and sentenced to death. – Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The fact that there are innocent men incarcerated for crimes they have not committed should cause us to reconsider the death penalty for any man. The Innocence Project works to exonerate the wrongly convicted and made me aware that wrongful convictions do happen and often times are racially biased. “For every nine executions there has been one exoneration. And for every hundred people condemned to die, four are likely innocent.”  Those stats are some of the most convincing for me against the death penalty. Better every man convicted serve life, then one more innocent man be killed.

3. Jury Duty and the Role of Individual Experience

About a year and a half ago I spent a month on jury duty for a murder trial. That month exposed me to some dark scenarios that happen on a regular basis in the underbelly of my city. The perpetrator grew up in a drug filled home and was afforded few of the privileges others have been. It caused me to evaluate the way in which the circumstances we are born in affect us. It caused me to question if we as humans have the right to take another life and to determine what justice is. We are very quick to assume our innocence in the same situation, when we have never walked that path. I think any person who would blindly say they have the right to take a life for a life is missing the point of what true justice, true innocence, and true restoration could be. That’s why I am sharing these things with you. I want Americans to be able to enter into these conversations thoughtfully and emerge with an improved system that is equal parts mercy and justice. For us to do that, we need to evaluate the information in front of us humbly and decide what kind of nation and people we want to be.

There is so much more to learn about the true cost of the death penalty. For more information please check out these resources:

The Innocence Project

Executing Grace

Death Penalty Information Center

Just Mercy

All quotes in this article were taken from Shane Claiborne’s book Executing Grace.