This is why I don't watch the news
Apr. 2nd, 2010 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseI guess there must be a shortage of "April Fools' Pranks Gone Wrong" stories this year, as CNN has decided to hop into their time machine and drum up a controversy that the gamer-subsection of the Internet was done with a year ago - specifically, the RapeLay game that was released in Japan back in 2009.
The game itself (and its thorny issues of obscenity and censorship) aside, the accompanying video clip serves as a pitch-perfect example of why I don't watch cable news - the entire thing is so pitch-perfectly tuned to manipulate viewers' emotions and draw attention away from the actually-quite-good arguments the commentator is making.
Seriously, give it a watch. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Let's break that down a bit, shall we? We've got:
• the generically-handsome news anchor speaking in his Concerned Father voice,
• the "We must warn our viewers, the following footage is extremely graphic" line of BS that is guaranteed to draw the aforementioned viewers' attention,
• the leading questions he's asking the interviewee - "How easy would it be for our children to get their hands on this game?" And when that doesn't get him the answer he wants, he goes for the old standby "What about violent video games in general? How do they affect our children?",
• the continual replay of the footage from the game, placed in a larger window higher up than the one with the commentator's face, thus subliminally minimizing her and drowning out her words in the emotional reaction they want the footage to inspire (five gets you ten that if she'd given them the reactive BS they were hoping for, her face would have filled the screen),
• the way the anchor keeps interrupting the commentator when she doesn't give him the response he wants, also helping to minimize her importance in viewers' minds
• the interface cluttered with "Parent Outrage!" and other such graphics, none of which are supported in the segment itself, as well as
• the overlay of various Facebook comments, all drawn from (or edited to appear to be drawn from) the hyper-emotional reaction they want, thus reinforcing said reaction among viewers
What kills me about this is that the commentator is making a perfectly rational and cogent set of points - that, for instance, [a] kids don't have easy access to this game (it requires some knowledge of BitTorrent or other shady venues to acquire), [b] it's not that hard to keep your kid's computer access restricted to common areas so you can (gasp!) walk by and see what they're playing now and then, [c] it's normal for kids to be attracted to violent games, and what matters is that you talk to them about it and about the differences in acceptable behavior in games vs. real life, and [d] CNN is actually doing more harm than good by publicizing this crap, since kids are far more likely to get curious about it after seeing it on the news. None of which, of course, will likely penetrate through the skull of most CNN viewers, given the blatant degree of emotional manipulation going on here.
I guarantee that if you interviewed any twenty random people who saw this clip, nineteen of them would be able to describe the footage and their reaction to it in great detail, but if you asked them about the commentator and what she said, they'd probably look at you blankly and go "Who?" And that's not even really their fault - like I said, this clip is tailor-made to exploit every single human fallacy surrounding hyper-emotional subjects. It's how the news industry gets ratings, which is how they make their money. Sadly, it's also a prime example of the quality of reporting you can expect from televised news, and why I urge people who do watch it to think about the information you're consuming. Don't just listen to it passively - watch the dynamics at play, look at how they present it, and ask yourself if they have an agenda to push. You may or may not be as horrified as I consistently am, but I think you'll find that it's far less unbiased than the networks would like you to think.
The game itself (and its thorny issues of obscenity and censorship) aside, the accompanying video clip serves as a pitch-perfect example of why I don't watch cable news - the entire thing is so pitch-perfectly tuned to manipulate viewers' emotions and draw attention away from the actually-quite-good arguments the commentator is making.
Seriously, give it a watch. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Let's break that down a bit, shall we? We've got:
• the generically-handsome news anchor speaking in his Concerned Father voice,
• the "We must warn our viewers, the following footage is extremely graphic" line of BS that is guaranteed to draw the aforementioned viewers' attention,
• the leading questions he's asking the interviewee - "How easy would it be for our children to get their hands on this game?" And when that doesn't get him the answer he wants, he goes for the old standby "What about violent video games in general? How do they affect our children?",
• the continual replay of the footage from the game, placed in a larger window higher up than the one with the commentator's face, thus subliminally minimizing her and drowning out her words in the emotional reaction they want the footage to inspire (five gets you ten that if she'd given them the reactive BS they were hoping for, her face would have filled the screen),
• the way the anchor keeps interrupting the commentator when she doesn't give him the response he wants, also helping to minimize her importance in viewers' minds
• the interface cluttered with "Parent Outrage!" and other such graphics, none of which are supported in the segment itself, as well as
• the overlay of various Facebook comments, all drawn from (or edited to appear to be drawn from) the hyper-emotional reaction they want, thus reinforcing said reaction among viewers
What kills me about this is that the commentator is making a perfectly rational and cogent set of points - that, for instance, [a] kids don't have easy access to this game (it requires some knowledge of BitTorrent or other shady venues to acquire), [b] it's not that hard to keep your kid's computer access restricted to common areas so you can (gasp!) walk by and see what they're playing now and then, [c] it's normal for kids to be attracted to violent games, and what matters is that you talk to them about it and about the differences in acceptable behavior in games vs. real life, and [d] CNN is actually doing more harm than good by publicizing this crap, since kids are far more likely to get curious about it after seeing it on the news. None of which, of course, will likely penetrate through the skull of most CNN viewers, given the blatant degree of emotional manipulation going on here.
I guarantee that if you interviewed any twenty random people who saw this clip, nineteen of them would be able to describe the footage and their reaction to it in great detail, but if you asked them about the commentator and what she said, they'd probably look at you blankly and go "Who?" And that's not even really their fault - like I said, this clip is tailor-made to exploit every single human fallacy surrounding hyper-emotional subjects. It's how the news industry gets ratings, which is how they make their money. Sadly, it's also a prime example of the quality of reporting you can expect from televised news, and why I urge people who do watch it to think about the information you're consuming. Don't just listen to it passively - watch the dynamics at play, look at how they present it, and ask yourself if they have an agenda to push. You may or may not be as horrified as I consistently am, but I think you'll find that it's far less unbiased than the networks would like you to think.
