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Selective Perception
“I am not objective?” Rubin demanded. “Me? Then who is objective?”
“No one, of course,” the artist exulted. “No one! No one ever was and no one ever will be. Every act of perception has an emotional coloring. The truth is supposed to be the final result of investigation, but don’t we perceive a sort of truth before any investigation has begun?”
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), writer, from The First Circle (1968)
RED-LETTER DAYS: Today in History
2001: FBI’s Robert Philip Hanssen arrested as Russian spy for 15 years; 1995: “Get Smart” airs final episode; 1988: Anthony Kennedy sworn in to Supreme Court; 1960: 8th Winter Olympics opens at Squaw Valley; 1953: “Bwana Devil,” first 3-D movie; 1930: Pluto discovered; 1929: First Oscar Awards; 1885: Mark Twain publishes Huckleberry Finn; 1861: Jefferson Davis becomes Confederate president; 1856: Know-Nothings convene in Philadelphia; 1564: Michelangelo dies (See History.com.)
How many times have I posited just this view... and what does this mean for journalism? It means that as a journalist one puts one's bias up front for all to see and then does the best one can to present multiple perspectives on any issue so that your audience/readership is free to make its own (informed) mind up as to where it wants to attribute meaning and value...
ReplyDeleteI agree to a point.
ReplyDeleteHuman nature taught us to think. Think when we want, how we want and what we want. Its hard to keep an open mind at all times but think of how different our media would be if the writers did. If all that we read was truth and fact and set to a tone that us the reader and interpreter would choose how we wanted to understand it.