By Mac McPhail Contributing columnist You are flipping through the channels on your TV looking for something to watch.
As you scroll through them, you stop at a news cable network.
Something has caught your attention.
At the bottom of the TV screen, you see in bold letters, “BREAKING NEWS!” But is it really “breaking news?” The headline that follows is basically the same “breaking news” that you saw yesterday when you stopped at that news channel because a “breaking news” headline caught your attention.
But, is it really news?
When I was growing up, there were the three major television networks, ABC, NBC and CBS.
If you wanted to know what was happening in the world you watched one of their half-hour news casts at 6:30 PM.
That was it, unless there was something really major happening – like a war, an assassination, or a hurricane.
Then the networks would break into their “regularly scheduled program” for truly breaking news.
The arrival of CNN changed the news landscape forever.
As cable TV began to change our TV viewing habits, Ted Turner’s Cable News Network offered the viewer news reporting 24 hours a day, not just a half-hour of news during the dinner hour.
Seeing how profitable the venture was for CNN, other news networks, like Fox and MSNBC, soon followed, with their own news networks.
The news networks soon learned that you didn’t have to get every viewer to watch their news in order to be profitable.
Just a loyal, dedicated percentage of viewers will do.
So they began to direct their programming to that loyal, dedicated percentage of the audience in order to make them even more loyal and dedicated.
It’s quite obvious that Fox News Network tends to cater to a more conservative audience, while CNN and MSNBC cater to the more progressive, or liberal, viewer.
Why is this so?
It is because we all have opinions and beliefs.
And we all believe that those opinions and beliefs are correct and right.
We look for information and facts that will verify them.
And we will neglect or reject facts or information that contradicts our opinions and beliefs.
This is called confirmation bias.
The technical definition is “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.” We all tend to do it, but mostly on a subconscious level.
So we gravitate toward information sources that confirm what we already believe and think.
And in the age of the internet and Facebook, it is even easier to find those information sources.
We may not be aware of it, but the news networks surely are.
They know the more they deliver information and opinion that reinforce your already held beliefs, the more loyal and dedicated viewer you will likely be.
So what’s the problem?
If I am right, what if I choose to gather information only from sources that agree with me?
Well, the obvious answer is, what if I am wrong?
And one thing I have learned thru the years, I’m not as smart as I used to be, or as smart as thought I was.
Yes, I can occasionally be wrong.
So I need information from a variety of sources to help.
While I may not often agree with a certain source’s views, they may have information and insight that might help me as I form my own beliefs and decisions.
So it is important that I am open to them.
I don’t have to agree with all their views in order to accept that some of the information they provide may be correct.
It would be refreshing to hear during a media debate from political opposites, that one said, “You know, that’s an interesting insight.
You may be right.
I’ll have to think about it.” Now, if that happened, it would be “breaking news.” Mac McPhail, raised in Sampson County, lives in Clinton.
McPhail’s new book, “Wandering Thoughts from a Wondering Mind,” a collection of his favorite columns, is available for purchase at the Sampson Independent office, online on Amazon, or by contacting McPhail at [email protected] Call: T: 910-592-8137 F: 910-592-8756 Address: 109 W.
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