Although they are only a small percentage of what is publicly said and written about the war on terror, it is worth paying special attention to headlines because they are, for a large part of the population, a main source of information; many people glean their knowledge from scanning headlines rather than reading whole articles...four out of five people read only news headlines.Headlines matter more than we think. The Times' Isabel Kershner chooses her words deliberately, in the aftermath of the Itamar terror attack in Israel:
1. Israeli military is the active subject.
2. Suspicion of Palestinians (and thus probably a false overreaction to a single incident)
3. A hunt. Not a search for murderers, but a merciless hunt.
4. Settlers have been killed: the fact that their house was built on the land they chose is a completely justified reason for what took place.
Well, at least there are no quotation marks.
~vanilla hazelnut latte~
All these ways of phrasing things that drastically affect the meaning and emphasis of a story are scary, because the average reader wouldn’t notice them unless someone pointed them out first. It’s frightening to think how many Americans are reading these stories the way they’re portrayed here and then looking at the situation from that context. The average reader doesn’t analyze their news sources to detect bias, so the media has a lot of power in terms of how they frame stories.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Noah. Also, in addition to the pervasive use of media framing, I think the ridiculous coverage of this event (which by the way the media has COMPLETELY forgotten about) shows how important it is to read multiple sources of information. Like we discussed in class, people often have confirmation bias where they only read or listen to news that already agrees with their opinions. To truly get an event, you have to read all sources of news.
ReplyDeleteAvital - I am very impressed by your coverage and your perceptiveness, it is surely without peer.
ReplyDeleteI obviously agree with your observations, and I decry the New York Times for another classic example of their unforgivable anti-Israel bias.
Keep up the good work.