A Stand-Still Conclusion

In the final concluding chapter of unSpun, the authors once again reiterate what they’ve been telling readers all along: the importance of authenticating facts, the respect one should have for real, honest-to-goodness facts, and the constant vigilance to be had for any chance of being spun yourself. However, the message I walked away with was one inspired by a quote on page 183: “We’re not surprised that advertisers and politicians try to deceive us. Who can blame them for fabricating, twisting, exaggerating, or distorting the facts?”

This statement, though it seems unassuming at first, would later cause me to deeply question the ethics and morals within the modern day world. “Who can blame them?” I can blame them, we as the unassuming public can blame them! What is wrong with society in which consciences are so lacking that advertisers and politicians can use propaganda techniques that can border on blatant lies in order to win support? Isn’t lack of this sense of moral dignity and responsibility to honesty the larger problem? The fact that we live in a world where it’s okay for people to blatantly distort facts for their own personal or monetary gain terrifies me. Why can’t politicians run campaigns or businesses promote their products on the basis of their own strengths? Why have we reached the point where we feel we must manipulate people in order to gain their approval? Worst of all to me is the idea that many of these propagandists have begun to believe their own spin, because the moment this occurs is the moment where we all begin to exists in a world of self-constructed lies.

have learned much from this book about spin, including how to spin others. And yet, ironically, the best lesson I learned of all is that of honesty. Even though the authors weren’t intending to teach it, I have begun to genuinely appreciate messages that lack any and all spin whatsoever. Because there’s something to be said for the real, un-adulterated, cotton-pickin’ truth.

Darrow Rolls With Jesus?!

In Chapter 8, the authors again remind us of the importance of verifying facts (this time the focus is quotations, in order to be assured that the person being attributed with the lines actually spoke them) with an anecdote about the infamous Scopes Monkey trial. During the court proceedings, lawyer Clarence Darrow, the defending attorney for the teacher accused of teaching evolution in a Tennessee science class, was quoted as having uttered that it was “bigotry for public schools to teach only one theory of origins,” a quote that many Creationists would use at the time and for years to come in their own argument for the teaching of creationism in schools, in an almost-reversal of the trial’s eventual rulings.

However, as it turns out, despite numerous sources citing Darrow as having spoken this infamous phrase, he never actually said it. And yet despite the fact that it is now widely recognized that the line was contrived and there are numerous reputable source disputing his supposed “statement”, many creationists and intelligent design promoters still use this quotation as part of their arsenal during arguments, a phenomenon that authors Jackson and Jamieson explain well by simply stating that people will use whatever supports their cause if they can get away with it. In carrying this idea over to other areas of life, the authors remind us all that the media is a business; its goal is to create a sensation in order to sell whatever they must. Thus, it is always important to verify what is being said and to look deeper than what’s apparent on the surface for a statement’s true meaning, or else risk being seriously mislead.

Lastly, the chapter warns against being swayed by a majority’s opinion simply because it is the majority. The Asch experiment involving showing a number of students different lines and asking them to verify the lengths, but also allowed them to compare their answers to other students undergoing the experiment. Interestingly, many chose to change their answers (even when they were right) in order to become a part of the majority, even though the majority was always wrong. This is intriguing and terrifying to me at the same time, because it signifies that far too many people are not confident enough in their own intelligence to stand next to what they believe is right. And if such results were to be carried over into a real-life situation in which the majority was wrong again (entirely plausible), such easily-swayed masses could end up making decisions that have horrifying repercussions.

Osama, Ollie, and Al – Awkward Alliteration Attempts Abound

In Chapter 7, authors Jackson and Jamieson feature the controversy surrounding Osama Bin Laden, Oliver North, and Al Gore to illustrate the importance of verifying facts one finds on the internet in order to form opinions based on legitimate facts (thus repeating the same conclusion that is reached in every single chapter, but with the inclusion of computers). In this particular controversy, which occurred “within weeks of September 11”, an anonymous e-mail began to circulate stating that conservative senator Oliver North had been warning Congress about the dangers of bin Laden and al Qaeda for years, but that a number of prominent liberal senators, most notably Al Gore, had completely dismissed his testimony.

Almost immediately, information was unearthed that resulted in the complete disproval of this rumor, but for many who didn’t bother to do their research and blindly followed the hype the lie continued to be real. Obviously, many people were unjustly influenced by false information, and this may have affected them during such events as elections. However, rather than allow such people the excuse of ignorance to explain their actions, I would simply like to once again point out the “duh” factor of this entire chapter. Perhaps it comes from being of the generation that grew up with the internet, using it so consistently in settings like school where we were told that all of our information had to be verified, but I cannot comprehend how anyone would have been able to receive a message such as this one and not try to figure out whether it was true or false, especially before passing it on, as this chain e-mail quickly was. It is of course true that when this scandal first occurred in 2001, it was in the earlier days of the internet, and fact-verifying sites were less well-known and harder to find. But still. Sheesh.

3 Million Homeless Crows Using Cars to Crack Nuts

This latest chapter of unSpun has introduced some of the most startling information yet. After beginning with an introduction that told the story of the great crow fallacy and how it continued to spread long after suspicions had arisen and even after it had been debunked, the authors summarize the entire debacle quite well when they say that “It’s easy to see how spotting a few crows getting lucky can encourage even serious scientists to think the behavior might be deliberate” (105), and simply “It’s fun to think that crows might be clever enough to learn such a neat trick” (105). Again, the book shows us that we as people like things that are easy (because thinking is work) and because information is always more engaging when it’s actually entertaining.

What really surprised me, however, was how many people are willingly to believe information that is obviously fabricated, and, what’s more, is openly admitted to be so! The story about the ex-con Snyder blatantly faking the statistics about the numbers of homeless people within the country, and then (only when caught in a lie, of course) admitting it, only to have journalists and others continue to cite his information, was completely mind boggling! I know that many of us can be mislead either due to our own lack of effort in researching the facts or by or the genuine skills of propaganda creators, but this was beyond ridiculous. That a man could come right out and tell the WORLD that his information was completely baseless and still hold some rapport is utterly absurd, especially because (unlike with the cutesy little crow story) no one would actually want to believe that Snyder’s estimates, which were in fact tremendously overblown, were actually true.

Sometimes it is hard to be able to find the truth in any story, especially in cases like those of news reports during the Gulf War, when the media would often only portray the stories they wanted to be seen (which, in that case, were those of a clean war with supposedly little civilian casualty). But when it comes to believing something simply because it’s an entertaining or amazing piece of information, people should think twice about whether or not it may be valid.

Factual Healin'

I am about to say something that someone (somewhere) will no doubt take offense to, but nonetheless, here it is: people are, as a matter of being, pretty damn lazy. This laziness results in decision making that is (to put it gently) on par with a slightly decomposing tree stump. Living in a country that has organizations to regulate and report back to us on everything (the FDA, FCC, ADA, ACLU, NASA, SPCA… yeah, I’m getting carried away, but you see the point) we have come to the point where we believe that we no longer have to think about the value or legitimacy of the products we buy or the services we choose, because someone else in some big fancy administration somewhere has already done it for us.

To a degree, this can sometimes be forgivable, if the action or choice being undertaken is small. If someone has not stopped to consider that the newest loaf of bread, listed as being ‘On Sale’, is still more expensive than the generic brand after already buying it, the result is forgivable, if not mildly unfortunate. However, in the case of such people as Daniel Bullock, the hardworking, community-service-performing “all around good guy” California physician who was thrown in jail for buying into a scam that he thought would exempt him from having to pay taxes, the repercussions for his stupidity were much more dire. At first, I felt a small pang of sympathy for the doctor, because he had not intentionally harmed anyone and might not have thought he was committing a crime. However, the more I mulled over the situation, I realized he had gotten exactly what was coming to him: after he purposely chose to avoid doing the research necessary that would have obviously informed him that such an act was illegal, he then chose to bask in willful ignorance, believing that this would keep him from suffering the consequences, if there were any. But think about it: If you were to go to a different country, would you not be subject to those laws, even if you did not know about them? We each have a personal responsibility to know the rules and laws of the society we live in, and, if we don’t want to deal with the consequences or get gypped out of our cash, we should also know the background stories of what we buy and what we do.

It’s hard not to be lazy. We have already learned in previous chapters that it is part of our brain’s natural chemistry to fall into the trap. But that doesn’t mean we have to, and if we consciously choose not to seek out the facts, the only people we have to blame for what happens to us is ourselves— not the companies or ad industries. They’re just doing their jobs.

UFOs, Moonbats, and Other Sky-High Hoaxes

It's no secret to anyone that sometimes the least well-informed people are the hardest to convince of the truth. What's more, even though most of us can personally identify a situation in which we were forced to interact with one of these people, we can rarely (or are unwilling to) identify a time in which we were on the other side of the argument, simply because we tend not to think of ourselves as lacking information or being misinformed. Up until this chapter of unSpun, however, it had never occurred to me that there might be some sort of neurological explanation for why we tend to make the mistakes and hold the opinions we do, and this revelation is both uplifting and depressing. On one hand, I can partially blame the mistakes I make in thinking on something that is initially beyond my control - the natural reactions of the brain. On the other hand, however, there are now two things I must overcome when processing new information: my own natural laziness, AND the product of thousands of years of evolutionary brain biology.

What I found most interesting in chapter four was the section entitled 'This Is Your Brain on Politics.' Studies have showed that not only are our brain willing and ready to accept propaganda that supports our views without questioning, but that rather than reasonably considering this information, we feel emotionally rewarded when we reformulate such (often incorrect) information to meet our needs. I am intensely curious as to how this function of the brain developed and evolved within our species, because I can see no reason why it would help us to survive, especially if it keeps us from processing information we may need to survive. Did it develop in early humans when rival tribes fought in order to keep ourselves from being easily tricked? Was it some form of a defense mechanism? In any case, it is a dangerous shortcut key that our computer minds should be sure to avoid, because though it may be naturally present in us, it is like a cancer that, should it be allowed to take control, could very well lead to terrible outcomes.

I don't really know if this counts as propaganda, but at the very least they're suggesting that Russians like Lynard Skynard and epic choral arrangements.

http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/3114/85/