After any debate, primary, caucus or other media-worthy event, modern political campaigns send their best storytellers to a reporter's feeding frenzy. Here these "masters of political spin" attempt to create the most compelling media narrative about their candidate for the subsequent news cycle.
Matt Taibbi, a reporter for Rolling Stone, recently did a segment for "Real Time With Bill Maher" on these political spin rooms. Aside from showing how ridiculous these events are backstage, Taibbi correctly observed that these places are essentially "echo chambers," wherein "common knowledge" is manufactured and then readily accepted as literal truth.
Ultimately, the media is telling a story. William Randolph Hearst was the first of the modern media barons to realize that facts don't sell papers, sensationalism does. Since ultimately the media's goal is to make money, it constantly develops narratives that follow common literary arcs (falls from grace, David vs. Goliath and redemption) that tell stories rather than explain them.
What allows some of the modern media to do this so well are the echo chambers. These chambers legitimize false information through heavy media coverage even if it is acknowledged in the story as inaccurate or wrong. Essentially, they echo lies enough times to make them a part of the collective conscious; they lie so much that they make it truth.
Case and point, Supery-Duper Tuesday II (or whatever they called it). The facts are that Hillary Clinton, after losing 12 consecutive states, was barely able to hold on to Texas, Rhode Island and Ohio. Texas and Ohio, which her campaign once touted as their 20 point-plus lead "firewall" states, made a significant shift toward Obama. In turn, he was able to make all these inroads despite an avalanche of Clinton-orchestrated negative press.
And when the dust settles (the Texas caucus results aren't all in yet, but I got $20 on Obama), Hillary will still be losing by nearly the same amount of delegates that she was before Tuesday.
But this is not the story. The headlines are, "She's Back" and, "She has the wind at her back." Her campaign, which originally said it was about delegates and not momentum, has now attempted to craft its resurrection through a narrative of momentum they originally dismissed.
It hurts my head.
But this echo chamber reality we live in doesn't just apply to presidential campaigns. This how we ended up as bad as we are in Iraq. Karl Rove understood that if you said something untrue enough times, you could make it true. If you need further proof, just turn on Fox News.
Right now. Go ahead.
See, they just lied. Told ya.
This is why, as a country, we believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This is why we thought Iraq had something to do with Sept. 11. This is why right now, in Iraq, we think that the majority of whom we are fighting is "al Qaeda" and our "surge" is working.
Through talk radio, 24 cable networks and now the blogosphere, the powers that be have created such a powerful echo chamber that we now live in an Orwellian reality. That is why people believe that war is peace, up is down and Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Zeitgeist is a term that is used to refer to the commonly perceived truths or ethos of a particular group. Echo chambers have manufactured our false zeitgeists.
As the prophet George Carlin once said, "Don't take any shit from the Zeitgeist."
No comments:
Post a Comment