The Role of Propaganda in the Media.

"the burden of disprove rested on Con's shoulders" nope - Con agrees that "propaganda is able to create a less informed [aka misinformed] electorate" "Logically [. .. ] democracy is limited" nope - the topic is not self-evident; Pro must present evidence and "logically" cannot fiat that he is right and wins the debate. "Con's singular argument" as opposed to Pro's lack of an argument/metric to assess the public's opinions/desires "fails to take into account [. .. ] that the individuals surveyed are victims of media manipulation" Nope (polls are statistically sound, etc; this has been addressed before) "if the democratic system had failed, the approval polls would reflect this circumstance, which is simply false" Incorrect and irrelevant - Pro has not explained or provided any evidence for why this false. Also, Pro has not provided an alternative method to assess whether or not the democratic system has failed (besides fiat), so Con's method must be preferred over Pro's lack of a method. "individuals [. .. ] avoid reflecting that they [are] victims of this manipulation" Nope - if "media manipulation" does not cause people to act differently, then it does not exist or has no effect, making it irrelevant (and not bad). "evidence contrary to Con's opinion that "propaganda misinforms only people who want to be misinformed and are looking for an excuse to be misinformed. "" Nope - Pro ignores the argument that propaganda pieces from opposing sides will cancel each other out unless people want to believe in one side more than another instead of searching for the truth. The evidence does not disagree with this argument. "indicate correlation not causation" A positive correlation between media and approval ratings suggests that media does not cause approval ratings to be lower or limit democracy, which is all that Con has to show. Media could have no effect. 1. The logical fallacy of, ". .. what is wrong with manipulating the public, if the public wants to be manipulated? " Pro said: It is presumptuous to claim that "the public wants to be manipulated" since there is no accurate method to determine if this is true. Con is attempting to argue that media manipulation can only occur as a result of public consent, which is an absolutely absurd statement with no logical premise to support it. Response: There is a method to determine if "the public wants to be manipulated": see if the public pays attention to manipulative media. In the absence of coercion, people's wants/desires will coincide with their actions. The government is not forcing anyone to view government-owned media - people are free to go to factcheck. org, etc. 2. "Again, why is this an issue? Why is it the media's job to inform the public? They are doing what the people want, which is why people choose to watch and pay for dishonest media. " Pro said: The news media's role is to inform the public just as a doctor's role is to aid the sick and unhealthy; this seems a fatuous question as the topic of the debate is the role of propaganda in the media and its effect on the democratic process. Con's lack of knowledge on this topic is quite obvious, even more so is the lack of research done to establish a relevant argument, which leads one to then question his/her motive for accepting this debate. Response: Ignoring the ad-hom attacks, different doctors have different roles. Some perform eye surgery, some perform arm surgery, etc. Similarly, different media sources have different goals. Some focus on fact checking (factcheck. org), some focus on entertainment (television shows), some focus on unbiased reporting, some are okay with propaganda (fox news), and some focus on reviewing other sources of media. So, the media's role is not to inform the public. It's role is, according to dictionary. com, to reach and influence people widely (. http://bit.ly...), nothing more, nothing less. 3. "This is true but irrelevant. Although people have the ability to be informed (fact check sites, etc) many choose not to, which is not a problem in a democracy. Only elected officials need to factually know about all the issues. " Pro said: This, again, is an illogical argument: all theories on decision making processes involve the acquisition of knowledge or information, generally referred to as the communication phase but Con does not mention any related evidence. Response: In a democracy, people are not forced to stay away from fact checking sites. If they choose not to acquire knowledge or information, then, in the absence of coercion, it must be because they do not want to acquire knowledge or information. Since there are plenty of publicly available fact checking sites out there, it follows that people have the ability to become more informed, but do not want to (and choose not to). In fact, people always have the ability to become more informed. Basically, democracy is alive and well in America right now. Note: Pro has not disputed any of Con's seven arguments.