Media, echo chambers, and personal bias
By: Tony Morgan
Tags: Politics, Bias, Ego, Media

The fact that no one seems to be able to agree on what the facts are regarding things really scares me. It feels like we’re living in two different realities and if we can’t reconcile this in some way, we are inevitably going to be headed to real conflict. See for example the fact that, according to polls, 98% of Biden voters see his win as legitimate, whereas only 12% of Trump voters do.

So let’s talk a little bit about facts, bias, and the media. TL; DR will be at the bottom, but please read. I think this is important for all of us to understand to be able to move forward together. I’m going to do my best to keep this non-partisan, this isn’t a right vs left issue.

I see a lot of people dismiss “mainstream media” as politically biased, and then use that excuse to dismiss any story from any media outlet that they don’t like. This is generally pretty bad. Especially since *generally* mainstream media reports facts pretty well, they may present those facts with spin, but mainstream journalism societies have high standards of factual reporting. Of course they get things wrong at times, but everyone does. There is not a person on this earth who has not had their facts wrong at some time or another. But that’s why most mainstream media outlets will link in their articles to the sources that they get their facts from.

So next time someone posts an article that conflicts with your worldview, instead of immediately dismissing it as “media bias” please verify their facts (and this is where it becomes important to be able to separate facts from spin — an article can have heavy spin one way or another, but still be factually correct — we’ll go in more depth on this later in the post). Facts don’t have a bias, if you disagree with the facts, you’re wrong. Period. Believing gravity isn’t real, or the earth is flat doesn’t make those things true.

I think this is something we all struggle with, a lot. People inherently struggle with coming to terms with being wrong. But we all need to realize that being wrong isn’t a character flaw. We are all wrong all the time about a LOT of things. And maybe this is a flaw we have in our language (and I’m speaking for English only here because I’m mostly speaking to my American audience), where we don’t really have a distinction between being wrong morally and being wrong factually. They’re related but not really the same, especially in this context. We can disagree on what is wrong and wrong morally and a lot of the time there has to be an ability in society to be able to “agree to disagree” on some of those topics. But where it becomes extremely problematic, is when I see people saying that phrase when it comes to what the actual facts of the situation are, and the refusal of a lot of people to come to terms with reality.

Being wrong factually is okay. We all are raised and taught things that are wrong all the time. I mean look at history, we have countless examples of common beliefs over time that we now know to be factually incorrect. I think it is incredibly ignorant to believe that we still don’t have a lot of common myths that are perpetuated in our societies even today. Being wrong becomes problematic, however, when we reject facts that conflict with our worldviews. And we all do it.

There are a number studies in sociology that dive into this phenomenon. One way of explaining it, is that we all have frames (or metaphors) through which we interpret the world. If you’re into spirituality, you may have heard of this as ego, and another way I like to refer to it is worldview. It affects how you see yourself, your friends, even how you interpret language. This is also where spin comes from, and it’s also a lot of the reason why liberals and conservatives struggle communicating about politics. And studies show that when people are confronted with facts that conflict with their frame, that most will reject the facts and keep the frame. And I think that it’s pretty obvious why that’s the case. It’s hard, and a lot of work to reconstruct your worldview, ego, frame, or life-metaphor every time you encounter a fact that doesn’t fit-in. And trying to hold facts that conflict with your worldview creates cognitive dissonance.

Honestly how do deal with this is a part of emotional maturity that we do a horrible job of teaching people (and honestly I honestly think we fail pretty badly at teaching any emotional maturity in people) and I think it’s largely responsible for the predicament we are in now. When no one can agree on the basic facts around what is happening in the world, it makes it incredibly difficult for us to move forward with anything. Differing worldviews is inevitable, no one can know everything and we all have very different lived experiences. Learning how to operate with people who see the world differently than you do is something we all need to get better at doing, and requires a high level of empathy. But when we can’t even agree on basic facts, it becomes a lot harder (maybe even impossible at times) for us to have empathy for each other. And the converse is true too, once we can agree on basic facts, it becomes easier for us to dissolve things like spin and find common ground. The ability to constantly reevaluate the things you believe for a grounding in reality is also a skill I think we do a poor job of teaching. I know for me the a lot of what I’m talking about right now didn’t make it into my brain until I was in my 30’s, and I’m still to this day working on implementing it and probably will be for the rest of my life.

So next time you see a news article that conflicts with what you believe (or even reinforces what you believe), take some time to review the facts they’re presenting. If you can pick out statements that can be objectively true or false, you can then try and verify those with independent sources. Once you verified the facts, it becomes much easier to evaluate the spin as well as your own biases. Once you have a better handle on both of those it’s easier to have a real discussion on the subject matter with others, especially those who have opposing perspectives. But if we spend all of our time arguing on what the facts are we aren’t going to get anywhere.

Again, I know this is a big ask. It’s a lot of work and can be hard on people emotionally, especially when you’re really invested in your worldview. But this is something we all need to commit to being better at, including myself. Nobody can do this work for you. But if we don’t we’re going to keep heading down a really dangerous path. When a large portion of the population is living in an alternate reality, that becomes a weakness that despots exploit. They twist that alternate reality to suit their purposes and use it to control people. They will feed you alternative facts that fit your worldview, and with use those alternative facts to shift your frame. (Before I make the next statement I need to clarify something, when I say “holy” I don’t mean in a purely religious sense. Religion informs world views and creates frames, and on the flip side non-religious people can have perspectives that are sacred to them. We all have things that are “holy” regardless of religosity.) They will use that to start a holy war against their enemies. It is a lot harder to control someone who double checks all of their facts, and wars don’t happen unless you can convince the masses that they’re going to their death for something important to themselves. But I’m really worried right now that if we don’t take the time to work on this, that we leave ourselves open to real armed conflict when a despot gets into a good enough position to take real advantage of it.

TL; DR (yes I know it’s kind of disjoined, just read the post): Just because media is “biased” (as if anyone isn’t lol) doesn’t mean their facts are wrong. When presented things you don’t agree with (and maybe even more importantly when you find things that you do agree with), always verify the facts being presented. The ability to separate facts from spin is going to be important if we’re going to be able to move forward as a society. We also all need to constantly evaluate our implicit biases to make sure they align with factual reality, and then make an effort to be aware of those biases (and our limited personal perspective) when evaluating facts being presented to us. When we refuse to confront our own biases we become open to radicalization, and it’s generally more helpful to hold media we agree with accountable than it is media we don’t. When we hold our own sides accountable to truth and transparency, we protect ourselves from radicalization by those who would take advantage of us, only going after the other side results in echo chambers that don’t do us any favors.