Our minds: not prepared for today’s dialogue. Does it hurt our society?
Recently, Greg Miller from “Smithsonian.com” sat down and discussed how our brains make memories with Dr. Karim Nader from McGill University (neuroscientist). Nader talks about how memories can actually be changed each time we recall them, making accurate memories less likely with each recollection. Anecdotally, he says he remembers on 9/11 viewing on the television that night footage of the second plane hitting the second world trade center building. He later found out, footage of the incident did not become available until 9/12. But the traumatic event was played over-and-over on television and in his mind during discussion with friends and relatives that his brain actually re-wired to include that 9/12 footage into his 9/11 memories.
Now let’s apply this concept to something else. On June 15, 2010 President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office on live TV. His speech lasted a total of 17 minutes. However, the night and days following his 17 minute speech CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC spent numerous hours discussing what the President did and didn’t not say, what he actually did say actually meant, and what he didn’t say says about his ideology in dealing with big business and how he handles national crisis.
Going back to Dr. Nader and what we now know about memories, it is quite possible that millions of people watching the aforementioned shows will remember Obama saying are not saying something he actually did not or did say. They will most likely remember what commentators think his words meant then the actual words the President used.
This is our mind: this is our media culture in the 21st century.
Source:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-Our-Brains-Make-Memories.html?c=y&page=1
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This dilemma extends beyond politics. Individual events happen in seconds, minutes, or at most hours. Yet with our 24-hr news cycles they can be discussed and delineated for days. I guess this comes back to asking what a journalist responsibility is. In the case of President Obama is it really up to a journalist to comment on what the President “actually” meant by something, or just to report the news?
ReplyDeleteAll the more reason that these people should be held accountable for what they say by a peer-reviewed system. I'd even settle for a website which tries to ranks news sources and news people by the validity of their statements.
ReplyDeleteI think this probably ties in with the idea that 24 hour instant access to everything and anything almost tends to hinder information and progress as much as it moves them forward. What I mean by that is that almost any comment or discussion is likely to be forgotten. So later on if an opinion needs to be adjusted to fit with the current events (think Sarah Palin with off-shore drilling), all that needs to be done is to start talking about your position and how it has always been what it is now. Do that a bunch of times, have other people comment on it and people remember those comments better than what was originally said.
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