BELIEF IS THE ENEMY OF

KNOWING
An Examination of Bias and Propaganda
By John Wielenga

JUNE 6, 2016
WHATCOM COMMUNITY COLLEGE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1
Methods and Materials.................................................................................................................... 2
Results............................................................................................................................................. 2
Discussion....................................................................................................................................... 4
Summary and Conclusion........................................................................................................... 5
Works Cited ................................................................................................................................... 6
Appendix A - Review of Literature ............................................................................................... 7
Appendix B - Survey Response Summary ..................................................................................... 9

JOHN WIELENGA

ABSTRACT
This research explores the problems of ideological programming and selective exposure to news
coverage. It contains a vast array of secondary sources, an interview with 84 respondents, and an
interview with an independent journalist. The following report details examples and forms of
propaganda. Through exposing these forms of propaganda I believe that people will gain tools to
help them to be more aware of when they are being manipulated.

INTRODUCTION

(source, Gallup)
News outlets are becoming increasingly less trusted. Each night you can turn on your TV to find
any sort of logical fallacy being sold. Americans have more faith in satirical news figures like
John Stewart and Steven Colbert than the mainstream media pundits (source). This is because
Colbert and Stewart are at least open about their bias. They do not claim to be some sort of
objective source of news and people respect that. When sources claim to be objective and are in
fact ideological they can often mislead their audiences.
Bias is our perspective that causes us to favor one thing over another. It is our inescapable
perception of the world that creates our own subjective view. Without bias we would be
homogenous robots who feel the same about everything. This natural bias can run amok and
needs to be addressed in journalism. The news is, after all, where most people go to be informed
outside of a school. Objective journalism lacks an emotional interest in society (source).
Ideological journalism can be a double edged sword, like most things. On one hand it does well
by spurring action in an otherwise complacent society. On the other hand, this can lead to the
media attempting to push us towards an agenda that seems to be in our best interest, but is in the
favor of special interest.
JOHN WIELENGA

A handful of corporations have a monopoly on the major news networks (source). The
executives are ultimately who decides what news is important enough to broadcast. These
networks are claiming to be objective, when in fact they are all biased. The effects of partisan
coverage and propaganda are something that we face as a species across the world and in our
daily lives. Nowhere might this be more evident than in our nation's political sphere. Society has
essentially become polarized into an ideological dichotomy, with the major parties both drifting
further away from each other in the extremes.
At first this research set out form a basic set of ethics that could be used to produce somewhat
objective journalism. I have come to realize this is essentially an impossible ideal for the scope
of my project. The focus has been shifted more towards the individuals who consume the
information. To gauge how they feel on news and bias (their own and that of others). In the end
the goals accomplished through research were: To explore some aspects of personal bias. To
inform people of the subjectivity and bias of modern news outlets. To define propaganda (its
benefits and detriments. To present some solutions that we can use to stay informed which will
help us to inform others.

METHODS
I devised a survey that consisting of about 20 questions which was posted on Survey Monkey
from May 16 June 6. When I drafted the survey I wanted to get a feel for how people felt about
things like news bias. Different major news networks (CNN/FOX/MSNBC/etc). How much time
people were spending getting their news from particular mediums (TV, radio, internet, etc).
What influenced their political identity the most. What their age and political affiliation was, and
how they felt about various policies such as guns, immigration, raising the minimum wage, and
free trade. It currently has 73 responses. To get participants I would post a short description and
the link on the most popular trending political news-feeds on Facebook. People were generally
participative and this allowed me to gather a fair amount of response data in a short amount of
time.
A second copy of the survey was created (distributed May 29 June 6) that has an additional
optional question. The question is as follows Is there anything else you would like to say on this
subject?. This survey is currently still open and has a total of 9 responses. Data collected from
both surveys has been input into Microsoft Excel. The data has been sorted and analyzed
according to age and political influence for trend analysis. In all I was able to get 85 responses
for my research.

JOHN WIELENGA

During the course of my research into objective journalism I was looking up objective
journalism on Google and YouTube, I came across a video by James Corbett entitled The
Myth of Objective Journalism. This video got me questioning this notion as a false ideal. I
promptly emailed James and an interview was conducted via email which is available online
(source ?). The 7 questions that I sent to him were paragraphs, generally containing multiple
questions within them. His responses are very detailed and cite a total of 15 sources, giving me
plenty of information to work with. This interview was very crucial in gaining understanding that
the survey could not provide.

RESULTS
SURVEY
In terms of influence on political identity, conservatives tend to place more value on family
values and church. While liberals tend to put more value on education and family values. It
seems that most people feel little influence from mass media. Whether or not this is really true
requires more study. But these are both definite sources of propaganda. Hardly anyone wanted to
identify as Communist (1 person) or Socialist (3 people).

JOHN WIELENGA

PERCENTAGE OF TIME
SPENT GETTING NEWS
FROM MEDIUM

Trust Rating of
Cable News
Networks

Trust Rating (1-5)

Talking
15%

3.58

3.55

2.61

Other
Internet
(YouTube,
websites,
etc)
31%

TV
13%

Newspaper
7%
Radio
8%

Social
Media
26%

2.71
2.48

2.19

(Figure 2)

(Figure 1)
All age groups and political
persuasions have a low trust for the
cable news networks

People have moved away from using Television,

Radio, and Print as a medium for news. People are far
more likely to get their information from social media,
and various other websites on the internet in this day
and age. The internet, like any tool, has upsides and
downsides for being a source of news. On one hand, it
is easier and quicker for people to access a vast array
of topics and modes of thought. But if the press is
capable of lying so are random bloggers, social media,
and even alternative and independent journalists.
People tend to not explore the various sources, many
of which do not fit or oppose their way of thinking. It
seems most people focus in on a source of news that
fits their ideology. Thus reinforcing their bias and
limiting their worldview.

For how many people were spending their time getting news from the Internet (as opposed to
more old fashioned means like TV or Radio), not many people reported that as an influence on
their political identity. For example, not one independent listed social media as an influence,
while the average independent surveyed spent 4 hours a week getting news from it (source). It
would seem that these people do not recognize the influence of how much time they spend on
mass media. There have been many controversies regarding social media outlets censoring
conservative and controversial topics.

JOHN WIELENGA

Agreement that "The Mainstream Media deliberately

spreads propaganda"

0.5

Independent Avgs

1.5
Neutral Avgs

2.5
Libertarian Avgs

3.5
Liberal Avgs

4.5

Conservative Avgs

(Figure 3)
Conservatives and liberals were typically willing to agree strongly with the statement In
general, the mainstream media deliberately spreads propaganda. One reason this may be is
because liberals will at least think of FOX as biased, and conservatives tend to see a liberal bias
in the media. It seems from the results though that a broad array of people are aware of the bias
and propaganda in the mainstream media. This does not necessarily mean that people are aware
of the bias in their own sources.
As was stated in the Methods section, an optional comment box at the end of the survey was
added for people to add their thoughts. Here are some of the comments that participants left.

(Survey Monkey)
PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED
One thing that must be understood is that this survey was covering a fairly broad range of
subjects. This survey would be best off with around 1000 respondents. So I was not able to
speculate on correlations about policies and whether or not people were under the effect of
propaganda or their own free will. However, the trend observations presented are the most
concrete conclusions.

JOHN WIELENGA

One of the answers for the question on political influences (self-education) was completely
ambiguous. It could mean any or none of the other categories. I have decided to eliminate this
response in my analysis.
Very early on in the survey distribution there was not independent as a choice for political
affiliation, but there was neutral/dont care and other (please specify). I then had a respondent
who specified that they did not know whether to go with neutral because they identify as
independent. An independent option was added in and I have received many people who have
identified as such since.
A major problem I faced at first was that I was getting too large a liberal sample. My family is
mostly conservative so having them participate helped. But I also remedied this by posting up
my link on conservative news outlets and groups on Facebook. I have also attempted to
strengthen my libertarian sample in this manner. This technique has been successful in gaining a
more representative sample. There is now a good deal of both liberals and conservatives, and
also other samples like independents and libertarians.
A decent amount of people did not answer some of the questions on the last page. This may be
because they do not understand the policies that were asked, or that they are not willing to
address their bias and opinionate on propaganda, or a plethora of other possibilities. I have
created a second copy of my survey, removing the prior mentioned self-education option. A
text box has been added at the end (Optional) Is there anything you would like to say on this
subject?, to give me more feedback. Surveys that were massively incomplete were deleted.
INTERVIEW

James is an independent journalist who lives in Japan and has a Youtube(source) with hundreds
of episodes and a website at www.corbettreport.com/. He writes articles on economics, society,
politics, history and a vast array of topics, and gave a lecture at TedxGroningen on his personal
experiences as an independent journalist(source). He has a great understanding on the topics of
this research because he has immersed himself in them since 2007. His responses were very
thorough, which has helped my understanding greatly on this matter. Subjects that we spoke on
were objectivity in journalism, bias and propaganda. The questions (source) asked were of
particular interest in my research because I could not directly answer them through my survey
results alone.

The first thing that struck me from our conversation was his response to the second question,
when I asked him about the validity of objective journalism. He responded, Nope. Let me be as
explicit as I can be: there is no such thing as objective journalism There are only admitted
biases and hidden biases. (source)Objectivity is impossible for any human. James offered a
JOHN WIELENGA

logical argument to this assertion. Don't believe me? Here's a test: you have to edit a 30 minute
news program tonight that objectively presents the news of the day. What stories do you include?
Who do you talk to for each story? Whose responses do you present and how do you present
them? (source). Objectivity is a false ideal to expect from the world. The closest thing well get
to being objective is for us to be willing to listen to as many different perspectives as possible.
------- what is objective journalism?------More people are turning towards social media and the internet for their news. Facebook is under
public scrutiny with the recent revelation that they have been suppressing articles that come up in
their trending newsfeed. I asked James how he felt about Facebook and social media in general
regarding the recent controversy. This is a problem that seems unique to outlets in the age of
social media, which promises the ability to be truly democratic in the sense that they can
actually rank content objectively by views or likes or shares. However, no major social media
outlet has delivered on this promise yet. He went on to describe how Twitter, Reddit, Digg and
Google have all suppressed controversial topics.

Encyclopedia Britannica defines Propaganda as information, especially of a biased or

misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view
(source). I spoke with James on this subject. The following are just a few of the examples he
cited.

VNRs are Video News Releases, they are also called Fake News. These are segments that are
broadcasted as if they are a news report, but are really paid for by a government agency or
corporate entity. The government guide for this process describes them like this A video news
release (VNR) is the television version of the printed press release, translating the printed word
into the language of moving pictures. It is distributed via satellite to television stations
nationwide (source). Essentially providing a covert form for government and corporate PR to
market to the public.
The Pentagon Pundit scandal was revealed during the George W Bush administration, on April
2008. The explosive report revealed that since 2002 the administration was having the Pentagon
funnel propaganda through analysts on cable news networks (source). The primary goal was
simply to win over approval for a possible invasion of Iraq. None of the corporate news outlets
would even touch this story because of their own conflict of interest. Not only is this immoral,
but it is completely unconstitutional. It has become blatantly obvious that we do not have a free
or fair press.

JOHN WIELENGA

DISCUSSION

Aside from a few design flaws, the survey supports a lot of my initial expectations. There was a
sort of psychological emphasis on the last few questions, this was to assess how much people
recognize their own bias. One thing I must admit is that I did not expect was the overall
agreement with the statement In general, the mainstream media deliberately spreads
propaganda. The answer is represented on a scale of 1(Strongly Disagree) to 5(Strongly Agree).
The average is currently sitting at 4.28 on Survey Monkey. The survey supports the Gallup poll
results (source) that there is a low trust and approval of the cable news networks, including
CSPAN.
The public is well aware of others bias, but not of their own (survey). Bias is something that is
well understood in areas like psychology. Essentially every news report is subjective and has
bias. Because we as humans are limited by bias and perception in our attempts to expose truth.
We are also limited in our ability to perceive lies. Therefore, since news is produced by human
beings, it inherits our bias. We should be wary of anyone who claims objectivity.
The effects of Propaganda can be intensified when television is its medium. Have you ever
noticed how people tend to zone out while watching TV? An article by Melissa Melton
highlights some little known effects that TV has on the psyche. Melissa explains that within one
minute of television viewing, the human brain switches from Beta to Alpha waves. Beta waves
are primarily associated with logical thought processes. Alpha waves are associated with a more
relaxed, daydreaming like state. According to these findings alone, it does not take a large stretch
of the imagination to say that frequent television viewing could be called 'mind control'.
Especially with the media's constant use of buzzwords and ideological programming (not to
mention the advertising industry). It also states that we never forget images that we are exposed
to on the TV, essentially desensitizing us (source).

By definition any editorial could be considered propaganda. Propaganda is a tool, it can

overthrow truly oppressive regimes, or it can be used to fuel them and to suppress information.
James described the effects of propaganda as being a feedback loop where:
Someone has an affinity to a certain ideology so they are attracted to media outlets that
share that viewpoint. As a result, they tend not to be exposed to information that goes
against this worldview, thus further strengthening the already existing beliefs of the
person and ensuring that they will be less interested in media that does not share that
worldview. (source)

Of the networks listed, surveyors found local news stations to be the most trustworthy (source).
This is a sense of trust that I also had before I had researched Video News Releases. I came
across a documentary on the subject by a man .who had captured and
JOHN WIELENGA

recorded hundreds of hours of raw footage on his satellite. It is absolutely stunning to see behind
the scenes footage of Candidates and Presidents being coached on how to dodge tough questions.
I could not describe the impact of this documentary on my research, the leaked videos speak for
themselves. Still in disbelief and a bit skeptical I researched the topic more and found studies and
articles with more proof. The website www.prwatch.org had an article entitled Fake TV News:
Video News Releases which summarized its research as follows. From June 2005 to March
2006, the Center for Media and Democracy documented television newsrooms' use of selected
video news releases (VNRs) and satellite media tour (SMT) interviews (source). The report
showed 36 examples of corporate entities who hired a PR firm to produce fake news. Here you
can see the original VNR and examples of it being spun into the stories of Local News outlets.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

We cannot expect objectivity from any news source. Every journalist has bias which carries
over into their news. Ideological journalism has benefits and detriments. It can be used to
brainwash us or to set us free from oppression. Most people only understand the negative
connotation of words like bias and propaganda.
We will never eliminate bias or find some system of objectivity to maintain it. Its only when we
confront our own bias that we should worry about others bias. Only then we will be able to put
aside our ideological differences and settle on facts, and sometimes reach a common ground.
Maybe we should teach subjects such as psychology and philosophy at a younger age. There are
millions of different worldviews and only two partisan ideologies in the mainstream airwaves.
We need to continuously be skeptical and ask questions. We need to be willing question our own
understanding. Debate is a healthy part of any society. When we present our argument we should
be willing to state our bias, and have a truly open mind. We should be more willing to look at
information that we may disagree with or find unbelievable. When we do not have a decent
understanding on a particular subject we should be willing to accept it. It is ultimately our own
responsibility to inform ourselves. The internet is our new frontier for journalism. It not only
allows us to learn, but to be our own journalists, to teach. It is currently our greatest and possibly
last hope to be able to access and understand the world. The internet has the power to free or
enslave us. For every argument that a person can make there is some factoid on the internet to
support it. We must continue to resist the risk of censorship, which has been introduced through
bills like SOPA and PIPA(source).

JOHN WIELENGA

10

REFERENCES
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APPENDIX A SURVEY ANSWER AVERAGES

HOURS PER WEEK SPENT GETTING NEWS FROM:

TV

Newspaper

Radio

Social Media

Other Net (youtube, websites, etc)

2.81

1.61

1.71

5.54

6.63

Convo
3.13

TRUST RATING OF SOURCE FROM LOWEST (1) TO HIGHEST (7)

FOX

CNN

2.19

2.61

MSNBC CSPAN ABC/CBS/NBC Local News Outlets

2.48

3.55

2.71

3.58

AGREEMENT WITH STATEMENT. RATING LOWEST (1) TO HIGHEST (5)

"We need comprehensive immigration reform
"Guns don't kill people. People kill people."

with a path to full and equal citizenship."

3.74

3.97

"The Federal government needs to increase

"Free trade is destroying America."

the minimum wage to 15$."

3.33

3.03

The news sources you favor MOST are biased The news sources you favor LEAST are biased
3.29

4.43

"In general, the Mainstream Media deliberately spreads propaganda."

4.5

JOHN WIELENGA

13

APPENDIX B INTERVIEW

Confronting the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity

by James Corbett
corbettreport.com
May 28, 2016
Of the many under-appreciated gems in The Corbett Report archive, my podcast episode on "The
Myth of Journalistic Objectivity" may be one of the most important. Not only does it expose a
few of the many examples of bias in the mainstream media (from Bilderberger Charlie Rose to
World Federalist Walter Cronkite to CIA Anderson Cooper), it also lays out in detail why the
idea that journalism can ever be "objective" at all is not just a pipe dream, but a dangerous
delusion.
Following on from that expose, I was recently contacted by John Wielenga about a research
project on 'Mainstream Media Bias and Propaganda' that he is conducting for a class that he is
enrolled in. The Q&A that he conducted with me for that class is instructive about the ways that
the media can shape and distort our view of reality, and why subjectivity in journalism is
unavoidable, why it should be embraced, and how the onus is on each of us to temper our own
biases by avoiding the online echo chamber. To that end, I present that Q&A here in its entirety.
JOHN WIELENGA: You are an independent journalist with your own website and many
videos on YouTube that cover a broad array of subjects. How long have you been a journalist?
Why is it that you chose to become an independent journalist? What are some of the benefits and
detriments?
JAMES CORBETT: Let me start with the straightforward answers to these questions. I founded
The Corbett Report in 2007 and it has been my full time occupation since 2011. I have talked at
some length in the past about why I became an independent journalist, perhaps most notably in
the lecture I delivered at TEDxGroningen in 2014. In short, I was motivated by the outrage I felt
at the discrepancy between the information I was able to find online and the information I had
been force fed by mainstream media my whole life. Luckily, we live in an age where I was able
to do something about that problem (namely, start my own website), and now my reports have
been viewed tens of millions of times by people around the world.
But it seems your questions beg a more fundamental question: what really IS a "journalist?" Am
I one? Are you? I'm not being facetious here. The concept had a more defined outline in the days
of radio and TV and newspapers, but with the advent of blogs and vlogs and cell phone cameras
and social media, the line between capital J "Journalist" and mere "civilian" has become blurrier.
I've toyed with the idea that we're all journalists now, but perhaps it's better to say that we're all
editors now. Instead of relying on the editorial decisions of a few trusted media outlets to spoonJOHN WIELENGA

14

feed us the daily news, we can now turn to literally millions of online sources from anywhere on
the planet to sort through information and construct the daily news for ourselves. Perhaps an
"independent journalist" like myself is just someone who publishes their own editorial content to
the web instead of keeping it to themselves?
At this point I'm not sure how useful any of these labels are in describing the information
gathering/sorting/sharing processes that modern technology has enabled. But for the sake of ease
I just put "Editor" on my business card.
JW: After that I watched one of your videos, where you explain that truly Objective coverage is
an impossible feat for humans. Would you agree though that Objective and Ideological coverage
are really a spectrum, and we should strive to be more Objective to get to a more middle ground?
JC: Nope. Let me be as explicit as I can be: there is no such thing as "objective journalism."
There are only admitted biases and hidden biases.
Don't believe me? Here's a test: you have to edit a 30 minute news program tonight that
objectively presents the news of the day. What stories do you include? Who do you talk to for
each story? Whose responses do you present and how do you present them? Every single one of
these choices and all the millions of smaller decisions that arise in the making of such a program
all stem from a subjective, ideologically informed worldview. Every one of them.
I think what most people believe to be the ideal of "objective" journalism is merely "he said/she
said" journalism, where the journalist presents one side, then the other, then throws their hands
up and tells the audience to decide. That is not objective journalism. Again, why this story
instead of another? Who chooses how the story is framed, contextualized and presented to the
audience? What do you assume the audience already knows, and what do you have to tell them?
Which sources do you contact for comment? If there is an issue in the history of the world that
only has two sides to it I have yet to encounter it, but assuming such a two-sided (and ONLY
two-sided!) issue exists, who gets to speak for each side? Again, all of this is subjective and
ideologically informed.
For me, the real danger is in assuming there is an "objective" viewpoint behind these
fundamentally subjective editorial decisions, or even that such a viewpoint is a type of
unattainable goal that is still worth striving for. That assumption enables many outlets to hide
their ideological perspective under a veneer of "objectivity." The more up-front that outlets are
about their worldview and their perspective, then the easier it is for the public (which, you'll
remember, now consists of a multitude of individual editors) to account for those biases and seek
alternate perspective from another outlet.
JW: You also highlighted some features and instances of Propaganda. I envision that branching
off from Ideological coverage there is a sub spectrum between (subjective) Truth and
Propaganda. Is this an accurate description?
JC: Well I do concede (without, I hope you'll forgive me, offering proof) that there is an
externally existing independent reality, and as such it is possible to make statements of fact about
the world that are objectively true or false. But I take it that we can all agree that statements of
facts about the world ("Politician A said 'xyz' today") are not journalism. Journalism is when we
JOHN WIELENGA

15

put those facts into a narrative consisting of a series of such facts that together tell a story of
some sort.
The upshot of this is that all journalism is "propaganda" in its original sense of "an attempt to
persuade the reader of some viewpoint." That propaganda can either take the explicit form
("Bashar al-Assad is a madman who just likes killing his own citizens and the moderate rebels
are freedom fighters who are just hungry for democracy") or the implicit form ("No conversation
about the money trail of 9/11 is ever relevant to a discussion of what happened that day.")
JW: According to data collected from my survey, a large number of millennials get their news
from Facebook. Around the same amount use YouTube, blogs and alternative sites to get news.
How 'Objective' do you feel the Facebook news feed is, regarding the new controversy?
JC: The ironic thing about the new Facebook newsfeed scandal is that Facebook is being
lambasted for doing what every other news outlet in the world does, namely curating their news
feed. The only difference is that they have been pretending that there is some neutral algorithm
that is automatically generating the list of "trending" stories instead of a team of editors deciding
which content should or should not be included.
This is a problem that seems unique to outlets in the age of social media, which promises the
ability to be truly democratic in the sense that they can actually rank content objectively by
views or likes or shares. However, no major social media outlet has delivered on this promise
yet.
Google Video had the "problem" of "problematic" videos about 9/11 truth and the Federal
Reserve and other non-mainstream topics showing up in their "Top 10" videos each day, so they
shifted their top 10 ranking off their front page and shunted it into a difficult-to-access sidebar.
Then they changed the algorithm. Then they scrapped the top 10 altogether. Then they shut down
Google Videos, bought out YouTube, and scrapped YouTube's front page in favor of individuallytailored front pages full of videos from channels you're already subscribed to or videos that
YouTube "recommends" based on your past history.
Digg was an extremely popular social content aggregator that allowed visitors to vote up posts
that they thought were important. Again, there was the "problem" of the "wrong" kinds of stories
being voted up (i.e. stories promoting Ron Paul's 2008 presidential run) so they began using
"bury brigades" and assigning certain promoted users the powers to single-handedly veto
trending stories off the site's homepage.
Reddit has also had its share of controversy, with various subreddits having controversial policies
about what websites users can or can't submit content from, what topics are or are not allowed, or
how certain topics are to be debated. There have been controversies involving paid content being
promoted as a type of covert advertising for corporations and controversial topics being
suppressed.
Twitter has also recently been exposed for the practice of "shadowbanning" users who post
controversial or sensitive content, with their tweets routinely failing to show up in the timelines
of their followers. This is on top of the politicization of the "verified" tag for preferred celebrity
users and the establishment of a "Trust and Safety Council" to police the platform for content
that might hurt people's feelings.
JOHN WIELENGA

16

So, if anything Facebook is in good company. There is no major social media platform that does
not engage in curation, censorship or policing of content in some shape or form. This is not to
say that a truly "objective" popularity-based newsfeed is something to strive for, either.
"LAUGHING CHEWBACCA MASK LADY" has been shared millions of times in the past
week and is likely one of the most shared pieces of media online at the moment. That does not
mean I would appreciate seeing it in a "newsfeed."
And once again we are back to the myth of objectivity, where even deciding whether something
is or is not news is an editorial decision informed by an ideological worldview.
JW: Could you list some recent or current examples of Propaganda produced by the Mainstream
Media? What would you consider to be some "Buzz Words" or "Talking Points" the media uses,
and what's their effect in society?
JC: Do you have a few hundred hours? My mind spins at the idea of itemizing a list of stories
that clearly demonstrate the bias of the mainstream media.
How about the White House-produced "Video News Reports" that were blended in with the
nightly news in direct contradiction to long-standing laws against just such government-funded
domestic propaganda? But maybe that doesn't matter because Congress retroactively passed a
law to make the practice legal.
OK then, how about the "Pentagon Pundit" scandal where the Pentagon fed talking points for
selling the Iraq War to personnel who then appeared as frequent guests on the cable news
networks without disclosing their Pentagon ties?
How about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which purchases favorable coverage of its
activities from outlets like ABC, NPR and The Guardian? Coverage that then promotes the
commercial interests of companies like Monsanto that Gates is a shareholder in.
How about the mainstream media's near universal reliance on sources like the Syrian
Obersvatory for Human Rights and praise for the humanitarian work of the so-called White
Helmets with no investigation into what these organizations are, where they come from or what
they represent?
Need I go on?
JW: I have noticed a lot of Liberal folks who rebut arguments by saying things like "Stop getting
all your news from Fox and Hannity". This statement would suggest a sort of ignorance or denial
of the bias of leftist news outlets. Do you have any thoughts on this?
JC: To contextualize these statements, those on the left will cite the many many, many many
surveys, polls and studies that have been conducted over the past decade showing that Fox News
viewers are the least informed segment of the American population while viewers of more liberal
programming like NPR and the old Jon Stewart Daily Show are the best informed.
As you may have guessed by now, though, the categories of "informed" and "uninformed"
viewers are, like everything else, subjective, ideologically-driven constructs that necessarily
reflect the biases of the researchers. Unsurprisingly, this is exactly how right-leaning media
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outlets have refuted these studies in the past.

The opposite could easily be done to show that those who consume left-leaning media are
woefully uninformed on issues surrounding Benghazigate, the Clinton's many scandals, Obama's
kill list, the R2P doctrine used to justify left-liberal wars of aggression or any number of other
issues that would be dismissed as unimportant, overblown or phantoms of Hillary's infamous
"vast right-wing conspiracy."
So in the end, leftists are woefully uninformed on those issues their critics think are important
and vice versa. But there are many issues that both left and right-leaning mainstream media
ignore completely. I bet I could construct a questionnaire about 9/11 that demonstrates that those
who consume mainstream media know almost nothing about the events of that day or the
subsequent "investigation" into those events.
JW: The biggest problem I am having in my research is finding a way to distinguish the
difference between a person being drawn towards ideological coverage based on confirmation
bias, and the effects that Propaganda has on the reinforcement of the bias of the person. It seems
like a bit of a continuum? Do you have any thoughts on this matter?
JC: A very insightful question. Rather than a continuum, however, I would picture it as a
feedback loop. Someone has an affinity to a certain ideology so they are attracted to media
outlets that share that viewpoint. As a result, they tend not to be exposed to information that goes
against this worldview, thus further strengthening the already existing beliefs of the person and
ensuring that they will be less interested in media that does not share that worldview.
It's a dangerous feedback loop, especially now that we live in the online world where everyone is
their own editor. With thousands of websites catering to every niche in the political universe it is
now possible to insulate oneself from opposing viewpoints in a way that simply was not feasible
in the era of radio/TV/newspaper media. The worst part is that while everyone feels that they are
immune from this phenomenon, in reality we are all prone to the "echo chamber" effect.
This is why it is exceptionally important for news outlets to be upfront with their worldview,
their biases and the ideological constructs through which they determine what constitutes "news"
and how it should be covered. They also need to be up front with their funding sources so the
audience can determine who any given outlet's customers are and how that might sway their
coverage.
I'll say it again; in this era we are all our own editors. This is at once an incredibly freeing and an
exceptionally burdensome realization. We can now sidestep would-be gatekeepers with a few
clicks of the mouse. But at the same time we are now all subject to the whims of our own
internal gatekeepers that would like to keep us within our mental comfort zone at any cost. It is
only by being conscious of inherent media biases and our own ideological position that we can
make the conscious effort to seek out information from a variety of sources, including those that
we disagree with

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