Why mainstream media really sucks
Al Gore says he invented the Internet? Congress declares pizza a vegetable? Federal judge rules that cigarettes have free speech? Europe says water doesn’t prevent dehydration? Based on these headlines, the average American might conclude that a significant portion of the world has suddenly contracted whatever intelligence-sapping disease seems to be plaguing certain Republican presidential candidates.
The problem is that these headlines, and the “reporting” that accompanies them, are saturated with intentional exaggerations and gross misrepresentations of information that serve no other purposes beside attracting audiences and manipulating public opinion.
So, what is fact? And what is fiction?
Congress did not, in fact, declare pizza a vegetable. What Congress did do last week was pass a revised agriculture-appropriations bill, a section of which deals with what school meals should look like. Neither the word pizza, nor any possible synonym for pizza is mentioned in the bill.
The recent pundit babble stems from a section stating only that 1/8 a cup of tomato paste or puree is roughly equivalent to 1/2 a cup of other fruits and vegetables in terms of nutritional value. Yet somehow this is allowed to be contorted, embellished and proclaimed as, “Pizza is now a vegetable!”
The real kicker? Well actually, there are two: the line pertaining to tomato paste is scientifically accurate, and that section of the bill was not even new policy. While 1/8 a cup of tomato paste has a higher sodium content than say, 1/2 a cup of apples, it also has higher levels of calcium, potassium and fiber. Fruits and vegetables all vary in nutritional content by volume.
Lawmakers looking to make school lunches slightly healthier were attempting to get the amount of tomato paste required as the recommended vegetable serving raised to 1/2 a cup, but were defeated. Thus, no rules applying to tomato paste were even changed. The law, in that regard, remained the same as it was before, but mass media outlets chose to trumpet this non-story as some testament to the “ridiculousness” of modern government.
Then we have the cries of “Judge rules cigarettes have free speech!” And where in the world did that idiocy come from? In June 2009, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act gave the FDA the authority to regulate the manufacture and sale of tobacco products. The FDA then mandated that tobacco companies place graphic warning images of tobacco-related illness/death and phone numbers for quitting assistance hotlines on cigarette packages starting in September 2012.
In response, five tobacco companies filed suit against the government claiming the images violate their freedom from speech as granted by the First Amendment.
The actual court case is not expected to be heard until some time next year, but a district judge did recently issue a temporary injunction stating that he agreed with the tobacco companies and they would not have to comply with the possible mandate until 15 months after the actual suit is resolved. The truth of the events is incredibly far removed from “Cigarettes have free speech” and all of the related nonsense.
And then there was the proclamation that “Europe says water doesn’t prevent dehydration.” In case you’re wondering, no, Europe did not say such a thing. What actually happened was that the European Food Standards Authority, which is responsible for evaluating marketing statements made on products claiming that they reduce the risk of disease(s), was presented with this sentence: “The regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration and the concomitant decrease of performance.”
This hypothetical marketing claim (that could be slapped on bottled water if approved) was submitted by two professors purposely seeking to test the EFSA’s criteria.
The claim was rejected because it is scientifically inaccurate and misleading. The “regular consumption” of water does not explicitly prevent dehydration in the future. Drinking seven bottles of water today will do nothing to stop the onset of dehydration tomorrow, especially if you decide to go rock climbing tomorrow in scorching hot weather and only bring a single bottle of water.
Drinking copious amounts of water alone will also do nothing to treat a case of dehydration that is already far gone. Without enough salts to ensure that it is retained (a specific symptom of dehydration), you will urinate out practically all water that you drink trying to treat your condition. That is why hospitals use a saline IV drip, as opposed to simply water, when someone has been admitted due to dehydration.
This obvious penchant for bent truths, absent details and misleading headlines in mainstream media is somehow both alarming and expected. In the back of our minds we all know that there’s probably always a little spin in a story somewhere, but when did it get this bad?
“I know they always say, ‘don’t believe everything you see on TV,’ but to outright lie about stuff doesn’t seem acceptable to me,” said freshman Anthony Harris.
Other students have remarked that it doesn’t seem like something they should get away with.
While some parties are certainly more guilty than others—yet another study has been recently published documenting that Americans who primarily watch Fox News know significantly less accurate information about current events and politics than their peers who watch other channels or read newspapers—the problem of misrepresentation and factual discrepancies seems almost pandemic in the mass media today.
How do we know what to believe and when? I’m afraid I don’t have an answer—only a vague memory of a boy who cried wolf. The best one can do is be skeptical of sensationalist headlines, and do your research when something seems off.
And in case you were wondering, Al Gore never actually said he invented the Internet.
