Sep 25, 2008

Does ideology trump facts?

On the ars technica blog an article by Jonathan M Gitlin suggests that it does.
- in 2003 a study found that viewers of Fox News were significantly more misinformed about the Iraq war, with far greater percentages of viewers erroneously believing that Iraq possessed WMDs or that there was a credible link between the 9/11 attack and Saddam Hussein than those who got their news from other outlets like NPR and PBS. This has led to the rise of websites like FactCheck and SourceWatch.
I suggest that what is organizing all of this is the deep rooted conflict of idea, or paradigm, which we all hold close and dear to us at a metaprogramming level in the unconscious mind. The irrational mind cannot see a truth value in it's objective state. If you present a fact to the irrational mind, it will not look like a fact, it will look like a falsehood and be clouded with the personal emotional charges that govern that particular individual.

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