Distortions in the information that reaches us.

[Anarchy]

This isn't about our own distortions, it's about the often unintended biases in the information that we use to build our picture of the world around us.

Please contribute your own examples. My first example came up when I was thinking about another thread, and I realised that there are whole separate topic that deserves a dedicated thread.

OK, it was about the biases that are inherent in reporting gun use and misuse. Sorry that it's a contentious area.

OK, someone who is approached by what appear to be potential attackers, who perhaps go as far as testing their potential prey out, walk past, bumping them, turn around and come back asking "got a light mate?"

If the intended victim stands their ground with a hand in their jacket, looking like theyre about to draw a gun, and says calmly and assertively

"back off, right now"

And the members of the group say "ok, calm down" and back off at go away.

That isn't news. No one was attacked or hurt. No one robbed or raped. It probably doesn't even make it into the precinct's desk sergeant's desk diary, let alone a local weekly news paper.

Even if a defensive shot is fired. It's likely to perhaps make a local news bulletin "man was shot, he's been arrested on a misdemeanor charge of..."

A criminal misuse of guns where there's blood and dead bodies, will make regional news, and perhaps in the case of school shootings, they'll make the national and international news for weeks on end.

What are the natural conclusions that are drawn from that distortion?

 

[Supervixn]

I'm confused lol

 

[Friday]

A criminal misuse of guns where there's blood and dead bodies, will make regional news, and perhaps in the case of school shootings, they'll make the national and international news for weeks on end.

What are the natural conclusions that are drawn from that distortion?

How do you see that as a distortion?

 

[Justmehere]

I’ll give an example of the distortion of info that can come towards a person:

When I was enduring flooding in my area, I went out for a walk. I passed by a group of news crews. They were filming what they said was deep water. It was about 3’’ of street flooding.

But, about 6 blocks away, cars were being swept away at rapid pace.

If I hadn’t known of the greater flooding not far away, I might have scoffed and shrugged off the melodramatic reporters.

 

[Anarchy]

There's only the one side of the whole good bad and indifferent spectrum that gets widespread coverage.

I used the example of guns because that's what I was thinking about first, but I guess reporting of people with mental health issues is another possible example. The information which reaches us via the mainstream is overwhelmingly the extreme bad end of the spectrum.

Users here get to see much more of that spectrum, but I can understand why some people with little first hand experience might automatically fear violence from people who have mental health issues.

Hope that I'm making sense, the distortion is in the information we're receiving, rather than due to our own filters.

 

[Friday]

There's only the one side of the whole good bad and indifferent spectrum that gets widespread coverage.

Ah. That makes sense, now! Thanks!

 

[littleoc]

Misleading information, in a way?

 

[scout86]

A number of years ago, I worked for a large highway contractor. The company was building a large bridge over the Mississippi River. When a bridge is under construction, stuff moves and it makes noises. A certain amount of that is normal. This bridge, though, did something really odd. The guy who was in charge of cranes for the company ( he'd be like a general in charge of the bridge crews), his foreman, and two sons of the company's owner (one was responsible for all field operations and the other was responsible for over all everything else) went to the job site to inspect the bridge and try to determine if it was safe to continue work. Everyone else was off the bridge at the first sign of trouble. The bridge collapsed with those guys on it. The foreman didn't make it off the bridge. One of the sons managed to escape by jumping to the old bridge, near by, and pulling himself up.

One of the local media outlets really attacked the company. NONE of their coverage mentioned who these guys were. They were referred to as "employees" and it was implied (IMO) that the big shots sent in some peons to check things out. The media outlet went on at great length and in much detail about the company's many situations for safety violations. What they didn't say was that the actual number was relatively small, compared to the rest of the industry and most of them were for stupid things like inspectors finding that someone had patched an extension cord with electrical tape, or didn't put on a reflective vest before they jumped out of a loader to shovel some debris off the street at the end of the day. (It was a dead end street, as I recall, and that actually happened, a friend of mine was running the job.)

If I hadn't worked for the company, and didn't know better, I'd have thought it was a really bad outfit. In the end, it turned out the bridge collapsed because of an engineering error. It would have gone down sooner, except that the company had chosen to use a piece of reinforcing steel that was stronger than the plans called for.

There was an attempt to fine the company. The company won, but coverage of that was minimal. There's no way anyone in the general public could have known what the real situation was. None of the media covered it, it's just that the one station went way further blaming the company than the rest did.

I'm sure stuff like that happens all the time. It happens when immigrants get labeled as criminals, based on individual cases, in spite of the fact that more objective statistics say they are actually less likely to commit a violent crime than the general population.

I actually think one of the reasons gun sales go up after shootings is that people want to get a gun while they can. There was a big run on guns an ammunition when President Obama was elected. The rumor was "he's going to take our guns". Didn't happen, wasn't going to happen, and it wouldn't surprise me if the people who make & sell guns and ammo didn't push the idea as a weird ad campaign. The thing is, unless you actually have independent confirmation of the facts, how do you know?

 

[Anarchy]

Misleading information,

Yes, and not for any underhand reasons (underhand stuff does exist in news coverage, but I don't want to confuse the thead by delving into that as well ).

It's just the way that human attention works, and what we consider newsworthy.

 

[Anarchy]

@scout86 I think I saw a TV thing about that bridge collapse.
Sorry, I never thought I'd know someone who had first hand knowledge of it.

Steel deck? Something about the plate on undersurface buckling or detaching?

Sorry:hug::hug::hug:

 

[Anarchy]

Yeah, Obama is arguably the most successful gun salesman of all time.

"Unintended Consequences" is a phrase that has multiple meanings amongst activist gun owners. Including being the title of a direct warning novel by John Ross.

The massive sales of "black rifles" sen'th a very clear message. People were voting with their wallets (economic democracy),

and they weren't buying the guns to then turn up a few months latet to surrender them when told to.

I guess that is a distortion that didn't make the mainstream news because the journalists either never spotted it, or didn't want to believe it.

 

[Fadeaway]

I have read plenty of news stories that tried and convicted people before the courts did. I have read the comments sections on these articles where people were calling for the person to be tied to a car and drug through the streets or worse. Only to see an very small blurb later on showing thee person was innocent and yet people had already made horrible judgments about this person.

One that I recall was a local story where a toddler had gotten out of the house in the middle of the night and was hit. The were accusations of neglect and the parents being drunk or on drugs, and next thing you there was a riveting tale spun by the media of cocaine abuse. In a small follow story (the child survived) the parents were found to be free from drugs and alcohol and the child just outsmarted the child safety locks while the parents were asleep.

Another that comes to mind is the Columbine shooters and video games. Video games and violence got huge amounts of blame, but the Columbine shooter in fact, never into video games at all. Never played them. There was even a false report made by one of the investigators that was eventually debunked. (I did a college paper on it) The results though was a huge scare on video game violence leading to actual violence. The video games lead to actual violence myth has been thoroughly debunked.