Public Opinion (book) - Approaches To The World Outside

Approaches To The World Outside

The second part describes the social, physical, and psychological barriers impeding man’s ability to faithfully interpret the world; “Chapter II: Censorship and Privacy”; “Chapter III: Contact and Opportunity”; “Chapter IV: Time and Attention”; and “Chapter V: Speed, Words, and Clearness” describe how, for a given event, all of the pertinent facts are never provided completely and accurately; how, as a fraction of the whole, they often are arranged to portray a certain, subjective interpretation of an event. Often, those who know the “real” (true) environment construct a favorable, fictitious pseudo-environment in the public mind to suit his or her private needs. Propaganda is inherently impossible without a barrier of censorship — between the event and the public — thus, the mass communication media, by their natures as vehicles for informational transmission, are immutably vulnerable to manipulation.

The blame for this perceptual parallax does not fall upon the mass media technology (print, radio, cinema, television) or logistical concerns, rather, upon certain members of society who attend to life with little intellectual engagement, because “they suffer from anemia, from lack of appetite and curiosity for the human scene. There is no problem of access to the world outside. Worlds of interest are waiting for them to explore, and they do not enter”, thus:

1. The buying public: The bewildered herd must pay for understanding the unseen environment through the mass communications media. The irony is that — although the public’s opinion is important — they must pay for its acceptance. Hence, people will be selective, and will buy the most factual media at the lowest price: “For a dollar, you may not even get an armful of candy, but for a dollar or less people expect reality/representations of truth to fall into their laps”. Hence appears the media’s duality, i.e. their social function of transmitting public affairs information and their business profit role of surviving in the market.
2. Nature of news: People publish already-confirmed news that are thus less disputable. Officially available public matters will constitute “the news”, and unofficial (private) matters either are unavailable, less available, or are used as “issues” for propaganda.
3. News truth and conclusion: The function of news is to signal an event, and that signaling, eventually, is a consequence of editorial selection and judgement; thus does journalism create and sow the seeds (news) that establish public opinion.