I wish I could find it... if anyone knows the link to this, please post.

I read a study showing people's behavior in regard to which news sources they consider credible and trustworthy.


They found that the following premise, while it seems to make sense:


People watch news in order to be exposed to new information.


... is not true.


They found this instead:


People choose their news sources to be those which affirm ideas that they already believe.


It is rare to find individuals who critically analyze the things they hear and are prepared to accept the logical conclusions they come to, even when they challenge the assumptions that we use to base our relationship to the world around us.

To use an example, my grandfather believes the United States is the end-all-be-all of virtue, honor, and good will in the world. If I show him confessions from the horse's mouth of atrocities our government has committed in our name, he explains, justifies, or refuses to believe that any of it is true.


Is this a surprise?


For people who are interested in staring the beast of reality in the eye, and recognizing it for what it is in order that they may change it to make the world better, how can we make our presentation to stiff-minded individuals so that they will not find our statements to be offensive?


[edit on 15-11-2007 by dionysius9]

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which is a nice way of saying reality is in the eye of the beholder.
I can read something and quite clearly see a word and understand its context and effect on the text around it. Then I will go back and look for that word, and lo and behold, it is gone. I imagined it.
I'm willing to bet this happens a lot more than I am aware of, as how often do you go back and look for a word?

Your Pa, as does everyone, lives under the omnirule: 'I reject your reality and substitute my own.' Immortalized by Mythbusters, the statement rings true even if you might scoff at the suggestion that you have a highly biased way of looking at things, so biased in fact that it alters how you perceive them. I guess a full expression of what I'm saying here would require multiple pages and someone far more gifted with words than I, but the basics still stand. We see things as we want to see them, and it is only through close analysis of both the object of our attention and ourselves that we can begin to have an unbiased view.

I watch the news to hear what's going on in our world. There is no one source of news that I watch, listen to or read. I try to collect all the info I can then sift through it.

I find not one news reporter or source as any more creditable that the other. Which brings me to why I am an ATS member. Without one tiny doubt I beleive the real truth will be eventually found here at ATS.

Our members and staff will not stop untill the "news" is totally disected, discounted, discovered, and proven real or false.

As I continue writting I realize ATS is my most respected news source.


Long live the people and freedom to question the news.

I love you ATS.

A certain bible quote seems to come to mind.

3For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

2 Timothy 4:3-4 (King James Version)

3For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

4And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.