This is part of a series on the parallels of misinformation locally and nationally that led me to write Systems out of Balance.
I brought to my meeting with Doug Hoskins, Environmental Analyst for the DEP, a series of maps to show how the Yale Farm Golf Course overlaid watercourses more than would be expected by mere chance, how slope gradients were not the deterrent that applicants claimed, and how the golf course avoided the best land for development more than would be expected by chance. However, the most telling map of all was one the applicants already provided Doug.
Doug showed me a map of slope gradients provided by the Yale Farm developers upon request of the DEP. The map consisted of just slope gradients in gray scale tones and some locational features. Anyone would he hard pressed to distinguish between the slope gradients or to know how they coincided with the golf course layout. Fortunately, I brought with me a map of slope gradients in which slopes under 10% were in yellow tones and slopes over 10% were in red tones. I also overlaid the golf course layout on top of the slope gradients to make clear how much of each hole was either under or over the 10% slope gradients. In other words I provided the DEP what they had requested from the applicants in a form that they could actually use. I watched as Doug shook his head while comparing my map with theirs; I knew my case about misinformation was being made in the comparison.
Misinformation does not need to take the form of outright lies, in fact, it seldom does. Lies open people up to severe retribution should the lies be discovered. Ah, but if you can bury harmful information in an obscure, undecipherable form you not only escape consequences, you’ve fulfilled your obligation. Obscuring information prevails in two ways throughout our society. First, we have an economic philosophy of “Buyers Beware.” Corporations can spend exorbitant sums to promote their products independently of any real merit that they deserve, while important but potentially damaging information can be provided in obscure “gray scales” whose responsibility to decode falls on consumers or legislators.
Second, we have corporate media. People revel in the fact that you can find any information you want on the Internet now. We have entered the Information Age. While that is true we also have information providers, corporate media, adept at promoting select news and information through echo chambers and entertainment. All the information is there to be had, just like that map of gray scale slope gradients, but the information that sticks and sells is the information echoed by a corporate media that grows more consolidated and centralized each year.
Corporate media became a central focus for my research into how we were being misinformed, with several illustrative examples occurring during the election year of 2004. In August of 2004 two “news” stories were getting significant play. Corporate media was either echoing opinions that Kerry did not earn his war medals, or that Bush had connections that kept him out of Vietnam. In response people were debating whether corporate media had a conservative bias or a liberal bias, which had to please corporate media executives. In the end, the corporate media manifests a corporate bias only.
Thus in that same month of August two news stories came out on the same day about high levels of uninsured and people in poverty, a juxtaposition that almost sells itself for a media with a mind to provide sensational entertainment. The country at large heard nary a word. Providing such news might have been an indictment against one of the two presidential candidates, but more importantly it would have been an indictment against our economic system. You could have found reports of these disturbing trends on a Friday afternoon, but otherwise this news was relegated to the “gray scales” of obscurity for the 2004 election year.
We all know how corporate media called the 2004 election wrong. From a scientist’s/empiricist’s point of view the corporate media response to this was bizarre. Statisticians have refined the techniques for sampling so that they have become very accurate. Any scientist knows this, so that when the sampling fails multiple times in the same election, our instinct would not be to blame the sampling. Yet this is what corporate media did to itself. We witnessed corporate media competing with their mea culpas over the difference between sampling and election results. You would have to go to sources outside of corporate media to know that 89% of the Democrats supported Kerry nation wide, yet in Ohio districts moderately Democratic with Diebold voting machines they bucked prevalent patterns by splitting their vote.
I would not claim that there was a nationwide conspiracy to control the election. But the company that produces Diebold voting machines is owned by a staunch Republican loyalist. An empiricist’s curiosity would be stimulated by all these factors, but corporate media can prove to be most incurious about certain matters.
The week after the 2004 election I turned on Rush Limbaugh to conclude an experiment I had been conducting. Up until then the longest time it took to hear Limbaugh whine about something after tuning him in was 26 seconds. If he was ever going to take a Reaganesque approach of “morning in America” this was now the time, with Republicans controlling everything in expanding measure. Yet I did not have to wait even one second, as he was in the midst of a diatribe about Democrats complaining about the elections. Good Lord! I’d hate to be married to that misanthrope!
Limbaugh confirms a point of emphasis of corporate media. They are to entertain rather than inform, and they are to entertain by drawing out the dark side of humanity. This is driven home on a sticker I saw just this morning. The back windshield of a pick-up truck had the saying “I rather hunt with Cheney than ride with Kennedy.” As an ethical statement I concur. What Ted Kennedy did in evading responsibility for a death is worse than what Dick Cheney did in delaying news about shooting someone in the face.
Yet the sticker was really a political statement, not an ethical one. The real importance of the statement goes beyond the politics favored by the truck owner. What that sticker declares is that all politicians are ethically challenged, none are to be trusted, so stick with “your bastard” rather than empower the other side.
Think about that for a moment. Will Republicans ever be able to hold a Ted Kennedy accountable? Will Democrats ever be able to hold a Dick Cheney accountable? The best chance we have of ever holding politicians accountable is by their own party members. Yet the special brand of groupthink known as party loyalty forbids that. Party loyalists bend over forwards to excuse the detestable behaviors of their own, while continually escalating the negativity and the whining about the other side.
2004 was so depressing I felt compelled to do something for positive change. Fortunately, there was a bit of good news to help give me the courage and the confidence to embark on such a quest. After Doug Hoskins looked at my data he declared emphatically: “You’ve GOT to show this to the federal agencies!” So I made an appointment to share my data with Steven DiLorenzo of the Army Corp of Engineers. Meanwhile, the DEP did not follow through with a tentative approval, but instead made further requests for information from the Yale Farm applicants.
My meeting with the ACOE and other federal agencies bore fruit as well, though that fruit would not be picked until 2005.
Tags: Corporate Media, Cultural Misinformation, Yale Farm Golf Course
