A Red Pill Moment

At some time, you have likely had an “a-ha” experience, in which you suddenly stumble onto a new insight. Fans of The Matrix (movie) talk about the red pill and the blue pill. If you take the blue pill, you go on believing what you have been programmed to believe. If you take the red pill, you start learning what is actually going on … what we used to call “the truth”.

Anyone who has been consuming the news lately probably needs to take a red pill right now … if you can find one. Where would you find a red pill? For many people, it may not happen spontaneously. You might need to go through a process … one where you think somewhat deeply for a few minutes.

Without being Einstein, you could perform what he used to call “a thought experiment”. A thought experiment is where you go inside yourself, imagine a scenario, then use the logical side of your mind to analyze the scenario.

A Thought Experiments About the News

Here is the first experiment … Imagine yourself as a reporter sitting in a news room at your computer. The boss calls and says s/he needs a certain type of story by tomorrow. What do you do?

If you are a top staffer, maybe you just receive a story hint and a deadline. If you are lower down the totem pole, perhaps you geta description of the type of story needed and the slant (narrative) to take. If you are a regular staffer, you would already know what slants (narratives) your boss and your organization prefer.

Once you have your deadline, time is of the essence, so you begin to rush around gathering any information that could help you get the job done. Then, you set an earlier deadline for completing your writing to allow for review and approval by the main deadline. A second person must check, and edit, your story; then it will be published as a news report.

Now, store this newsroom scenario in your head for a minute, and let’s consider a second scenario.

Thought Experiment About a Quality Report on Milk

In the second scenario, you are a quality control inspector on a milk production line whereon milk is being unloaded from several tanker trucks into a single vat where it will be processed, then bottled. In quality control, your job is to look at the whole process, imagine things that could spoil part (or all) of the milk, and then inspect the milk at various points to determine its quality prior to, during, and after bottling. At the end of your inspection, like the reporter, you will write a report.

Now, in the logical side of your mind, compare the newsroom scenario and the milk scenario. Which scenario is more likely to result in an accurate, unbiased report?

A Milk Quality Report is Likely More Accurate Than “The News”

Clearly, there is no contest. The milk scenario, by its nature, is designed to generate an accurate, unbiased report on the quality of the milk. Based on a reveiw of the newsroom scenario, there is absolutely nothing that would suggest that a news report would be either accurate or unbiased.

Your Red Pill Moment

Your “red pill” moment should begin as you wonder why you ever expected that a news report would be accurate or unbiased. If you still believe that a news report would likely be accurate and unbiased, please go back and perform the thought experiments again.

OK. Now we can go on.

I chose the milk analogy, because everybody understands where milk comes from, and I have personal experience as a quality control inspector. As a young quality inspector I was allowed me to learn what the words “accurate” and “unbiased” actually mean. If you never worked in quality control, you may have a slightly looser grip on exactly what these terms mean.

While my quality control experience would help anyone understand the degree of inaccuracy and bias that is designed into news reporting, I actually had a spontaneous “red pill moment” about news reporting before my quality control job. In case, you may have had a similar moment, I will tell you about it.

Here is my personal anecdote.

My Red Pill Moment

I had my red pill moment, and quit trusting the news, in 1968, when Walter Cronkite suddenly changed his mind on Vietnam, triggering an avalanche of mind changes around the world about Vietnam.

Because I was 23 and subject to the draft, my interest was intense, to say the least. I was amazed and shocked that Cronkite made such a strong reversal in such a short period of time. To a scientist in training, it seemed almost fishy.

Cronkite’s sudden change of mind was in response to the so-called Tet Offensive, a Vietnam War battle that began in January 1968. Following Tet, two conflicting narratives began to emerge. In a new narrative, the one embraced by Cronkite, it was a terrible loss for South Vietnam, a catastrophe for the US, and a big win for North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. The counter-narrative was that the Tet Offensive was a surprise, but the South Vietnam and US forces quickly repelled the advance with minimal casualties, and the offensive had failed to achieve its stated objectives. The counter-narrative was ignored by Cronkite, and dropped by most media.

In the mainstream media, following Cronkite, the catastrophe narrative quickly began to dominate, supplemented by reports of increased rioting on college campuses. In March, President Johnson announced he would not run for re-election. In April and June, respectively, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. A bad run of luck for the US, to say the least.

Since 1968, the counter-narrative (that the Tet Offensive resulted in a win for the US) seems to have won the day in the history books. Here is what Wikipedia says today.

“Although the initial attacks stunned the allies, causing them to lose control of several cities temporarily, they quickly regrouped, beat back the attacks, and inflicted heavy casualties on PAVN/VC forces. The popular uprising anticipated by Hanoi never happened. “

“The offensive was a military defeat for North Vietnam, as neither uprisings nor ARVN unit defections occurred in South Vietnam.”

What Cronkite’s Reversal on Vietnam Revealed

My point about the Cronkite Vietnam reversal story is that it was my red pill moment when I began to understand that the nightly news is neither accurate nor unbiased. At that moment, I began to understand that network news departments were not engaged in “objective reporting”, but were presenting events selected to support “the story”, the preferred narrative of that reporter and news source.

It seemed implausible to me that Cronkite could have found many objective facts so quickly to justify such a sudden change of mind. He had merely switched suddenly from one narrative to another. I suppose he had his own Red Pill moment.

Since World War II, the news media had mostly followed the narrative that the government were good guys who knew what they were doing. There had always been a counter-narrative (that the government’s conduct of the war was incompetent and evil), but this narrative had mainly been embraced by news sources in North Vietnam, China, and Russia. Suddenly, Cronkite had just switched narratives. Just as surprisingly (to me), the entire mainstream news media followed Cronkite, within a short period of time, over to the new narrative along the lines dreamed up by North Vietnam, China, and Russia, and picked up by Noam Chomsky.

Nowadays, narratives and counter-narratives are no surprise. On a typical night in 2020, you could count on watching CNN and Fox report on the same event while employing two opposing narratives and two opposing sets of facts.

How to Go Forward (What I do)

For every narrative, there is likely a counter-narrative. Once you know this, you should consider that every important news story likely may have a counter-narrative that may be worth knowing about.

This is not as difficult as it sounds. Here is what I actually do. I read the editorial and commentary pages of several news sources. I may skim over so-called “hot news” stories, but I wait for information that slowly leaks out. I try to never watch TV news.

You are probably not a “first responder”. If anything important were to happen, as a citizen, you probably have plenty of time to form an opinion. You do not need to, as they say, “rush to judgment”. You certainly don’t need to arrest anyone, form a mob, demonstrate in the streets, or start a riot until the facts slowly leak out. All you really need to do is reflect on important news events so that, down the road, you can read opinions, decide, and cast a more informed vote.

When anything important actually happens, it soon becomes a subject of discussion on the editorial pages (and in blogs and podcasts). If it doesn’t, it wasn’t very important anyway. In reading opinion columns and op-eds, it is much easier to become aware of the narrative and counter-narrative. Every news source is biased, but in discussing past events, most editorial writers will refer to the counter-narrative in rebuttal. (The other guy may say “such-and-such”, but “so-and-so” is the real truth, this is why he is wrong.)

Once you get the feel for narratives from different news sources, you can often guess what the counter narrative might be. You can locate a news source that will give the counter-narrative a good articulation. Then you can compare the two narratives with your own experience, independent data, whatever, and decide which narrative you think is more likely.

Independent Data

How do you go about getting independent data? Don’t believe there is any independent data in any newspapers, magazines, or blogs. All mags and blogs love trick graphs that are usually deceiving. They rarely give you tables of data. The most important sources of independent data are: (a) things you have seen with your own eyes; and (b) numbers you can look up in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is not unbiased, but they try pretty hard to keep people from posting made-up numbers. As to your own eyes, it helps to be old and to have seen a lot of things. Older people are not always wise, but wise people are usually older.

Anyway. That’s my method. That’s what I do.

Epilogue

Most people tend to follow news sources that usually agree with their own pre-existing narrative. This is not wrong, it is merely incomplete.

Instead of spending time reading “news stories”, I think it is better to read commentaries on big events a while after they happen. By then, more of the truth has had time to leak out. Again, no need to rush to judgment.

The best journalists used to limit their news reporting to facts (nouns and verbs with few adjectives), but those “good journalists” have long since left the building. Today’s so-called news reports are laden with emotional descriptions, and plenty of adjectives, so you can limit their impact on your mind, by ignoring them.

It is always good to read commentary from multiple sources some of which have a narrative that differs from your own. It is possible to locate commentators you like and respect who have a different spin than you do. I like to read Wall St. Journal (WSJ)(center right), NY Times (left), Epoch Times (center right, but not as urban oriented as WSJ and NYT), The Economist (center left and offshore), and, of course, Wikipedia (but mainly for numbers, date, times, not opinions.)

I think it is really important to keep checking the narratives against things you have seen with your own eyes, and numbers you can look up in Wikipedia. In this one, it helps to be old and to have seen a lot of things. Old people are not always wise, but wise people are usually old.

Here is a example of my method. During my entire lifetime, the popular media narrative has been “the only thing wrong with USA schools is that they need more funding”. You can look up in Wikipedia that nearly every state and district have steadily increased their funding of schools for 50 years. During that same time, USA schools have dropped from 1st to 34th in the deleloped world. As a final check, almost everyone you know who is old can read and write pretty well, and almost everyone you know who is young has trouible with readin’, ‘ritin’, and ‘rithmetic.

These things would tend to make you think that something is probably wrong with the popular media narrative about education. Please think on it.

Categories: Commentary