Half the whole truth...
As Artifact closes down we must remember: it's not about what you read - it's about how much you read it, at the expense of reading everything else...
I’ve worked in the world of media bias for five years now and probably the most important thing I’ve found is this: bias isn’t formed by what is said or how it’s said…
… it’s a function of what is not said — what is left out.
Last month the newscaster above, Maryam Moshiri, was caught giving the middle finger to the camera at the start of a broadcast segment – an internal joke, according to Maryam.
One of our political parties here in the UK then used a still from the clip, much like the still above, to denigrate their opposition’s policy on immigration. Others used it as an opportunity to cast the BBC as unworthy of their funding model. All in all, a split second slip - even a still frame - became a news story for a day. In some quarters.
Making news from thin air
The reason this is important is that it illustrates bias in the media is not about what is said or how it’s said … but about of what it tends to miss out.
Whichever newspaper we read and however balanced we believe its reporting to be, I can promise you they while they are telling you the whole truth … they’re only telling you the whole truth about a fraction of what’s really happening.
This matters because the impact of news is not that it informs you… it’s that it conditions you. It modifies your whole world view.
Conditioning you to think in a certain way isn’t so much linked to the details of what I tell you … it’s a function of the sheer number of times you’re asked to think about the same thing. It’s repetition of an idea that lays down the subtle pathways that later manifest to define your belief system.
Take immigration, as this example above illustrates. The video has nothing to do with immigration. Her finger had nothing to do with immigration (she was imitating the stage-manager’s countdown .. a gesticulation that gets done in front of her, off-camera, all day, every day). But by associating the video with immigration - and by disgusting a lot of people in the process - the subject continues to get airtime and it grows in people’s minds as an issue … without a single immigrant doing or saying anything whatsoever.
The many headed beast
Bias is, of course, also not just political.
It’s geographic: Each country tends to hear a great deal more news about its own country than about anywhere else … so we’re more attuned to our own issues and plight than those of anyone from anywhere else.
It’s gendered: The more we hear about contentious arguments about trans rights, gender violence or abortion rights the more polarised we become on each of these issues. Nuance is lost and teams are picked.
It’s economic: Different publications tend to focus on entirely different aspects of the complexities of fiscal policy, taxation, public spending so that different groups of readers fixate on entirely different challenges, making it harder to reconcile what start to appear as fundamentally different priorities… event though they are parts of the same economic system.
The good fight
I have been working, for five years, to build a decent, politically, economically, geographically and culturally agnostic AI news platform and while my success has only been moderate to date I am by no means done.
I’m not the only one working in this space either. This evening I’m very sorry to read that one of our biggest competitors, Artifact News, founded by Kevin Systrom, the former founder of Instagram, is shutting down after just after a year.
Building in this space is difficult because everyone is addicted to reading their own little section of the whole truth … and simply doesn’t see, much less understand, much less crave what they’re missing out on.
Nevertheless, for us to survive as a culture — for us to avoid fracturing or returning to populism, authoritarianism — we must be able to have a balanced, nuanced debate about what’s ahead of us.
As I said at the new year: 2024 is a watershed year - by any number of standards.
For us to weather the immense cultural disruption that’s coming at us head on, not just from climate change but from the culture change that ubiquitous AI will bring about, we need a better way to see the whole story… not just the little vignettes one team or another wants us to see so that we feel on their side (or that they’re on our side) when it comes time to vote.
I’m very sorry to see Artifact go. They were fighting the right fight.
The world needs more makers prepared to build not what the world wants … but what the world needs.
Safety, humanity, enlightenment, and purpose thrive in the light of the whole truth.