Media Comments from Sisyphus

April 25, 2005

Tim, at Sisyphean Musings, is on a news-rhetoric roll, with a series of comments based on DIKW information theory -- the Data / Information / Knowledge / Wisdom hierarchy.  It's always useful to know where we think we're perched, and the links here are mighty edumacational. The Rhetorica Rhetoric is also a cool resource, to which his links led.

Update: You know, just when we think all our former readers are in Machu Piccu, or somewhere, we post something that's too much off-the-cuff shorthand, and comments, phone calls, e-mails pull us up short.  Thanks guys. The point of the above paragraph is to highlight a 5-part series on the rhetoric of trust in media.  The hierarchy of data, which leads to information, which leads to knowledge, which, occasionally, leads to wisdom, was just the push-off topic.  Sorry for the confusion, and big thanks to Chrystal and DG.

In another vein, as if our own clumsy rhetoric leaves us any room to speak, sometimes at PressThink the discussion of "bias" goes right off the rails. Tim's several posts on bias based on underlying mental-model structure, through excellent links to Rhetorica (which also opens up the looming class issue), can help ground the discussion for anyone who wants to "get it." Just how intellectually curious is it to dismiss "MSM bias" perceptions as some kind of clanging symbol?

Hands over ears:  "la-la-la-I-can't-heeeeeeaaaarrrr-you!"

Update: See the comments. We do appreciate Jay Rosen, his engagement and interest. He elucidates the ways in which I got it wrong, especially in the realm of whether there is any more to say or any new places to apply a discussion of "liberal bias." He may have Heard It All and Then Some. He could be right. Either way, we appreciate him, all he has accomplished in PressThink and his astonishing energy. (Do we need a typographic symbol for non-sarcasm here. Somehow the smiley face doesn't strike the right note.)

Update cont'd: Nonetheless, the perception of liberal bias is embedded in the public discourse (see interviews with the author of South Park Conservatives), and unless the source of such a comment is to be dismissed out of hand (a biased thing to do, n'est ce pas?), the perception is a fact, its correlative up for discussion.

We here think the subject is neither dead nor futile, although we offer our friends full license to be tired of discussing it. We get mightily tired of a lot of stuff, too, and refuse to become enmired. De gustibus. Everyone has a right to triage his energies, which upon writing it begins to sound like a mantra for a typing exercise. Somewhat hysterically trailing off here.

Never mind, too complex....

Update:  Maybe there is a little something to the controversy and the crisis of confidence in the MSM, a little currency, after all.

Via Roger L. Simon

Update: Twice.

Comments

[Chrystal Cain]

I am not too sure I understand DIKW -- I tried following some of your link resources and it just didn't make sense to me -- nonetheless, it sounds pretty fascinating. I hope some day to learn more.

[Jay Rosen]

You got it wrong. It's not hands over ears, "I can't heeeeeeaaaarrrr-you," it's, "I have every note of this song stored permanently in my brain, and couldn't wipe it from my memory if I tried."

You got it wrong. It's not that I don't want to face criticisms along the lines of "liberal ideologues disguised as impartial journalists, who populate so many of our newsrooms." It's that having examined every variety of them, and listened to their logic, seen the same proofs cited and participated in hundreds of exchanges, there is nothing more for me to understand about this particular claim. Therefore it is just "sound" to me.

You got it wrong.

[Sisyphus]

That's a good update for the essence of DIKW theory.

I'm advocating visualizing the news (among other communication systems) in layers. It's a model, not necessarily the only one, or one that's useful for everybody.

DIKW gives a layered texture to the content we might find on the pages of a newspaper or on our TV screens.

I am also advocating thinking about the journalistic process (http://sisypheanmusings.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_sisypheanmusings_archive.html#KairosMsgControl2bm , click on Excerpt) in layers.

[Sisyphus]

GH, have you seen "PressThink's Questions and Answers about Media Bias"?
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/05/22/qa_bias.html

In the "After Matter" of that post are links to many more of Jay's posts on media bias.

Jay, perhaps it would be better to respond to the "sound" of the "Sousa march" with a simple link to your Q&A with a sentence or two about why, when you hear the "music", you refer commenters there. I would also like to recommend that you put it on your Hightlights (replace "Maybe Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate").

[Jay Rosen]

Good point, I forgot I wrote that.