Lippman notes

LIPPMAN NOTES:

CHAPTER 1

People were carrying on trading, ordering supplies, manufacturing orders etc- not realizing that Europe was at war.

So they carried on operating in an imagined environment which was obsolete.

Knowledge and pseudo environments

We know the larger world indirectly. We are not in the war torn northern areas. So we do not see drone attacks.

We treat the shadows as if they are real

We treat our image of the world as if it is reality.

Does burying your child at the beach under a lunar eclipse cure polio?

Looking for India travelers found America

We act according to what we think is reality even though this may not be actually true.

But our actions have real consequences. We thought we were heading towards India we were actually heading to America and this had enormous consequences- ask the native Americans.

Constructed personalities

We think we know Famous and important people. Lots of audiences roam around thinking they know everything about their celebrity crushes. But even the celebrity’s personal assistant doesn’t really know this person. This person is a constructed personality. Constructed in pieces by interviewers, magazine articles, youtube videos and blog comments. Michael Jackson, wacko Jacko with never land ranch and bubbles and children who wore masks later Jacko the paeodophile. And now the king of pop the legend.

Myths

in times of peace it is hard and rare for masses to fall behind symbols without argument. In peace time we enjoy greater autonomy in what we choose to follow- this may be because we’re too busy with our own business to care about important national symbols. But in times of war- Hitler becomes a symbol of tyranny, and it is easier for such symbols to become very powerful. Symbols distort reality because they channel our thoughts in one direction down one path and prevent alternative frames.

So far we have spoken about things we do not know but have feelings about – Michael Jackson, Hitler, the cure for polio and the location of America/India.

You and I have never been to Iraq or Palestine. We have not met Einstein. We were not in the Mutiny/war of independence. We never lived during a Raj- ruled by an alien race.

The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by mental images of that event.

Write down on a piece of paper how the following events make you feel

How do you feel about the lawyers’ movement

The ashura blast in Karachi

Musharraf’s coup in 1997

Partition 1947

For each of these events make a list of images that come to your mind when you think of these events.

Now you know what Lippman means- certain events and people we do not know- we still have feelings, opinions about them.

These feelings, ideas, images make up our counterfeit reality. The following four ingredients go into the recipe of our counterfeit reality

1- the casual fact

2- the creative imagination

3- the will to believe

this is why it was so easy for Indians to believe that Pakistan was behind the Mumbai blasts.

while the pseudo environment lies between us and the real environment- our actions are real so they have real consequences.

The real world/ environment is too big and too complex and too fleeting (experiences don’t last long)

If we tried to deal with all of these details

And grey areas

With a fresh unprejudiced mind

We would collapse.

So we need models of how things work- i.e the model of super-powers and third world nations, failing states and conflicts.

We need to simplify complex reality so we can deal with it. i.e so we can learn what we need to know and move on.

So an action is distinct from different from how we view that action. There are two things- the action that happens and how we understand what happened are different.

The pyramid comes here.

What people do- what actions they take are based not on certain knowledge but on pictures of the world that he has in his head. Pictures like- America is a super power and India is evil.

Propaganda is “the effort to alter the picture to which men respond.” We feel about an even a certain way- we have a certain picture of it- i.e Kashmir. Picture of Indian atrocity, religious persecution, an Islamic issue. If the govt wanted to change the picture to for example- a fight over natural resources (river) solveable by compromise and in the greater good if solved. It would use propaganda to get us to see the issue in a new way.

Propaganda is a loaded word- but it does not have to be a negative thing.

Sometimes governments need propaganda in the national interest.

A good example of the above is Marxism. When Marxist ideas spread- the picture men (and women) had in their heads about economic class systems and the place each person had in the world – was disturbed- changed.

Ideologies such as Free market = enterprise and you get what you deserve/work for

And Socialism = equality and brotherhood and common property

Are great examples of propagandas that impact how we act upon the world and how we picture the world.

The free market vs socialist ideology also tells us another thing- that we need theories in order to make sense of a complicated reality. Why do Economists come up with ideas about the Tragedy of the Commons; Diminishing returns etc

Because people/humans try to make sense of complicated reality by simplifying it, making a model of it and reducing it to variables about which we can generalize.

Similarly ordinary citizens who are not economists and experts also have to make a simplified picture in their head of what the world is like- that world which they do not meet and experience but one they need to have a sense of.

External Limitations that stand between us and the real world

i ) Limitation of social contact (we don’t meet everyone or everything we have opinions about

ii) shortage of time for news and information- we are busy

iii) Distortion due to space limitations on media and because language and vocabulary are not perfect (remember Shaugnessy said language is not neutral)

iv) limited vocabulary.

v) fear of facts that might threaten the established routine of our lives. If Americans before the civil war had accepted that their African slaves were human beings with souls then life would’ve turned topsy turvy (which it did once slavery was abolished) can you think of a similar issue which we are reluctant to face upto? What about corruption in our society? What about crime?

CHAPTER 6

In this chapter Lippman talks about the problems with testimony- see page 49. Why is it so hard for us to report what we saw? Why are we so often wrong when reporting an event we witnessed?

In the previous chapter we talked about how we operate in a counterfeit reality with respect to parts of the world and people we do not know directly. Now we are talking about how we even make mistakes when we witness things ourselves.

Anthropologists, scientists etc try to observe with blank minds- i.e with no prejudice. We cannot do this everyday or we will die. As we grow older from baby-hood we learn how to name first and then observe. i.e we learn how to use shortcuts and pay attention only to certain things ignoring others.

So reality depends on the habit of our eyes. That’s why its so much fun to read Sherlock Holmes- because he observes details ordinary people don’t. we see what we look for – what we are used to seeing and what we want to notice. So your female friends are more likely to notice your new earrings or the fact that you used ribbon on your kameez instead of lace but your guy friends are more likely to notice that your car’s fan belt is making a strange sound or that you have a particular type of cell phone.

We also pick out what our culture has defined for us. Which is why gorahs often look so funny to us when they show up wearing t-shirts with shalwars. And all short skirts are too short for our eyes, while Miss Pakistan offends our eyes with her bare skin much more than Miss Russia would.

Artists have always taught us how to see things. A sunset, a vase. That is why non-professional artists always make the same typical art subjects- a series of mountains behind which a sun is setting, or a girl carrying a matka.

How would we know what a badshah salamat looks like if we hadn’t seen Mughal miniatures. Imagine for a few moments the following images which artists have taught you to see a certain way:

Dragons

Sword fights

A landscape

A king seated on an elephant or battle of Panipat.

Unicorns.

Unfortunately since art has such a limited impact on Pakistani culture its hard to bring out too many examples that are not from the realm of science fiction and fantasy.

Similarly literature creates stereotypes too. For example tropes is a word used for a character that is described in such a way. i.e the buffoon, the evil witch, the innocent princess, the well meaning fool.

Indian movies take full advantage of such stereotyped people.

Have you seen Johny Lever playing a character called Musharaf ?

Sri Devi was always the ditz and Juhi Chawla was always the sweet bubbly girl.

This chapter also talks about the impact of photographs and films. Photos have more authority Lippman says because we tend to assume they have little human meddling. This is probably less relevant today as we all know about air brushing and photo shop. But we still find a lot of people looking at publicity images and reaching the conclusion that Kareen Kapoor has really great skin.

About films Lippman says that watching a movie requires such little effort from us as the activity of observing, describing, reporting and imagining have all been done for you and even judements are made for you as villains are conveniently ugly and act evil etc.

All you gotta do is stay awake.

Therefore films have even more authority over us and power over us.

You can read more about this idea which is a popular film related research topic and deals with the impact of suspension of disbelief……

Chapter 23 and 24

Now that we have a general idea of what Lippman’s on about: i.e. how hard it is to know the truth

1- because we do not experience the whole world directly 2- because we have to simplify, model and theorize in order to understand 3- because we rely on stereotypes

also because even for those details we do experience directly we tend to muck it up cause we have so many problems with our capability to observe. Culture comes in the way, habits come in the way, our gender comes in the way.

NOW – we will talk about how News organizations fail. They fail because they are humans with limits and shortcomings like us. But also because of the way they are set up.

How are they set up?

News orgs need to process a LOT of info in a VERY SHORT SPAN OF time and within a budget. If they get excited about everything that happens in the WHOLE world they will die of over excitement and exhaustion.

As an example : reuters and AP are two very common news sources for Paki media- go check out their websites and see how much news they have versus how little of it we cover in the Paki media

http://videopoint.reuters.com/

AP: search for associated press on google.

How do news orgs organize their day and their work?

They assign different duties to different people. So not everyone is looking for news. Only reporters go looking for original stories and not all reporters report everything- there are specialists. A business reporter ; a crime reporter; a political reporter etc.

The editor puts it all together according to certain professional norms, standards and practices.

Look at the following and try and decide where an Editor would place them : front page, back page, Metropolitan section, World Affairs section, letters to the editor or WASTEPAPER BASKET.

Parliament signed a bill. Cricketer Mohammad Asif scandal. Some dude in Guatemala swallowed a 50 foot python. US drone attack. Obama addresses old folks home. Woman in Karachi gives birth to 6 children. Loadshedding in Multan continues for 15 hours. Researchers find link between green peppers and cancer rate. Turkey tourism. Man shoots self after failing exams.

The decisions about what is important and what is not- who will do what job- how stories are written – how long headlines should be. How many headlines on a page. How many inches make a column-

These are all routines that make it possible for a newspaper boss to do his job fast and cheap

And another issue of great importance to most news orgs- you.

If the paper is full of stories no one understands or no one is interested in- the newspaper will soon fail.

This is why few people not of Pakistani origin or especially interested in Pakistan (i.e studying Pakistan as part of an M.A course) will read Pakistani papers. Even a shockingly small number of foreign diplomats posted in Pakistan actually watch Pakistani TV (I ask them every single time I meet one- hey what do you think of our tv channels?)

MORE PROBLEMS WITH NEWS:

-before facts become news they have to attract attention- be noticeable

-something definite has to happen with definite, unmistakeable form. (we know what an earthquake looks like it has a form we cannot mistake. But if you call up Jang and tell them fairies are dancing in your garden they’ll probably hang up on you.)

- these events should not be ambiguous, amorphous or open ended (news orgs hate indefinite stuff- try telling them that a Minister may or may not attend a party at IBA which may or may not be a student protest against second hourlies and maybe we might have 20 or 300 attendees)

so news is not a mirror of social conditions but a report of an aspect of conditions that has obtruded itself (look in a dictionary- I’m tired of finding easy words)

reporters do well when they have numbers to work with. Like sports scores, exchange rates, population statistics, crime rates, number of hours without electricity, number of people without jobs etc.

they do a good job when working with SYSTEMS OF RECORD- i.e

Birth registration office

Police FIRs

Court dockets

They don’t do as well with describing/ reporting:

States of mind

Character

Motive

Mass feeling

Public opinion

Foreign governments policy

Predictions

Private profits

Working conditions

Descrimination

Imperialism

When no empirical facts exist either we don’t report or if we do report than our story is open to dispute and charges of bias.

PRESS AGENT

The dude that stands between what we are reporting and our reporter. This dude will give you the reporter a fat and very slick stack of publicity material praising his organization/candidate to the skies.

He will bend over backwards to assist you in writing your story.

He’ll pull out the relevant facts for you so that you don’t have to go through 100s of pages of research. He’ll tell you who the important people are for you to speak to and he’ll tell you about the latest polls and statistics that are out.

Reporters like this guy- he’s really helpful.

Guess what- he’s not paid to tell you the bad stuff. That his boss the politician takes bribes and sells drugs or that his client the MNC bribed a union leader last year so as to keep working conditions dangerous and that his client is destroying the environment.

Why do reporters rely on press agents?

Reporters don’t have too much time, too many resources or too much money. The typical TV reporter is much better off than a print guy. Earns about 20,000 a month, has a motorcycle with some petrol allowance. A fixed cell phone allowance and about 4 stories to cover within 8 hours. Often he has to edit the story on the computer himself and sometimes he may shoot himself to.

AUDIENCE:

News orgs also have to make stories interesting to YOU the audience. They do this by making a story relevant to you- often ignoring important aspects of the story in the process. They will tell you how a workers strike affects you but little about why the workers are striking – what workers lives are like- what kind of changes have taken place- what this means for capitalism and the market. Etc.

Lippman: “without exact records and quantitative analyses we make moles mountains and mountains moles”

We report consequences--- strikes, blasts, protest

Not underlying problems

We report crime not economic and social conditions that give rise to crime

Causes are intangible and hard to prove – so lets focus on the numbers.

So in order to get our attention and our interest news orgs try to get us involved in the story to make it seem urgent to make it seem like we have a stake in the outcome so we cant remain neutral.

In real life we are rarely as certain about issues

But when it comes to news we are a lot more sure.

This is because in real life we have more access to conflicting arguments but in news we have less independent ability to check. Especially for news that comes from far out hard to access areas.

News is only as precise as the information news organizations get. If the even cant be names, measured, described it either doesn’t get reported or is reported tainted with prejudice of observation. i.e earthquake- we need the meterological and geological office to tell us about the richter scale even tho most of us know nothing about this scale. We need the govt to tell us how many people died- how much money was the damage worth- how long will rescue take- how much money will rescue cost – etc

So- and this will upset you Geo haters a little

A country’s news is only as good quality as the institutions of that country

Note- our last census was in 1998!!!!! So much for stats that reporters can use.

Lippman says- a fundamental difference then, between news and truth is that news simply signalizes an even- i.e it tells us this happened and its news.

Whereas Truth would have looked at hidden elements and compared them to other relevant elements and brought to light what was obscure.

So then why do we expect news to fulfil the requirements of democracy.

Because we misunderstand the limited nature of news

The complexity of society

Our own appetite for current affairs info

Our ability to understand such info

Democratic theory expect us to understand and handle all kinds of stories

And expects the press to enable something as complex and important as public opinion.

MY FAVORITE PART:

Lippman goes all poetic and talks about new: the beam of a seachlight moving restlessly about bringing one episode then another to light

You can figure this out for yourself. Yes?