From Pine View Farm

Margaret Sullivan talks with Brian Stelter about his new book on Fox News. A snippet:

I asked Stelter what he found most surprising as he reported the book. (We overlapped briefly when I was The New York Times public editor, and I have been an occasional guest on his Sunday media show.)

(snip)

The second surprise, Stelter told me, was the number of Fox News staffers who acknowledge the harm it has done and its frequent failure to meet basic standards for truth-telling — and who struggle with whether to remain at the network. Some hesitate because they fear they are tainted by having worked at Fox News; others because the money is too good to walk away.

Follow the link to find out what the first surprise was.

Writing at Psychology Today Blogs, Jennifer Latson explores how exposure to constant repetition can wear down skepticism, cater to credulousness, and foster falsehoods, so that truth gets lost. Here’s a bit (emphasis added):

The marketing term “effective frequency” refers to the idea that a consumer has to see or hear an ad a number of times before its message hits home. Essentially, the more you say something, the more it sticks in — and possibly on — people’s heads. It doesn’t even have to be true — and that’s the problem. What advertisers call “effective frequency,” psychologists call the “illusory truth effect”: the more you hear something, the easier it is for your brain to process, which makes it feel true, regardless of its basis in fact.

In her piece, she goes on to explore other human tendencies that make us susceptible to such subterfuge, while also pointing out that, in these days of digital deluges of dubious diatribes and a blatherscape of blaring botnets, staying aware of facts and identifying falsity is increasingly important.

Aside:

I suggest “Fox News Effect” as shorthand for this phenomenon.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Charles Johnston muses on what seems to be the political strategy of the current occupant of the White House. A snippet:

With the election polls trending poorly for the current president in the U.S., there is really only one kind of strategy that remains if he is to be reelected. It might seem exactly backwards, but it has always been much of the current president’s strategy (though just how conscious this has been I am not sure). And Democrats seem always ready to play along. That strategy is to generate maximum discord and polarization.

Follow the link for his thoughts on why and how this just might–and he metaphorically emphasizes “might”–work.

At the Inky, Will Bunch weighs in.

Experiments fail, even noble ones.

I find myself bemused when persons refer to Trump’s “accomplishments.” He neither is accomplished nor has he accomplished anything in any way, unless incoherent blather counts as an “accomplishment.”

Image via Job’s Anger.