Information Warfare

This article (below) also illustrates an insidious trend I keep noticing in all life-style oriented articles. When it comes to the environment, politics and social trends. Newspapers tend to capitalize on the fact that people only read headlines in many cases. You spot an article like this in your paper and read the first part and come away with one impression... however if you read the whole article you'll find the hard hitting stuff at the very end. The headline will scream, "DOOM" and in the last paragraph, the article will say, "all experts in the field disagree." You can't accuse the article of outright bias or slant, because they actually show both sides, but they give more credit to one side (in spite of the actual facts) with the formatting. It's Graphical Bias... This new phenomenon relies on the rise of GUI in computers and its affects on readers styles of skimming information. Generally people do not read every article in a paper, or all of every article they do read. When we were taught to write informative papers in school we were asked to clearly state in the introduction what we intend to discuss. That way the reader knows what information he/she will be getting. However, in the papers, the introduction only outlines what the writer wants you to take away from the article.

If you do a google news search on this study, you'll get a list of articles in 30 or so major newspapers and the first line or two in the article. If you read all of them you will find no hint that there is any dissent on the validity of this study. Only that the study documents / shows / confirms the link between health problems and sprawl. You have to get to the end of the first page of the Washington Post article to get into any hint that the study may be flawed. A second page? is that an anachronism in the internet news world or what? I mean we have scroll buttons right? Article length isn't really an issue, the way it is in print newspapers. Why a second page? So you won't read it of course. Especially if theirideological intention is to weaken an opposing argument. Lets call this the "Second Page Technique". Another piece of journalistic kung fu here is the lead off criticism of the study. The libertarian Reason Foundation... is this a political issue? no so why exagerate teh fact that this group is libertarian? Because the media has a standing libertarian=wacko thing going. The hope is to get you to dismiss all criticism of the study as by some fringe group... hopefully you'll have made up your mind to support these findings and closed it to criticisms at this point, hopefully, you stop reading now... you won't get to Peter Gordon of USC LA's planning department... a qualified source of some kind. This is the "Fringe Taint Technique", using an overtly dubious counter argument to preempt a valid opinion. You can't read Mr. Gordon's comments without that nagging word "libertarian" hanging just outside of your perception. His comments are tainted as a result and therefor demeaned... if not ignored altogether.

When you marry these techniques to the "Ideological Headline/Introduction" there is little chance a casual reader will be able to defend him/herself against the bias. Like a perfect assasination, it looks saccidental too. On a point by point anaysis, it feels like a fair article since it covers all the viewpoints. But the subliminal effect is devastating. I'll be looking for other articles that use these techniques as well as new techniques to add to my museum of ideological weapons in months to come. If I am spotting them this easily, then they have to be pretty prevalant. Good luck out there... being informed is a battle!