[Neurons] 2021 Neurons #12 LEARNING HOW TO REPORT THE NEWS

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2021 Neurons #12

March 22, 2021

 

LEARNING

HOW TO REPORT THE NEWS

 

With Trump out and Biden in, the press with its hard questions and "in your
face" style of disrespectful comments and questions have suddenly
disappeared.  Did they suddenly learn better?  Did they all take an NLP
course on effective information gathering and reporting?  Sadly no.  In its
place they have replaced one form of dysfunction with another.  Now they
have a sickening sycophant pawning - asking, at best, softball questions and
doing the work of justifying the actions of the president.  The contrast is
as shark as day and night; heaven and hell.  

 

The shame of it all is that the press is supposed to be the watchdog for all
politicians and should not take sides.  But the American press, for the most
part, does not and has not for the past ten years.  One result is that
everything reported here is repeated verbatim internationally so that anyone
outside of the US is getting a severely biased account and really does not
have a clue as to what's really going on.

 

Once upon a time journalists did journalism- they presented the facts, and
only the facts, and let the listening public interpret what they meant.
Today they editorialize and refuse to even acknowledge that's what they are
doing.  Once upon a time, they knew the difference between descriptive
language that was sensory based and empirical and evaluative language that
reflects the values and perspectives of the speaker.  But no longer!  What
they need is some good NLP training in communication.

 

Once upon a time journalists would be ashamed of presenting propaganda and
calling it news.  But no longer.  But that's mostly what the new programs
today are doing.  These days I watch the news with my TV clicker so that I
go back and forth between the mainstream media (ABC, NBC, CNN) and Fox and
Fox Business.  The contrast is pretty drastic.  

 

This past week there was a case that highlighted the difference between
propaganda and actual empirical news.  The young disturbed man, who had a
tremendous sexual compulsion shot 9 people in Atlanta and killed seven of
them, was immediately arrested.  He confessed to the crime.  He said he did
it to stop himself from being tempted to go and have sex (a terrible
strategy for avoiding temptation!).  When asked if it was racially
motivated, he said no.  Apparently that had not even crossed his mind.  That
the workers in the Spa happened to be young Asia women, however, was jumped
on by the mainstream media and that became 'the story.'  Here the bias of
the press to interpret anything through the lens of racism overshadowed the
true facts in the case.  Now the press was off and running with the story
they preferred, even though it was entirely made up and ignored the facts.

 

Non-biased and non-partisan journalism used to be the saving grace in the
US.  Precisely because journalists did not take sides, it served the
function of holding politicians accountable.  That's a good thing.  But when
journalism itself becomes contaminated with its own biases, then every news
agency becomes a voice of propaganda ... and all of us are worse for it.

 

Learning to report the news sounds like something just for journalists.  It
is not.  You and I do that ourselves.  We do it every time we come home from
work and talk about what happened.  We do it whenever we get with others and
someone asks, "So what's been happening with you?"  Even kids get into this
one when we ask them about their day at school.

 

Further, reporting the news is the beginning of knowledge.  First, the
facts- the details, the empirical see-hear-feel facts that can be verified,
then the interpretation.  Whoever gets that mixed up, or turns that around,
is doing something destructive to their ability to think straight, reason
intelligently, and develop high level concepts that bring understanding into
the world.

 

This is not rocket science.  It is the process for how we legitimately learn
and come to comprehend our world.  It is the scientific method itself.
First the facts, then the interpretation.  If you take that as your mantra,
you have the foundation for resolving conflicts, the foundation for
leadership, the foundation for creativity and innovation, the foundation for
effective communication.  So many things depend on it.

 

This is also the foundation of NLP.  In trying to figure out the "secret of
the magic" of Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir, the founders went back to the
basics.  What was Fritz and Virginia noticing, saying, and doing?  One thing
both were doing was distinguishing descriptions from evaluations.  Why?
Because they were working with therapy clients- they noticed that part of
the distortions people suffered started with confusing description with
evaluation.  That population tended to live in the world of evaluation and
didn't know how to get out of it.  Fritz and Virginia brought them back to
the real world.  "Lose your mind and come to your senses" was the way Fritz
phrased it.  Virginia did so by distinguishing the "languages of the mind"
(visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, that by the way is where the founders
got the VAK).

 

If the journalists are no longer doing it- then all of us have to do it. We
have to get back to the facts and report the news before we promote the
interpretation.  May it be so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com 

www.neurosemantics.com/shop/ 

 

To subscribe or unsubscribe to Neurons, send request to meta at acsol.net 

Making smart decisions is not easy--- many, many cognitive biases work
against us and it is far too easy to default to pseudo-decisions: emotions,
gut feelings, intuitions, circumstances, others.  

Executive Decisions (2021) offers a way to decide intelligently and wisely.

 

130969 Neuro Semantics Executive Decisions Book Cover

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20210321/7033aefd/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 11695 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20210321/7033aefd/attachment-0001.jpg>