Truth vs Falsehood (21 page)

Whether a political position is perceived to be liberal or conservative often reflects the observer’s own point of view, as the human proclivity is to seek agreement and reinforcement of a positionality rather than truth itself.

It will be noted that there is some disparity between the calibration of political writers and the calibrations of the political parties in
Chapter 10
. This is due to the writers’ personal editorializing and ‘playing to the choir’ of the readership. Thus, differences may be overemphasized to more clearly make a point.

News Print Media

Business Week (June 14, 2004) reported a scientific study, “A Measure of Media Bias,” by the Universities of Chicago and California at Los Angeles at a conference at Stanford University. The study shows that by objectively scored ratings, the media (television news and major newspapers) are skewed substantially to the left of the members of Congress. By calibration technique, the editorial sections of major U. S. newspapers reflect a similar bias, and they calibrate lower than the papers’ strictly news sections. Other independent studies reach the same conclusion, e.g., Bob Kohn’s
Journalistic Fraud
(2004).

The media’s editorial viewpoints reflect the spectrum of prevailing levels of segments of society for which they are meaningful and of interest. Each columnist has their own following, as people want to see their own viewpoints expressed. This is common to all social expression, from architecture to music, movies, and news reporting.

Therefore, a true liberal supports the rights of conservatives to express their own views, even though they differ. Likewise, a true conservative defends the freedom of the liberal press. Integrous commentators of either persuasion protest extremes of slander, defamation, and gross prevarication, although, as noted by Newt Gingrich, “There are no rules anymore” (Gingrich, 2004).

Collectively, society represents a continuum of viewpoints and lifestyles that reflect predominance of values. One segment emphasizes excitement, novelty, rebel causes, ‘hot’ issues, glamour, emotionality, and refutation of tradition as ethics, morality, or reason. In contrast is the population that emphasizes civility, logic, stewardship, familiarity, security, and preservation. These values can be expressed to varying degrees, from mild to extreme, as represented by the political spectrum of editorial presentations, which range from calm to frenetic and reflect the balance between evolution and revolution.

The publications that calibrate in the mid- to high 400s apparently have achieved an integrous balance without compromising reporting itself. For others, unstated positionalities lower the calibrations, although they are still above 200. The public is uncritical if it is presented with honesty. It may disagree with a viewpoint but not feel inclined to attack it as it does when it feels it has been surreptitiously misled.

Others

Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World”

(2004; 2005 approximately the same)

This selection is important in that it reflects the judgment of the staff of a major print medium that itself currently calibrates at an integrous 375 and is written to be of interest to the general reading public. If their judgment is correct, then the overall calibration of the list at 198 is cautionary, and the “Leaders and Revolutionaries” group at 190 even more so, because when just four integrous leaders are arbitrarily selected and removed, the calibration level of “leaders” drops to a very nonintegrous 170. When coupled with the fact that the current United Nations calibrates at 195, it is rather ominous.

With the arbitrary removal of just four integrous people (there could be more), the “Heroes and Icons” list drops to calibration level 175. This deleterious signal gives added importance to the low calibration of only 180 for the selected list of artists and entertainers. These collectively reflect the focus of the media whereby their influence is unduly magnified, e.g. various celebrities made headlines by personally vilifying the President as being like Stalin (cal. 90), Hitler (cal. 45), Hussein (cal. 65), etc. Their comments calibrate at level 130, and their gross fallacy is demonstrated by the fact that the President’s (G. W. Bush) position calibrates at 460.

The vilification of integrity to such extremes reflects the serious pathology due to infection of the virus of malignant “memes” (the spread or persistence of ideas via a key term, concept, or word) that appeal to media celebrities who themselves are the victims of media-induced inflated narcissism and thereby the loss of reality testing. In contrast, honest dissent calibrates from 210-330.

Comparatively, the positive elements of “Scientists and Thinkers” receive little media attention, and the “Builders and Titans” are frequently the focus of criticism, although they calibrate collectively at 245.

It is interesting to compare the media’s viewpoint of important people with the massive collections of biographies in
Who’s Who
in both America and the world, both of which calibrate at 460, which would confirm that figure (460 indicates real-life excellence). It is the same calibration as in other areas as well (science, music, spirituality, etc.)

Literary Works of Authors

(Not Their Personal Calibration)

Only a relatively few writers have been represented on the chart above, which is primarily for illustrative purposes. As would be expected, the subject matter of books and their integrity is similar to that currently observable on the Internet. These range from instruction manuals on how to commit successful murder and bomb buildings to the search for spirituality and enlightenment.

In some countries, such as Japan, more than ten thousand new titles are published annually, and an author is grateful if he is fortunate to sell even one thousand books.
Amazon.com
lists three million titles. Via web sites, anyone can publish a new book that is printed on request by a purchaser. True freedom of the press, however, is not a worldwide reality, and censorship is still very active in repressive regimes, such as in secular Socialist, Communist, and Islamic countries. In the United States, freedom of the press is cherished as a First Amendment legal right.

In recent times, anxious parents were relieved to discover that, like the last generation’s
Oz
books, the Harry Potter books calibrate above 200, as do the works of Tolkein and others that focus on the theme of the search for truth and integrity. As the above writers reflect, life can be seen as a morality play, a comedy, a tragedy, or a fantasy, depending on one’s point of observation and intention.

The totality of man’s creative output over the entire evolution of history can be compared to the observations that ensue from viewing the different points of a hologram. In the past, the impact of great writing was limited to the elite few. Hieroglyphics, picture drawings, and pictographs inscribed on papyrus were very labor intensive; therefore, the destruction by fire of the great Library of Alexandria, which contained the collective wisdom of the ancient world, brought grief and loss of not only the wisdom but also the enormous collective human effort that had gone into its composition. The calibrated level of that great library is 200-500. Thus, we can conclude that besides the wisdom and discoveries that were lost, history’s awareness of itself as an evolutionary and cultural phenomenon was destroyed because the 200s reflect the warp and woof out of which society is constructed.