Feature: Hidden Meanings
Republican ... Democrat ... Independent ...
Muslim ... Christian ... Athiest ...
Red Sox ... Giants ... Cubs ...
In a world of choices, it's hard to be everything. There are choices we like and choices we dislike. We are instinctively biased toward some choices ("I like sweets") and against others ("I don't like snakes"). If this doesn't describe you, you've made other choices. We all do.
Some choices seem to be hard-wired from birth while other choices are learned by experience. We could call the total expression of our conscious and unconscious choices our values. We can also call them our biases.
If we were all the same, the world would be a less interesting place and dissatisfaction (which keeps us learning and trying for better) might not even exist--at least that's this author's bias. This author knows there are bound to be other views about this.
Whenever you read a statement like the one above, it typically appears as a fact. It's an assumption or claim that could be debatable, but it's given as the 'way things are.' Except in this case the author admits it is personal bias. That is pretty uncommon for an author to do.
Most of the time it is up to the reader to determine if this is fact (something all sides can agreed upon) or bias (something about which there is disagreement). This is further complicated by people who see bias where others see facts. The result is opposing views about common information, for example, positions taken by climate change proponents and opponents.
The potential danger in all this is blindly to accept or reject information as factual when rival interpretations are available.
Pizzagate
A North Carolina man was arrested Sunday after he walked into a popular pizza restaurant in Northwest Washington carrying an assault rifle and fired one or more shots, D.C. police said. The man told police he had come to the restaurant to “self-investigate” a false election-related conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton that spread online during her presidential campaign. Source: Washington Post, Dec. 5, 2016
The conspiracy that moved the shooter to act?
Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary Clinton was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Source: Rolling Stone Magazine, Nov. 16, 2017
After-the-fact, Rolling Stone and other sources called the Pizzagate incident a fake news scandal. But when shooter Edgar Maddison Welch read the original story he saw it as fact. He believed Alex Jones was telling the truth. Jones, who later apologized, admitted to relying on "third-party accounts of alleged activities and conduct at the restaurant." [Source] Had Jones verified his sources, there might not have been a news story But Jones' bias against Hillary Clinton may have made the appeal of the story to good not to publish.
Hidden Messages
In the Pizzagate case, the hidden message Welch read was 'Hillary Clinton is bad and this is happening' to which he added 'this must stop.' Jones didn't say he was biased against Hillary Clinton, although that could be implied given his history. Only later did he say his information was highly suspect. Did Welch know the message was potentially flawed due to bias? Not likely.
We learn from the things that happen to other people, both the fortunate and unfortunate. The choice here was informed by misinformation or information assumed to be factual. To avoid this in the future, what can be done? Unless authors admit to bias in what they write or say, it is the responsibility of readers to read for facts and bias. Fact-checking is one way to do this. The other is to watch for signs of bias.
Signs of Bias
An author who takes a side in an argument, whether intended or not, is biased. The facts may or my not be true. This doesn't alter the fact that what is written may be biased. Bias may be detected a few ways. First, in the facts that are reported. Second, in the language that is used and third, in the tone of what is written. The previous three editions of the Full Circle Kit focused on evaluation and fact checking, so little more needs to be said about investigating claims, proper nouns and numbers to make sure they aren't fake.
Biased Language - Words are clues to an author's intent. In this regard, nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs can be telling. This article is not intended to be a primer on language choices and hidden meanings, so instead, the focus is on the words from the original Alex Jones story:
(Hillary Clinton)...is an abject, psychopathic demon from hell,” who “smell[s] like sulfur...
These nouns, adjectives and verbs are extreme ways to describe a human being. Extreme language is often a tell-tale indicator of bias. Words used like this tend to force the meaning to an extreme side of a spectrum. In this example, the terms describe a demon or a witch. The opposite approach would be to describe Hillary as a saint or angel.
To one who doesn't like Hillary to begin with, these words might not seem extreme or even strange. That's the trouble with bias: things that are biased look normal if you are also biased. The antidote to blind non-recognition of bias is to focus on the words. Are there other ways to say this? Does this description push the subject into an extreme position?
Satisfying or Shocking Tone - If reading a passage creates a strong emotion in the reader, the question should be "why?" Imagine two people read the passage above. The first person's blood starts to boil in agreement, saying "I knew it! She's a witch." The second person reads it and is shocked by the descriptive words (and smell), saying "that's harsh; the author is clearly upset." Both are reactions to bias. One aligns with or is attracted to the position; the other draws back or rejects it.
A reader who is alert to bias detection pays attention to tone and its personal effect. A good novelist will move a reader emotionally. There's nothing wrong with that. It's an art to be enjoyed. It also has a dark side when used to sway a reader to treat fiction as if it were fact. This applies to the one who agrees with it, even if it can't be verified, as well as the one who finds it objectionable and doesn't realize the suspected fiction is actually fact. In scientific terms, the first person commits a Type I error--inferring something to be true that is not there. The second person commits a Type II error, inferring something to be false that is true.
Bias detection is not easy
- It doesn't need to apply to everything in print.
- It is influenced by one's personal beliefs.
- It seems wrong to consider the merits of things one finds objectionable.
- It seems just as wrong to question things one finds agreeable.
- Not to question allows bias to go undetected.
The lesson here is that reading non-fiction requires two commitments:
- curiosity when an author treats something as a fact, and
- sensitivity to how an author's words create an emotional reaction.
Action Zone: Bias Detective
Self-paced assessment tutorials featuring six examples of varying bias. Go
Curriculum: Connections
Suggestions for initiating discussions and prompts to evaluate bias in non-fiction writing and images. Go
Assessment: What Students Know
How to measure what students know about Bias detection. Go