Veils of Distortion: How the News Media Warps Our Minds

by John Zada

Overview

'Fake news' has become an obsessional catchphrase and a worldwide fear. Yet few of us realize that shades of falsehood have always run through the mainstream news media. As news organizations double-down in their efforts to shock and entertain, more people than ever before are tuning-out, disillusioned by an overly-negative and manipulative news cycle.

In Veils of Distortion, John Zada draws on two decades of journalism experience to explain how and why the news has become broken.

By depicting our world through a tiny sample of dramas that are often far-removed from our experiences, the news warps our picture of reality. What we see is not the world that actually is, but a caricature of it: a simplistic two-toned realm in which dangers and conflicts lurk around every corner. The societal angst that results can make the news a self-fulfilling prophecy, and can turn our minds into prisons of blinkered thought.

Zada walks us through the newsroom and reveals these distorting 'veils.' He offers suggestions on how to help mitigate the effects of this coarse infotainment, which, if left unchecked will continue to dumb-down and polarize our society, causing it to further unravel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781777357108
Publisher:	Terra Incognita Press
Publication date:	02/22/2021
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

John Zada is a writer, photographer and journalist who has worked as a television news writer and producer for both CBC News Network and Al Jazeera English. He is also the author of the book 'In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of the Sasquatch.' His articles have appeared in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Explore, CBC, Al Jazeera, BBC, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. John lives in Toronto, Canada.

Table of Contents

Preface xvii

PART I - VEILS OF DISTORTION

The News As Distortion 5

Why We're Dupes for News 9

The Filter 13

Exaggeration 20

Who Doesn't Love a Good Story? 30

'The Argument Culture' 41

The Objectivity Myth 47

It's All Journalese to Me 50

Coloured by Numbers 55

From PR to Propaganda 62

PART II - THE NEWS FACTORY

The Man Behind the Curtain 75

'Churnalism' 78

Capture and Hold 83

The Errors of Our Ways 86

Dumb and Dumber 90

Trumping the Real Story 96

Few Experts Here 100

Vigilance Misdirected 105

Deliberate Distortion? 109

Groupthink 113

News A!ective Disorder (NAD) 116

PART III - WHAT TO DO

High Stakes 123

Endnotes 137

Acknowledgments 143

Notes 145

Index 169

About the Author 187

A Request 189

Editorial Reviews

"Think you know a 'fake' news story when you see one? As Zada cogently shows, the way the brain works makes that highly unlikely. This is a powerful dissection of why we get bamboozled by the stories we are fed, and a guide to what we can do about it." - Denise Winn, author of The Manipulated Mind: Brainwashing, Conditioning and Indoctrination

"John Zada has shared a passionate, insider's account of how "churnalism" is bad not just for those who produce the news, but for everyone who consumes it. Of all the injuries that beset the world, few are as self-inflicted as our surrender to false narratives that are the sine qua non of today's media barrage. Better to ignore it all, or as Zada hopefully urges, do something - each and every one of us - before it's too late." - Ian Gill, author of No News is Bad News: Canada's Media Collapse and What Comes Next

"As we spend ever more of our lives staring at screens, it can be hard to remember that our daily existence is not consumed by natural disasters, shootings, celebrity indiscretions, and apocalyptic politics. What is this realm of horrors and trivialities and how did it colonize our perception? Drawing on long experience as a newsroom insider, John Zada illuminates the unseen and subtle dynamics by which mind, medium, and professional practice amalgamate into 'the news.' Veils of Distortion offers a brilliant primer on how the form of an industry gave rise to our dominant picture of reality, and in some cases to reality itself." - Greg Jackson, author of Prodigals and "Vicious Cycles: Theses on a Philosophy of News"

"John Zada's book speaks for those of us who are sceptical about the idea that there is any kind of pure 'news' that can't be manipulated in the first place." - Dr. David Giles, author of Psychology of the Media

From the Publisher