Manjoo Post

Farhad Manjoo’s book, True Enough, places many suspicions and ideas that I had about the facts in society.  Back when we were young, our parents told us in order to find out what is going on in the world by reading a newspaper or watching the evening newscast. Ultimately, we accepted that the media was always reporting the truth and that we shouldn’t question it. I always second guess information and after I read Manjoo’s book, I received a few answers to my questions about how the media reports its facts.

Manjoo introduced the terms selective perception and selective exposure and he gave many examples of how these terms are used in the media. According to Manjoo, selective perception is when two or more people experience the same act and come away with different ideas about it. An example of this would be two people attending a concert when one person had front row tickets and the other one had bleacher seats. They both saw the concert, but they experienced it from different parts of the arena.

An example of selective perception in politics would be Bob Schieffer’s take on the war in Iraq.  Schieffer says that the Iraq war is the longest American war. It is clear that the Iraq war is not the longest war and he is proven wrong by Louis Jacobson. Jacobson is a journalist and a researcher for the St. Petersburg Times, and he presented solid facts that proved Schieffer wrong. Jacobson said that the Revolutionary War, Vietnam War, and the war in Afghanistan are longer than the war in Iraq.  Schieffer said this because he thought that the war in Iraq was the longest war, and he had sparked the attention of others. Even though, Schieffer was proven wrong, I can bet that many other people were thinking the same thing that he was thinking.

Another example of selective perception would be President Barack Obama’s claim to end income tax for senior citizens who make less than $50,000 a year. This article was published on April 15, 2009 by Angie Drobnic Holan, a researcher and reporter for Politifact.com. She asked the White House if the president was going to honor this promise and she received no response. This article was catered to the senior citizens and to people who did not support Barack Obama. Holan tried to be unbiased but she had to pick a side because of this issue that affects many people. To the Obama supporters, she is seen as a knit picker, and someone who isn’t happy with Obama’s lack of effort to keep his promise.

Manjoo used the term selective exposure along with selective perception. His definition of selective exposure is when people choose people who suit themselves. In a broad sense, selective exposure allows people to associate with people who feel the same way that they do about different issues. For example, I like am very picky about pizza and I will only go to certain pizza restaurants. I would meet other people who share similar feelings about these pizza restaurants that I frequent.

An example of selective exposure in politics would be how Democrats and Republicans differ on Barack Obama’s presidency. There was an article written by   Bill Adair, and Angie Drobnic Holan on January 29, 2010 that explained the relationship that the Republicans had with Obama. The article said that there are strained relations between them but the Republicans still sided with themselves despite of meeting to compromise.  I can bring myself into selective exposure for this because, I know that a majority of Republicans do not support Obama and it’s because of their mindset.

Another example of selective exposure would be how Governor Charlie Crist is depicted of endorsing the federal stimulus bill. This article was written by Aaron Sharockman, a staff writer for Politifact.com, on November 5, 2009. Sharockman pulled up several sources of Crist’s interviews with CNN and basically caught him in a few lies. The ending result was the Crist did in fact endorse the federal stimulus bill. The article could be viewed by Republicans as proof of Crist’s disloyalty to the Republican Party. However, Democrats would view this as a positive notion because of how they feel about the economy.  Both examples show that whether or not the subject of the articles are right or wrong, people with similar beliefs will come together on these issues.

Another term that is worth mentioning in Manjoo’s book is truth value of the word expert. According to dictionary.com, expert means a person who has special skill or knowledge in some particular field; specialist; or authority. People tend to trust these experts and normally do not question their research. After reading this book, I have learned that Manjoo was dead on about not always trusting experts.

A good example of how experts on proven wrong would be taking a look at an article written by Angie Drobnic Holan on February 22, 2008. The article is about how experts rate both Democratic candidates’ health care plans the same. She found out that researchers from Harvard concluded that there can’t be a determined amount of money that would be saved for both candidates. I can almost guarantee that most people would have just trusted the experts and not looked at how the plans were the same.

Although, I had to force myself to read this book, I am glad that I got something out of it. These few terms that I had discussed were the validation that I needed to prove my theory. I had always thought that experts were not to be trusted and that you should always second guess everything. Selective exposure and perception are alive and well in this world, and Manjoo did a good job at pointing that out in this book.  I am sure that there were some things that I should’ve touched upon, but these terms were the ones that put the book together.