Miner Queries: Have you been media brainwashed?

 I recently got into a discussion on Facebook about media reports on the border crisis. A friend was trying to point out the differences in two different media outlets’ reporting. In short, she noted how FOX News used emotional language and implied dangers to stoke fears about the immigrant children.

After I responded to one of her friends about FOX’s history and financers, my friend mentioned a soon-to-be-released documentary called, “The Brainwashing of my Dad.” Take a look at the trailer.

In the documentary, filmmaker Jen Senko asks how her father, a formerly rather apolitical, unbiased and generous man was transformed into an angry, fearful and narrow-minded ideologue. In tracking the history of the transformation, Senko uncovers how the population has shifted to the right over the last 30 years, largely through media manipulation. As the film’s web site notes, “The result has lead to fewer voices, less diversity of opinion, massive intentional misinformation and greater division of our country.”

Senko traces the change in her father to a job change that led not only to a move, but to her father making a long solitary commute. To pass the time, he turned to talk radio as an educational tool. Unfortunately what he got was radio shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh. 

In an October 2011 interview for AlterNet, Senko was asked how she thinks people’s media habits can create such drastic changes. She responded:  “By media habits, I’ll answer as if you mean listening or watching habits. In the film, Steve Rendell discusses the personal nature of talk radio. There is an intimate connection between the radio and the listener. As for the effect it has on people, I think any message told repeatedly has an effect on people. It works in advertising and it works in forming one’s political views.”

In the 2011 interview, Senko was also asked if all media isn’t some form of brainwashing, and I found her answer thoughtful and instructive. 

“Media can be a form of brainwashing depending on the viewer/listener. Most people who choose to ingest one type of media are going to get influenced by that media. . . . A less educated mass also serves the corporate purpose.” 

As examples, Senko cites the push for charter schools and privatized education. She also notes many authoritarian media sources tend to blame identifiable others, like poor people and minorities, for stresses caused by our corporate-dominated economy.

Senko doesn’t tell us if her dad has been “deprogrammed,” of course, to keep us interested in seeing her film. But she does say he’s not the man he was three years ago. 

So maybe there’s hope for the rest of us. I’d note as I begin knocking on doors in advance of November’s election, it’s more important than ever that we talk to each other.  I may be a liberal Democrat, but unlike some Express readers, I’m not surprised when I agree with someone on the other end of the spectrum.  As long as we’re human, we have lots in common.

Cherie Miner is a local parent, community volunteer, freelance writer and artist. In a former life, she was a corporate writer and public relations professional. Contact her at news@redoakexpress.com or on Facebook.