Perception and Opinion
Facts and Reality
Some years back, a squad car with two Milwaukee police officers pulled over a car containing two African-American men. The officers exited their squad, and the two Black men stepped out of their vehicle. A crowd gathered on the sidewalk as a confrontation seemed imminent.
The policeman on the driver’s side of the car suddenly pulled his gun and shot the driver, wounding him in the upper arm. Witnesses later told the investigating detectives that the man had his hands raised and could not account for the officer’s actions.
I watched the news report on television and noted that these same witnesses, some in tears and some in anger, told the reporter that it was a case of “driving while Black” and demanded that the policeman be punished.
Later, CCTV cameras from a nearby bank, and the police dashcam, revealed that the car’s passenger had pulled a revolver from his waistband and tossed it to the driver as the cops approached. The driver then turned and pointed the gun at the policeman, who fired his weapon, striking the man in the upper arm.
The wounded driver, from his hospital bed, was interviewed on television and confirmed the details of the shooting, exonerating the policeman.
The following week, I had the opportunity to speak to the Milwaukee County District Attorney. I asked him if the witnesses who testified that the shooting victim was unarmed and raised his hands would be prosecuted for lying to the investigating detectives.
“No,” the DA said, “they weren’t lying. Those were their perspectives. They told what they had seen through their veil of experience, what others had told them, and what they had seen on TV.
“Perspective is not reality,” he continued. “What we accept as true, even when it’s objectively false, becomes our reality.”
I didn’t realize it then, but the DA paraphrased Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor (161–180 AD) and Stoic philosopher.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is perspective, not the truth.”
I keep that lesson in mind when I watch YouTube or news shows claiming to deliver facts but only delivering their perspectives.
Recently, FOX News Channel CEO Rupert Murdock admitted under oath that his news anchors peddle lies to keep their followers from switching to other channels. It wasn’t politics, he said, but the lies keep the viewership high and the advertiser revenue rolling in.
In a similar vein, Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.6 billion.
When questioned by the House intelligence committee, Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, said Google’s internal investigation identified 18 YouTube channels and 1,100 videos suspected of being linked to Russia’s disinformation campaign during the last American presidential election.
YouTube is watched by 1.5 billion people worldwide, so it has an enormous potential impact. A widely respected technology critic, Zeynep Tufekci, feels that the AI search and recommender algorithms that power YouTube are “…misinformation engines.”
Guillaume Chaslot, a YouTube engineer, told The Guardian’s Paul Lewis, “The recommendation algorithm is not optimizing for what is truthful, balanced, or healthy for democracy.”
We often accept the internet’s misinformation, lies, and slanted news as truth.
Two thousand years ago, Marcus Aurelius saw the danger of treating perceptions as reality and opinions as facts. In the modern age of the internet, TV news shows, and social media, we either heed his wisdom or run the danger of having our minds highjacked by liars and hucksters masquerading as truth-tellers.
As consumers and voters, we must be aware of the distortions in our media input, or we will descend further into the societal dysfunction we’ve experienced during the past few years.
As always, it’s our choice.
References:
1. Paul Lewis, The Guardian News, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia
2. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, The Modern Library, New York, 2018
3. Bellan, Rebecca, Forbes Magazine, https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccabellan/2020/10/16/misinformation-conspiracy-theories-and-real-world-harm-can-we-save-the-election/?sh=40bec193f3dc
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