Almalieque wrote:
Or maybe, they covered the whole story and that screenshot represented the segment of the article of her strength in the party. You said yourself that the article was focused on her losing ground. Again, you obviously don't watch the show. Neither of the two hosts are Clinton fans.
You're missing the point I'm making. You used the screenshot as proof that Clinton was a strong candidate, in direct response to my statements that she was weak. If the show in question had been primarily about arguing how weak she was, then why did you apparently walk away from it with the impression that she was strong? So much so that when faced with my argument that Clinton is a weak candidate, you thought of this very episode on this very show as a means to obtain data proving that she is, in fact, a strong candidate.
This is kind of a funny bit of behavior I've commented on before, where people pull out some media source as evidence of some position, but when the actual source is examined, it turns out that it was saying the exact opposite. Then fun comes in when I point out that the media source presented the information in a way designed to make their audience come away with the wrong impression, and those who just a post ago were claiming it as support for X insist that the media did not at all spin the data to make X seem to be true. Um... Then why did you think what you did?
If this show was really trying to make you see how weak Clinton is, shouldn't you have thought of it as a source showing how weak Clinton is? Even if you disagreed with the shows conclusions, you should never have thought to go to that show for evidence of her strength. That makes no sense. You'd have gone to some show you saw, or article you read, that was speaking positively about Clinton and then googled for that source to find something to support your "Clinton is strong" position. The very fact that something on this show stuck in your mind as showing Clinton is strong is evidence that this was precisely what they meant to do. You have to remember that most media are pretty clever about messaging. They're very good at saying one thing, but doing so in a way designed to get people to arrive at a specific conclusion, even if that conclusion isn't supported by the raw statements contained in the media report itself. Written sources do this with clever placement of information in the article, and quotes that are designed to weaken certain facts in the mind of the reader, while strengthening implied conclusions at the same time. Video sources do this with inflection of the voice, body language of the people while speaking, and yes, graphics being displayed while they're talking.
It's one of the reasons I've learned to ignore inflection and implication when reading, watching, or listening to any sort of news or opinion source. I pay very careful attention just to what is actually said, not what was implied or suggested. I've found that it can be amazing how different your take away from a media source can be when you do this. It's kind of a pet thing I do when I ingest any form of media, and I also try to pay attention to how other people view the same information and look for those differences. As I said, it's shocking how frequently someone will say "this source says X", and I'll go to the same source and notice that it doesn't really say X at all. It's just written/said/whatever in a way designed to make people *think* X is true. And again, it's funny as heck when you confront that person about this, and then they jump around trying to deny that they got played by cleverly worded language. The same person will simultaneously insist that they both didn't misunderstand the source *and* that the source wasn't designed to make people come to a specific misunderstanding but rather actually said the opposite of what they thought it said all along. And yes, I'm aware that this results in a completely nonsensical bit of rationalization on their part. But I run into it all the time.
Just like you just did.
Edited, Sep 14th 2015 8:22pm by gbaji