Trying to determine Physicists are fond of studying the fact that nearby sound or light waves are different from distant waves.
The sound of an approaching police van or fire truck siren has a high pitch, but the pitch gets much lower as it passes by. This is an example of the Doppler Effect or Doppler Shift. There are other examples as well:
That Doppler Effect can also be applied to the media. The further you are from the incident, the more you believe the newspaper reports. The closer it gets, and the more facts you know, the more you realize that the media is wrong.
A little bit of thought will reveal that if the newspapers are wrong about local events, then there is no reason to believe that events that take place further away are correct.
Some of us have learned to read about local events in a critical manner. However, for some reason, we seem to believe events that are reported about far away places such as Surinam or China. Those countries are apparently insignificant to our day-to-day lives. Yet, even though we know that the media report is usually wrong, we allow the newspapers and the media to fool and deceive us, again and again.
what is going on in the world
by reading newspapers
is like trying to tell the time
by watching the second hand
of a clock
- Ben Hecht
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