CRITICAL THINKING FOR THE MEDIA

The media everywhere ought to be trained in critical thinking. That’s my view. Why? Because there is so much that is the opposite of critical thinking in almost every broadcast of the news. In fact, every listener to the news and every receiver of the media ought also to be trained in critical thinking as well. Why? Because it is dangerous to one’s mental and emotional health to do otherwise. You and I and every member of the media ought to be trained in critical thinking for our own basic sanity and well-being. That will reduce the likelihood of “fake news”— deceptions, dis-information, lies, propaganda, etc.

What is the opposite of critical thinking? What would you call it? Shall we call it “sloppy thinking,” “imprecise thinking,” “lazy thinking,” “biased thinking,” “cognitive distortion thinking?” An argument can be made, and has been made, by writers and thinkers in the field of critical thinking, for each of those. Whatever the term we use, it refers to a highly unuseful and ineffective way of thinking.

Now, to more fully understand what is the opposite, it is useful to recognize what critical thinking means. Generally, the term refers to—

• Thinking clearly, precisely, and without prejudice.

• “Disciplined thinking that’s clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence.”

• Real thinking that relies on thinking through the facts, evidence, ways of reasoning with an awareness of the cognitive biases, fallacies, and distortions.

Now here’s a plug for basic NLP— the NLP Meta-Model of Language is a tremendous tool for critical thinking. Did you know that? It is. The 21 distinctions of the expanded Meta-Model gives you 21 linguistic distinctions to look for and discern so that you can then ask critical thinking questions. Did you know that? You didn’t? Great, then you’re in for a delightful surprise when you go back and re-study the Meta-Model!

Study the original Meta-Model by reading The Structure of Magic (1975). Study the expanded Meta-Model by reading Communication Magic (2001).

What will you find in the Meta-Model that will enhance your ability to think clearly and precisely? You will discover key problems (called “ill-formed structures” or ill-formedness) to accurate thinking. You will discover some of the inherent problems in language that you need to be aware of so that you can avoid doing it yourself and know how to respond to those linguistic– semantic problems when others use it on you. What the Meta-Model offers is a set of questions and with them you can get to the underlying experience that the language is attempting to describe. If they’ll engage, it will help them to communicate more clearly.

The point? Language is not innocent. Language itself is loaded with all sorts of problems. As a set of linguistic maps, language mis-maps the territory of reality and thereby mis-directs our understandings and responses. If you don’t know that— you will be an unconscious victim of those distorted maps and may be a victim of the person who use those crooked, unsane, and biased linguistic forms. After all, the language that you use creates and defines much of the “reality” that you live within.

Given all that, those involved in “the media” today seem to be almost completely clueless as to what they are doing and the confusion, mis-information, distortions, and problems that they are creating. I say “seem” clueless rather than make the judgment that they know what they are doing and are intentionally deceiving us. I don’t know that and I hope that is not the case. What I do know is that they constantly violate the structure of well-formed sentences in their reports. If I make that judgment, I would be making a linguistic distortion and ill-formed structure called “mind-reading.” I would be assuming that I know their mind and “reading” their mind by announcing their intentions. That’s one example of linguistic distortions and biases.

Once upon a time journalists learned the distinction between description and evaluation. But no longer. In almost every news report that I read or hear— the speakers are making no clear distinction between these. They through in evaluations constantly and do not seem to even know what they are doing. Some seem to be clueless about the difference.

What is that difference? Descriptive language uses empirical language of things that you can see, hear, sense, smell, etc. Evaluative language involves a person’s interpretation about what the description means to them. Watch for it whenever there is a word or phrase that you cannot see or hear. When this happens— “the media” is no longer reporting the facts, they are propagandizing with their opinions and interpretations. They are “spinning” the news so that they can support their political point of view.

Because this is everywhere— on TV broadcasts, cable news, newspapers, social media, internet, etc. what can we do about this? We can begin by learning and using the Meta-Model in our own language use. This means learning to distinguish the linguistic distinctions that indicate an ill- formed structure and asking the Meta-Model question that cleans up that distortion, deletion, or over-generalization.

We can also call attention to the un-critical thinking that we see and hear in the media so that others begin to learn to distinguish true facts from the imposed conclusions that people put on those facts.