"A lie that is a half-truth is the darkest of all
lies."
-Alfred Tennyson
While there is certainly a distinction between lying and
deception, they both produce the same results and are therefore equally bad. Deception
involves the manipulation and distortion of that which is known to be true in
order to convey the desired message. However, lying is based completely on
false information that is then presented as the absolute truth. Looking at the
consequences of both, it can be seen that the results are generally the same.
Lying and deception result in the public being deceived and left unaware of the
truth of the matter.
In class we watched the documentary Control Room, which
investigated the media coverage of the 2003 Iraq war. Within the documentary,
there was a distinct juxtaposition between the coverage provided by Arab news
channel Al Jazeera and the coverage provided by many of the American news
organizations concerning the war. While Al Jazeera mainly presented an unbiased
coverage of the events, many American news channels did not. Al Jazeera made it
clear that the Iraq War came at a price that was being paid with human lives,
either soldiers or civilians. In contrast, both America and the UK tended to
omit the idea of casualties and instead focused on portraying themselves as the
heroes and saviours of the Iraqi people. In order to convey this message, these
organizations deceived their audiences as they did not present the full story
or all of the necessary facts. In this way, deception is equally as bad as
telling a lie as both methods convey a biased and constructed message to the
designated audience.
Great post Tyler, I loved your insights concerning the end results of deception and lying, and the inclusion of that quote at the beginning...deep. That being said when it come to conveying information or presenting news aren't all individuals biased to some extent, influenced by their own personal views and for this reason can the misconstruing of the 'truth' be unintentional and if would this act of unwitting deception still be regarded as severely as an outright, intentional lie?
ReplyDeleteReally well written and completely agree. I wrote about the same prompt with a similar outlook so therefore can only agree with what you have just said. But also we should take into consideration if the government is purposefully deceiving or lying with the intentions of doing so in order to have a positive impact on themselves, or if it is just due to lack of information.
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