Watching CNN on
August 4, 2014, I tuned into CNN when Wolf Blitzer briefly mentioned the number
of Palestinians killed that day only to quickly pivot to a focus on Israel's
successful interception of two rockets. He went on to interview an Israeli
official on the defense system to the extent of near obsession. The implication
is that an Israeli life is worth more than a dozen Palestinian lives. At the
very least, the editorial judgment is questionable, if not suspect.
My question is not so much
as to why CNN (and other news editors and reporters) is so biased; they are
human after all. I find it more interesting that so many viewers have such a
tolerance for unfairness that they continue to watch.[1] CNN would not have
been giving the story such airtime were viewers fleeing like bats out of hell. As
soon as I realized that Blitzer's attention would be on the intercepted rockets
even as scores of Palestinians had died that day, I changed the channel. Did many
other people watching have the same sentiment of disapprobation I instinctively
felt and simply dismiss it when it came to deciding on whether to act? Or, do people
have different instinctual tolerances for unfairness, whether as bias primped
up as neutral journalism or the unfair fight being covered? Perhaps different
life-experiences intervene, rendering the common instinct more or less
sensitive to the external stimuli. Lastly, not everyone is going to make the
same choice regarding how to respond.
Nevertheless, we can look
inside the brain, at how it functions normally, to get at whether a certain
tolerance for unfairness is species-wide even if individuals differ in how far
the tolerance extends. The process of natural selection may have left its mark,
and the matter of self-interest or self-preservation is never far when
discussing human nature. Crucially, the extent to which a person’s own
interests—including one’s self-identity—or those of one’s friends—are involved
in a given case of unfairness impacts how reasoning, or cognition, and
emotions, or the passions, affect the tolerance.
Experiments have found that
activity in the cognitive area of the brain, the cognitive dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), increases the amount of tolerance beyond that which the
emotional area, the anterior insula cortex, will permit. Simply put, by
thinking over whether to accept a condition that is unfair to you—that feels unfair (and is)—a person analyzes
whether acceptance is in his or her own interest. If it is, then the person is
more likely to override his or her anger at the unfairness and accept.
In one study, $100 is to be
divided between two players—one of whom makes an offer, which the other person
can accept or reject. The game is played only once, and anonymously. So the
person tasked with accepting or rejecting the offer must decide whether a
distribution unfair to him or her is worth accepting, given that rejecting it
would mean he or she would not receive any money. Rationally, he or she would
accept any offer, even one in which the other player gets $95 of the $100
because $5 is more than not getting anything. Emotionally, however, the
responder may reject blatantly unfair offers. In the experiment, this second
player rejected offers in which he or she would receive 30% or less of the
$100. At that point, the emotive response outweighs cognitive calculation.
In another experiment,
magnetic pulses were used to reduce the activity of the relevant emotional area
of the brain (don’t try this at home!) while leaving the cognitive area
untouched and thus fully functional. The result is that more unfair offers with
less than 30% of the total $100 are accepted. The suppression of the sentiment
of disapprobation that is triggered by instances of unfairness gives cognition
the upper hand. The person can more easily conclude that tolerating the
unfairness is worth the (diminished) emotional cost of resenting the other
person for getting more than deserved. In business terms, the break-even point
shifts in the direction of greater tolerance. Reason can speak internally with
less suffocating clutter being spewed out by the passions: self-interest does
not reside ultimately in relieving momentarily unpleasant feelings. Accordingly,
the dominance of the cognitive area in the brain results in more tolerance for
unfairness in cases in which the person’s self-interest is directly impacted by
the unfairness.
The rational self-interest
impacts the tolerance by reasoning that the person gets more in spite of the
unfairness than without it. Less directly, the gravity of the self-interest can
be expected to inexorably skew the person’s perception to an angle at which the
unfairness is conveniently less transparent, and the tolerance more bearable.
The person’s assumptions naturally comply. By means of their larger framework—a
paradigm of assumptions unconsciously organizing experience with the world—they
bend perception itself accordingly.
The CNN viewers who
self-identified with Israel, for example, would not have perceived the bias
fully, or even at all. Hence, the rational self-interest can triumph without so
much emotional turmoil over the alleged unfairness to be tolerated. What about
the viewers whose rational self-interest is not invested in either side the
conflict, or with CNN? With perception freed up, though certainly not
objective, the appearance of the bias cannot be assuaged or mollified. Nor is
rational self-interest there to justify tolerating more unfairness.
Yet even so, self-interest
generalized as self-preservation—that genetic instinct informed by the process
of natural selection and elevated by reason—may still enable more tolerance. We
humans can evince a chilling tolerance for unfairness that is borne by others
rather than ourselves. The underlying culprit here may be our survival
instinct, which is etched into the fabric of our very being through the myriad of
accretions pronounced by natural selection on our species’ genome. We may have
a greater confidence of our own survival by vicariously "living"
through the dominance of an alpha male unfairly dominating a weaker
constitution. Any sentiment of disapprobation proffering a harsh ethical
verdict is also instinctual, but the primal urge of self-preservation more
successfully marries instinct to reason and is thus habitually more powerful.
According to Nietzsche, reason consists of contending instincts—the strongest
urge being victorious as conscious thought. The instinct of self-preservation
affords more tolerance of the unfair than the moral sentiment would allow. Society,
including its organizations, may magnify this tendency.
Broadcasters may orient
their news broadcasts to the cognitive dimension in highlighting facts,
statistics, and news analysis. CNN suffers less of a financial disincentive
from decreased viewership in exploiting an unfair fight and taking sides, even
if tacitly in the choice of paradigm undergirding the news reports.
Moreover, modern society
itself, being oriented to scientific advancement (e.g., in medicine) and technological
innovation (e.g., engineering) over the humanities (e.g., philosophy), may
privilege the brain’s cognitive functioning over moral, sympathetic feelings.
The news media may simply be reflecting this overall ethos. Ironically, the
teachings of some major philosophers, Hume excepted, advocate for the hegemony
of the rational dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Reason has what Kant termed “absolute
value.” Furthermore, Plato’s theory of justice requires reason to subjugate
emotions so as to provide order to the psyche and polis (city), which are then
in musical/mathematical harmony with the harmony of the heavenly spheres (i.e.,
stars and planets). Within this “justice as order” prescription, greater
tolerance for unfairness can be expected as the sentiment of disapprobation is
subordinated.
In conclusion, the bias
implicit in the CNN report relies on not only the rationalistic values esteemed
in the technological age, but also a natural proclivity in how the human brain
coordinates its internal parts. We may be inclined both as a society and as
individuals to accommodate instances of unfairness that are repugnant to us
emotionally—even those in which we decide to bear the unfairness ourselves.
Just think how easy it must be for us to tolerate unfairness when someone else
must bear the burden.
