A narcissist is someone who has an unreasonably high sense of self-importance. Seeking attention and admiration, they often ignore the feelings of others. Being around a narcissist can take a toll on anybody, but how would it affect you if your mother was one?
This of course can be a serious personal and family problem, but suppose we widen the view a little. Not for the sake of sarcasm directed at the BBC, but because the issue can be made considerably wider, taking in the behaviour of institutions. Here's an edited version of the above text as an attempt to make the point.
A narcissist media corporation is one which has an unreasonably high sense of self-importance. Seeking attention and admiration, it often ignores the feelings of others. Being saddled with narcissist national broadcaster can take a toll on any population, but how would it affect you if your primary media source was one?
To take just one common enough example, the "What you need to know" type of headline has many variations across many media sources. Here's a recent BBC version, very easily found to make the point -
It's more than talking down to people, it is talking down from an unreasonably high sense of self-importance at the corporate level. Perhaps it is inevitable that this seems to attract too many narcissist employees as presenters and performers.
8 comments:
Yes, an "unreasonably high sense of self-importance". I wouldn't mind so much if I was being talked down to by people who were intelligent; it's being buttonholed by a callow sixth-former that grates.
The Gell-Mann effect (also called Gell-Man amnesia) is an extremely worthwhile idea. I first encountered this as an undergraduate, reading and writing masses about Thomas Hobbes. I vividly remember reading an article about him in the Observer or Sunday Times, and was quite shocked to see that the piece was riddled with inaccuracies and misunderstandings. Up until then, I thought that all national journalism in "quality" papers was trustworthy. But then, of course, I forgot all about it, and believed what I was told in the economics or science sections.
You must have experienced a lot of it, AHK, when reading about science.
I suppose people might start out having the good intention to speak the truth. But then, when you realise that your audience can't answer back...
Mostly on BBC the person on screen or microphone does not know a thing about what they are talking about. They just have to meet the current appearance criteria and he able to read an auto-cue. Some of them can even walk and talk at the same time.
So they do not need to feel guilt or embarrassment when they spout lies, rubbish or current politically acceptable narrative. Yes, I know. Tautology.
They have a few who who gained good doctorates or professorships a while ago but now they spout on subjects of which they know naught.
E.g. Brian Cox. No not the excellent actor.
RIP David Bellamy.
Yesterday we visited my BIL who had a stroke a year ago and who, despite his shitehouse of a wife, is making slow progress. When we got there he had fallen asleep watching BBC “news”. It’s the first time I’ve been exposed to it for 4king years and it won’t happen willingly again. It was absolute crap: woke, bland, pointless and, in a short break, self-justifying. For this we’re paying an unavoidable tax . . .
I spent a university long vacation as the barman in a country pub/hotel. The locals told me of a murder on the moors a few years before. Journalists stayed at the hotel but couldn't prise any info from the police investigating the case. So early each evening the journos would meet in the bar and agree what they were going to report for the morning editions.
Illuminating.
@Sam Vega
It's not just the prestigious daily papers, or the Guardian. I've found that any reporting of local events by a local paper is subject to the same problems. When they report on things I have personally witnessed they manage to get key facts wrong.
Same with video news. Unless the video clip is continuous, with time stamps, you often get 'edited' videos - edited to imply some narrative which just ain't so.
Sam - yet the person who wrote your Hobbes piece sat down and wrote it. He or she must have known they were not too hot on Hobbes, but maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe the number of people able to pick holes in the piece was deemed small enough to ignore.
It does seem to be the case that many people with an area of expertise discover the facile nature of journalism when their speciality is covered by non-specialist journalists. It's happening now with all the blather about sewage discharges.
Doonhamer - yes, it's as if they are trained to treat veracity as an obstruction to be avoided whenever possible. As if it isn't seen as part of the professional toolkit.
Jannie - with BBC news, absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder does it? I haven't watched any of it for a long time, but even when I did look at it occasionally it had begun to seem weird.
dearieme - I bet it was illuminating. To my mind it's like a competition, if you aren't as cynical as they are you can't hope to play the game adequately and are certain to be deceived by them.
DJ - we come across that too. Not uncommon is where road accidents are reported as having occurred in the wrong location. Clearly they don't bother to go out and check.
Certainly chimes with my experience - as a 14 year old, reading a colour supplement book review and 45 years later getting the book through Amazon and finding it mis reported the contents outrageously.
Or the way they used to make up stories about my work, when I was a conservator.
Or reading a Telegraph article about a village scandal (in Derbyshire actually), that I was witness to, where they got key facts wrong and missed the key perpetrator entirely, as Sam mentions.
Tammly - I find book reviews can be very misleading. Some people seem uncomfortable with anything they view as "dated" or "outdated" and quite unwilling to place themselves in a period setting while reading.
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