The Limits of NarrativeSocietal crises of self-confidence can result from distorted and oversimplified narratives.
James Jeffrey
07 May 2022
“Lots of color and make it punchy.” As a journalist I hear this kind of thing a lot from editors, and it’s not necessarily bad advice. It basically means that vivid narratives are a better tool of communication and persuasion than dry analyses that sift inconclusive data and real-world complexity. This is no doubt true, but the upshot is that, before writing begins, a degree of shaping is already occurring that the journalist then compounds when developing a story. Even with the best of intentions, this shaping is necessarily a form of manipulation. In the hands of an intellectually honest writer, that manipulation may be benign. But it can also become an instrument of ideological distortion, especially in a highly polarized climate.
Narratives—especially those pushed by politicians and partisan media outlets—are a powerful means of influencing perceptions of the society and world in which we live. “Fact-checking, which has long been an integral part of journalism, has been supplemented by a type of ‘narrative-checking,’” warns Hal Conte in Compact magazine. “In some cases, facts have been deliberately removed or altogether omitted for fear that they would undermine broader truths (or noble lies).”
Conte argues that the main reason for this is “a self-conception among many reporters that they must protect the core truths of ‘democracy’—understood to mean not just electoral norms, but also a broad range of liberal ideological commitments.” And so, “it follows that facts and stories that contradict this set of commitments amount to anti-democratic ‘misinformation’” that may be legitimately silenced. Furthermore, each myopic narrative creates the need for an equally myopic and unbalanced counter-narrative, while the nuances of a messier reality are neglected in the middle.
* * *
Source:
https://quillette.com/2022/05/07/the-limits-of-narrative/
