What do you hear? What do you believe?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

One of the great benefits of the internet is that we can see and hear events that never make it as major stories in the major media outlets. It's also a problem -- obscure events can be elevated to become "representative" of entire groups of people without balance or actual analysis. We are constantly asked in the age of internet media to evaluate raw information without knowledge of context or proportionality.

This video, for example, made some rounds on the net a few months back. It purports to show a group of community organizers praying to Obama. The distributor of the video added captions at key points to assist your hearing of the key phrase "Deliver us, Obama".

Pretty damning, isn't it? Now the audio is pretty low quality, but when you watch it and listen it is pretty clear that they ARE offering prayer directly to the President.

Now listen to the video WITHOUT watching it.

If you are being honest, I'm thinking there is a really good chance that you are a lot less sure of what is being said.

So here is a question: how do you approach the supposedly "raw" information we have constant access to via alternative media sources? How much do these sources influence the "mainstream" media and what are the implications for how much even allegedly unbiased orignal source material can be manipulated?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And they were really no different than any of the other peoples in the region, the Mayans included. But still.......dripping hearts is not exactly the Western ideal of what civilization is. I mean, the Graeco-Romans were disgusted at the practice among the Germanic peoples to the north....

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

The Germanic peoples were disgusted by the gladitorial games, which were, when you stripped them down to the basics, ritual human sacrafice. I always find it interesting to note that Christianized Romans didn't stop the games, but as the barbarians moved South, the games stopped with their arrival.

Maybe it has something to do with Arianism.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, if I remember the story of St. Telemachus right his martyrdom *did* outlaw the practice by 404 AD, which is when Emperor Honorius outlawed them in the Western Empire. In any case for the Christian Emperors to have done so made a good deal of sense as the Games were major rituals to sanctify the pagan Emperors and to uphold paganism.

So it would have been a way to show that the Christian leaders were no longer interested in continuing old established conservative traditions....