TFY Ch. 8 Summary - Viewpoints

This chapter is about differing viewpoints and importance of being able to see from someone else’s viewpoint. Viewpoint is defined as one’s perspective, or attitude and the circumstances that create such an attitude. There are many different type of viewpoints. Some of them are political, national, ethnic, religious, occupational, and socioeconomic just to name a few. Some viewpoints may be unconscious. Some examples of this are egocentrism, ethnocentrism and religiocentrism. In the world we live in today, it is important to recognize viewpoints, especially political viewpoints. There is a left to right political spectrum that one should be aware of. Left means liberal and right means conservative. Viewpoints can be hidden in newspapers by how the editor frames the information. This is appropriately called News Framing. It is how the editor uses layout, placement, and headlines to sensationalize, exaggerate, downplay or convey importance. This, as the chapter states, can have a hidden influence on the reader. The chapter also touches on the importance of getting ones news from a variety of sources and not just from corporate U.S media. I personally would like to stress this point. I watch a lot of news and read a lot and I find that there truly is not a wide range of opinions and viewpoints that are reflected, especially when it comes to global issues and many domestic issues as well. My personal opinion is that the corporate news media’s actual goal is to keep you as uninformed as possible without making you realize that. I find the internet a good way to get around this and foreign media as well. People should not be blind to the fact that other people’s viewpoints exist for a reason. You should be able to step out of your own viewpoint and step into another by understanding the circumstances that lead to that perspective. Not being able to do so allows people and nations to be oblivious to the rest of the world. That kind of narrow thinking is the seed that eventually leads to totalitarian states who’s masses believe they are always right and others are always wrong.