This practice became the namesake of one of the best-known types of fallacies, the red herring fallacy. As a philosophy professor, this is how I explain the fallacy to my students: If the argument is not going your opponent's way, a common strategy — though a fallacious and dishonorable one — is to divert attention from the real issue by raising an issue that is only tangentially related to the first.
If our collective philosophical literacy were better, we might notice that this fallacy seems to be working spectacularly well for the fossil-fuel industry, the petrochemical industry, and a bunch of other bad actors who would like to throw us off the trail that would lead us fully to grasp their transgressions. We shouldn't keep falling for it. - Salon
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
One successful method with which Big Oil drives the "narrative"
It would be a lot harder without corporate media's ready and cheerful (if degraded) compliance.
Two side comments
ReplyDeleteToday, my bride was preparing dinner and I had the national news on the television ... expecting to hear a focus on resolving the debt ceiling issue and instead heard that Montana's governor had signed a law denying "drag queens" from doing public readings ... she said "what in the hell has this country fallen to ... MAGA Republicans are holding us hostage, so the media is focused on their culture issues." I said, "Honey, you are correct." There is too much diversion to issues that are designed to prick emotions.
Second story ... Tuesday, I had to stop for gas for my garden tractor at a local convenience store ... their pumps have television screens playing short commercials ... typically telling me that they have "hot and fresh coffee all day" ... but today's commercial was about Ford's Electric Vehicles ... that's right, I pumping fossil fuel into my five gallon can and hearing a commercial promoting electric vehicles.