How the press has handled coverage of the Trayvon Martin case points to what I think are disturbing tendencies on the part of the media. When the story first came out we heard that a guy named George Zimmerman had shot and killed a black kid. Zimmerman, of course, is the whitest name around (presumably derived from German) and the shooting sounded like a classic act of racism. Of course it then turned out that George Zimmerman is more correctly defined as hispanic (at least in terms of appearance. He has more than a passing resemblance to the hispanic rapper Pitbull.)

However, a couple days after the Martin shooting, a young guy in Tulsa rants on his facebook page about “niggers” and then allegedly grabs a buddy and goes off and kills three black men (and wounds two others). The press’s (and the public’s) reaction? Largely, “meh…”

It would seem if there’s any case perfectly illustrating the evils of racism it’s the Tulsa case. More deaths, more overt racism (the “n-word” is used) and, to top it off, the killers looks like they came out of central casting for “hillbilly racist fucktards.” (Pics at the link above.) So why the flaccid press coverage? I think it’s partly a matter of timing. The media already had their “horrors of racism” story in play with the Martin shooting and didn’t want to upend it. Secondly, while there’s plenty of conflict in the Martin case (white versus black, cops versus society, gun nuts versus anti-gun nuts) there really isn’t much in the Tulsa shooting. Most of us agree these guys are scum and should be put in jail. And this gets into a point I’ve made earlier. What the press needs is conflict – large groups of people set against each other. Conflict stories cause people to buy newspapers, watch television shows and discuss these topics (heatedly) at the kitchen table*. With the Tulsa shootings, there’s not much to discuss. Nobody’s going to defend these guys (and rightly so.)

* As I and others have argued, our eagerness to take sides in conflict may be rooted in the evolutionary psychology of our tribal roots.

But the problem is: which is the greater news story? Now, defining what is news is an ethereal art form at best, but I would argue that the Martin case is more of an inflated news story whereas the Tulsa shootings is more of a deflated news story. And we, as consumers of news, should be aware of the hand of the media in manipulating those valuations.

About a week ago, a friend of mine who’s writing a blog about novel writing brought up an interesting concept. In the process of writing fiction, he reported, one must insert conflict into the most atomic levels. What does this mean? Well, we’re all familiar with the idea that the story arc of fiction is about conflict and you may even recall the three famous themes of western fiction: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs himself. But that’s what you might call the meta-conflict. To really keep readers turning pages you need conflict on the level of the paragraph and dialogue. For example, the following would be bad dialogue:

“Let’s hike over to Mount Wammuu,” said Frank.

“That’s a great idea, ” agreed Bob. “I’ll make sure we have all the supplies we need!”

Better dialogue would be…

“Let’s hike over to Mount Wammuu,” said Frank.

“That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard, ” scolded Bob. “Everyone knows Mount Wammuu is populated by man eating bears. And there’s no way I could find the supplies we need! You’re a moron!”

The first example has no conflict; the second plenty of it. And this is just on the level of a few paragraphs. With the second example the reader is intrigued. “Are they actually going to climb the mountain? Will they be eaten by bears? I must read on!”

As I thought about it, I realized music is a lot like this. In music you have the idea of tension and release. Tension is created, often by deviating away from patterns already established in the song or by using chords that need to resolve to the main chord of the song. (If the song is in G major for example, the song ultimately should end up on a G major chord.) There’s all sorts of ideas in music theory about creating tension which is essentially creating conflict.

Recently I was also thinking about how certain people seem wired to see the dark side. Some funny light went on on the coffee maker? It probably means that the coffee maker is broken and will take thousands of dollars to fix and in the meantime is spewing noxious radiation in the air. Your boyfriend is a few minutes late? He’s probably still zipping up his pants having just had sex with your best friend. We’ve all got this voice in us, though whether we choose to listen varies from person to person. But this voice seems to thrive on creating tension and conflict.

So this all leads up to some thoughts I’ve had watching the Republican nomination process (with a largely distanced eye.) Something like 9 months ago, I basically said, “It’s going to be Romney,” and lost interest. But I couldn’t not be aware of these spasms, highlighted by the press, of, “It’s Perry! Wait, no, it’s Gingrich! No, it’s Bachman! No, wait, it’s Cain! No, it’s Gingrich again! No, wait it’s Santorum!”

Now, the exact mass psychology creating these spasms is probably impossible to understand, but I do think the press, as the storyteller so to speak, has a large role. They want to tell an exciting story and, as a result, craft conflicts, many of which, frankly, aren’t really there. Honestly, did anyone think Cain had a chance? Bachman, really? Gingrich, who has popularity ranking in the 30 percentile?

Just yesterday I saw some headline along the lines of “Santorum wins three states.” But if you look at the actual delegate count Romney is well ahead. As Romney himself has pointed out, he’s winning the big states (in delegate counts), Ohio, Florida, etc. If that headline was to be honest, it should have said, “Romney has substantial lead.” But there’s no tension there, no conflict.

Now I’m not saying this hasn’t been an unpredictable nomination process. And I suspect that is driven partly by the media’s crafting of this exciting storyline. Some guy in Arkansas would love to see Santorum in the White House but knows he hasn’t a chance against Obama so he settles on Romney. Then this guy sees all these headlines and thinks, “Maybe Santorum could win – maybe he does have the support,” and switches to Santorum. The reality starts to look like the media narrative.

I’m also not saying the that media is knowingly crafting this story. I think it’s a much more subconscious process driven by this innate human desire to have conflict (the broken coffee maker again.)

As another example, I’m reminded off a recent headline along the lines of “Prescription drug deaths now past auto fatalities.” You think, “Gee, that’s awful, Everyone know there are lots of auto fatalities.” But then I looked at a chart accompanying the article and realized part of the reason prescription drug deaths were now past auto fatalities was that rate of auto fatalities had actually gone down.* The headline could have just as easily said, “Yaaay! Auto fatalities are dropping!” By there’s no conflict there.

*No word on the declining rate of auto fellatio, but by definition that involves a certain amount of “going down.” HAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAWHAW!! I kill me.

My larger point here is that we need to be aware of when we’re being manipulated by people’s desire for conflict – whether it be news reports or reports of broken coffee makers – and act accordingly.

One of the authors at the Freakonomics blog has an interesting post on how he learned far more French from a three-month “fast learning” CD course than by taking five years of French classes in college. His take away from this is that the way we teach language, and indeed many topics, is faulty.

This corresponds to some of my recent experience. I took Japanese for three or so years in high school but I can barely remember how to say “hello.” Meanwhile, I’ve been casually learning German over the past two months or so, and I’m pretty impressed with the depth of my vocabulary and grammar. I’ll often be thinking some thought, or talking to someone, and I’ll test myself on whether I could make the same point in German. With surprising regularity, I can.

What’s the Freakonomics writer’s main criticism about language education? That it’s a process of learning rules, as opposed to how to speak naturally.

If we learned our first language like we usually learn second languages, it might look like this. A young child says, “I am hungry.” The parent replies, “Wait! Before saying am, you first must learn to conjugate to be in all persons and number, in the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive moods, and in the past, perfect, and future tenses.” After a few months, or maybe weeks, of this teaching, the child would conclude that it has no aptitude for languages and become mute. And human culture would perish in a generation.

He also makes this interesting point about formal methods of learning (any subject.)

Most of the learning is spent passively copying down what the teacher puts on the board or, in the high-tech version, using ghastly PowerPoint slides. This method of knowledge reproduction made sense 800 years ago, when a book cost $20,000 (in today’s dollars). The invention of the printing press has changed book prices but not how schools and universities organize learning.

This isn’t an uncommon criticism — that the kind of learning rewarded in institutions is rote learning e.g. memorizing facts, figures and vocabularies. This doesn’t capture whether the student has really learned the subject, in the sense of being able to tie it together with their existing knowledge. They haven’t had that “ah ha” moment. As a result, the student gets little joy from learning.

I believe the solution to this problem would be to burn down all high schools and colleges.