Newspeak And Doublethink Analysis

Circumspeak: Newspeak and Doublethink in Modern Media and Politics [OR]
FALSEHOOD IS TRUTH: Newspeak and Doublethink in Modern Media and Politics Aldous Huxley once wrote, “Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons” (299). The latter seems to be the situation in which we find ourselves today—with language being manipulated in the realms of media and politics, to the ultimate advantage of those doing the manipulating. In 1984, Orwell warns his readers of this very problem using his concepts of Newspeak and doublethink. In Winston’s world, Newspeak is the language that is used in Oceania, and is the only language in the world that is shrinking. By getting

Large American media conglomerates have been growing increasingly polarized on the political spectrum, each network presenting information and reporting on stories using angles that benefit the political party that they support (Prior). Most notably, Fox News is infamous for being a partisan news channel that strongly supports the conservative Republican Party, despite the fact that its motto is “fair and balanced” (“Fox News.”). According to a New York Times editorial, “[Fox News’] claim to be fair and balanced is no more than a knowing wink to its audience, and has no higher master than the dollar” (Crossman). For example, in 2012, during the presidential election, Fox News anchor Sean Hannity blatantly lied to his audience, claiming that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had stated that if President Barack Obama won a second term, “[t]axes [would] go up 30 percent” (Uwimana). In reality, the CBO report had merely been talking about fiscal bills that were in effect at the time, and had not mentioned anything about President Obama (Uwimana). However, Hannity still falsified information in order to support his own conservative agenda. Such political polarization in the media leads to a public that is increasingly misinformed. Further exacerbating the problem, Fox News often stages debates over facts rather than over opposing viewpoints (Scherer). There have been numerous occasions in which Hannity and other anchors have called into question the legitimacy of the scientific consensus on global warming (Rudman). By calling the legitimacy and reality of such facts into question, Fox News casts doubt on scientifically established principles such as climate change, and on other important facts that could potentially help clarify the true nature of