Predicted CFL Reporting on Iran Hostages
I recently posted on a media phenomenon where the reporting completely misses the part you want to know about most. I have decided to name it "CFL Reporting". CFL, an acronym for Central Field Loss is a vision problem where you only have peripheral vision and cannot see the center. It is the opposite of Tunnel Vision where you can only see the center. CFL Reporting has occurred when the topmost question the average person would want to know is completely avoided during the giving of the story. An example might be where a child was abducted and there was an eyewitness, yet the story would contain no description of the kidnapper.
During the time Iran held the 15 hostages we were all surprised to see the sailors going on camera and admitting to wrongdoing - stating that they were in Iranian waters in a confession style. The most obvious question on everybody's mind is what would it take to cause a trained hardened military person to submit to such an act? One would suspect that if an Iranian captor would approach one of the sailors and asked them politely to "confess" to being in Iranian waters and apologize on camera, that sailor would tell the captor where to go. Most would even think that if the captors were verbally harsh and made threats demanding they do this, it would be met with failure. This would lead to one of the top questions in the story: what did the Iranians do or say to convince the sailors to submit to such humiliation?
Information may be slow to come out, but when such data is available my prediction is that there will be very little focus on this critical detail if any in most stories produced by the media. I predict there will have been more reporting on the clothing and "goodie bags" provided for the sailors' return than on what spurred the "confessions". The next few days will tell if I am correct. I hope I am not, as I wish to know the answer to this puzzle.
During the time Iran held the 15 hostages we were all surprised to see the sailors going on camera and admitting to wrongdoing - stating that they were in Iranian waters in a confession style. The most obvious question on everybody's mind is what would it take to cause a trained hardened military person to submit to such an act? One would suspect that if an Iranian captor would approach one of the sailors and asked them politely to "confess" to being in Iranian waters and apologize on camera, that sailor would tell the captor where to go. Most would even think that if the captors were verbally harsh and made threats demanding they do this, it would be met with failure. This would lead to one of the top questions in the story: what did the Iranians do or say to convince the sailors to submit to such humiliation?
Information may be slow to come out, but when such data is available my prediction is that there will be very little focus on this critical detail if any in most stories produced by the media. I predict there will have been more reporting on the clothing and "goodie bags" provided for the sailors' return than on what spurred the "confessions". The next few days will tell if I am correct. I hope I am not, as I wish to know the answer to this puzzle.
Labels: CFL Reporting, Iran Hostages, UK Sailors