Theory

The Media Research Center is the conservative watchdog group that is the most influential intellectual authority behind the claims that the media "slant reports in favor of the liberal position on issues."

While there may in fact be instances where the media’s coverage is tainted by a political bias, the standard of scientifically validating this causal path goes beyond simply collecting "a mountain of evidence."

The MRC claims to have proven the existence of liberal media bias through "sound scientific research," but yet their scientific methodology relies solely upon inductive method of investigation while never using a more comprehensive Hypothetico-Deductive Method of scientific inquiry.

I intend for my project to be soundly grounded in theory from the disciplines of sociology, psychology and mass communications.

The underlying theory that I am trying to apply is that fixed attitudes and beliefs can limit one’s perception of reality. Our attitudes and beliefs are influenced by our value system and sense of morality. Our value systems serve as the primary filter to how we see the world and what we perceive to be the "truth" as we understand it.

The project will be covering issues that are very emotionally charged, and it will inevitably stimulate emotional states of high passion and low logic. But at the same time it is difficult to make a credible argument to an opposing viewpoint by going outside the bounds of accepted academic discourse. The more that the film’s content is grounded in academic theory, then more persuasive and acceptable it will become.

Names are important because they carry meaning.

I named my production company "MetaThought Productions" after a textbook called "Tools of Critical Thinking: Metathoughts for Psychology" by Pepperdine University Professor David A. Levy.

My mission statement explains further:

Our mission at MetaThought Productions is to expand consciousness by exploring the limitations of our attitudes and beliefs. By "thinking about how we think," then we can gain the perspective to be able to break out of our dominant paradigms. We accomplish this by producing multimedia outreach tools for liberals and progressives that stimulate dialogue with conservatives. The Echo Chamber documentary intends to build understanding between the polarized ends of the political spectrum by providing an emotionally engaging catalyst for discussing grievances with the mainstream television news media.

Josh Marshall on investigative journalism:

"They take hundreds of hours to put together. It's very hard for them ever to pay in commercial terms. And blogs will almost never fill that role."

A closed-door method of investigative reporting takes a long time, but it could go a lot quicker if the on-the-record interviews were open-sourced and input was taken from the online community.

The Echo Chamber Project is an experiment to attempting to implement an open-sourced model of investigative reporting.

The Media Democratization Model below combines the principles of the scientific method and open-source development and applies it to journalism.

The following ten steps illustrate how this combination would work and how our corporately-controlled mainstream media could more actively incorporate input and feedback from members of society...