Generally speaking, I try to avoid publicly denouncing people, as it usually ends up having a similar connotation as what people say happen when we assume things of others.

That being said, I was saddened when I saw the recent installment of of a video featured on “Watters’ World,” aired during The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News after SXSW. Jesse Watters, the show’s producer, employed journalistic methods that I find deplorable and unethical abuses of so-called journalism that are simply just thinly veiled attempts to poke fun at liberals attending the conference.

Instead of attempting to reach out to those who might not agree with their political beliefs, the segment seeks to only validate their own political positions on issues facing America today.

Objectively speaking, Jesse Watters’ political views have a tendency to lean towards a conservative authoritarian (or right-wing authoritarian) doctrines. As both a psychological and 0political theory, as presented predominantly in The Authoritarian Personality, such views can be “defined as the convergence of three attitudinal clusters,” as stated by Paul Rosenberg of the Daily Kos in “Rightwing Authoritarianism and Conservative Identity Politics”: 1. Submission to authorities perceived to be established and legitimate, 2. General aggressiveness perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities, 3. Adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities.

While I advocate for political diversity and — despite not being a fan of authoritarian trains of thought — believe that Watters has every right to have the political views that he displays. However, the methods through which he pushes his political views upon others I cannot endorse.

It is unacceptable as a respectable journalist to manipulate the content that your interviewees — whether that be cutting out words or actions or adding what they had said to a different portion of your story — in favor of conveying a certain message. Even in minor cases of this manipulation, journalists — much like myself — can abuse our First Amendment rights by accidently — or in the case of Watters, as I must deduce, purposefully — infringing on the rights of his interview subjects. This is what we call black propaganda. A good example of this can be seen in Steven Crowder’s (host of “Louder with Crowder” podcast) “Vox Rebuttal: Gun Control Propaganda Debunked” on YouTube.

In the case of Watters, Watters interviewed multiple — likely liberal — SXSW conventioneers and asked them questions, the answer to which he presumably and consciously edited with the intent of making them appear bigoted and uneducated in an attempt to smear liberal political arguments and further push his right wing authoritarian ones. Ultimately, the result of this — intended or not — his interviewees who given no indication as to what their interview would be used for and do not have the ability to respond because they have now been, essentially, discredited, bullied, and silenced with deceptive editing.

This manipulation is what we call sensationalism; sensationalism being, according to Webster’s dictionary: 1. empiricism that limits experience as a source of knowledge to sensation or sense perceptions, and 2.  the use or effect of sensational subject matter or treatment.

Sensationalism has a place in entertainment, but not journalism. Journalism is what we should naturally refer to as the truth. It is a method of communication in which an individual strives to gather knowledge and distributed it among fellow members of his society to better that society. Sensationalism is the exact opposite of that. It muddles the truth with half-lies and falsehoods based on the basis of subject matter with little logical value simply to invoke a sensational response. One form of this sensationalism is what we call “quote mining,” or the fallacy of quoting out of context, which is exactly what Watters has done. In a YouTube video called “Explaining Quote Mining to Idiots” Sargon of Akkad explains how quite mining abuses the journalism process to produce a desired outcome.  Here Sargon gives an accurate analyzation of a Wikipedia definition for quote mining, and rebuttals  an accusation made upon him and effective explains what non-quote mining, or essentially, accurate quoting, actually is. This accurate quoting is something Watters neglects to do at least once in his SXSW edition video.

At the end of the day, I concede to this simply being an opinion. Personally, I’ve seen corruption in the media due to political alignments. I cannot help feeling that the media, especially sections of it that thrive on sensational material such as Watters’ World are the reasons why there is little political civility or acceptance. The national political conversation is an atrocity, and it’s based on the foundation of this sensational journalism undermining political understand by aggravating people to the point where their lividity doesn’t allow for them to accept anything else but what they have advocated to be “the truth”

As a conservative myself, who knows and understands — and on some level sometimes agrees with — the doctrines of Jesse Watters, I denounce Watters’ methods of abuse of the First Amendment, and denounce Watters’ authoritarianism that justifies this abuse. As a libertarian, I implore FOX News, and furthermore the entirety of media, to move away from such sensationalist arguments that only please a minority of your viewers and aggravate a majority of people not of your political constituency.

I ask that we collectively condemn these barbaric methods and move more to civility. I ask that we go back to the roots of journalism and cut our own view out of our news, to avoid half truths and falsehoods; to go back to telling the truth. To go back to be respectful individuals of society that would thrive for nothing more than to convey that truth.