Countering

Throughout this unit, I have constantly mentioned how news agencies disagree with one another on the material they present. I have repeatedly said that to get the whole story, one must look at multiple sources from multiple vantage points. In Harris’s chapter on countering, another effect of differing vantage points in brought about.

Aside from the fairly viscous way television news counter one another, there are also constructive ways to counter.

As I was thinking of examples of countering, our class discussions about forwarding kept coming to mind. In that discussion, we examined an article on Andrew Sullivan’s blog regarding gay rights. In it were quotes from Abraham Lincoln. I view this as countering because, as we stated in class, everyone loves Lincoln; however, I do not think that he would agree with the topic his words were used for. I believe the type of countering that Sullivan was shooting for was ‘uncovering values’.

The word my group invented was “contexting”, which is simply taking someone’s words out of context. After reading the chapter on countering, I believe that contexting could be another form of countering. This is because in most valid arguments (or countering), one side usually uses the words of another to make his point.

When countering, the only lost is respect. This is because some people (including myself) are not amused by the bantering of professionals, even if it is friendly. In my opinion news is supposed to be unbiased and there should, because of that, be no argument. I do however believe that in countering something is added. That something is very difficult to name because it depends on the context of the argument. That is to say that often times when someone is being countered, it is because they have made a statement which was likely not their main point and it was subsequently made into the focus of another’s ambush.