The Teachings of Carlos

[David McCarthy]

A 60 Minutes TV documentary.
"Carlos" was modeled on "Ramtha".
Well worth viewing.

David.
The Teachings of Carlos.
video link
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 6446539758

**************************

From Rational Perspective.com


James Randi and "The Teachings of Carlos"
Back in April 2005, I wrote a post about how bad the media is at informing the public and performing actual investigative reporting.

In the post, the following problems were noted among the media's current failings:

The media treats opposing arguments as equally honest and equally extreme, no matter what the factual merits are.

The media replaces actual investigative reporting with punditry, often uninformed or obviously biased punditry.

The media determines the importance of a story based on how many other people are talking about it, and thus tends to favor coverage of celebrity trials over substantive news.

The media tends to dumb down complex issues, particularly in the area of science, economics and foreign policy

The combination of these failings tends to produce "fake" controversies. And, of course, it is then the "controversy" that is reported on and not the actual facts of the underlying issues.
Well now you can see for yourself in one neatly encapsulated story just exactly how poorly the media serves the public interest. This Google Video is of a relatively well known (in skeptic circles anyway) scam job that paranormal debunker extraordinaire James Randi perpetrated on the Australian media with the help of the Australian version of 60 minutes. Although I had read about in the past, I have never seen the actual story until now.

The scam revolves around "Carlos the Great", who James Randi had created by convincing a friend to portray a crystal toting, new age channeler who claimed to be able to channel an ancient mystical spirit who could make predictions about the future. To make sure he had a gimmick, Randi taught the actor playing Carlos how to suppress his pulse by placing a small ball under his arm and squeezing down on the ball at the moment when "Carlos" took possession of his body.

The beauty of this must see piece is that it shows how easy it was to manipulate the media and how terrible a job the media did at investigating the story:

Non Investigative Reporting:
In a matter of days, Randi had manipulated the media into giving the unknown Carlos huge amounts of publicity. He did this by circulating bogus media reports and press releases on the "Wisdom of Carlos". One newspaper even re-printed the press releases in editorial space making it appear as legitimate news. The bogus media reports and press releases were all from non-existent media outlets and just one phone call by any one reporter would have revealed the entire scam. Instead in initial interviews Carlos received only softball questions from the media who asked him about the nature of his predications instead of asking him to prove or authenticate the fact that he can actually make predictions. With a nurse present to monitor his pulse, they fully accepted without further questioning that his heart had actually stopped upon channeling the ancient spirit.

Treating opposing arguments as Equal:
On skeptical TV personality did question Carlos. But instead of doing the actual simple investigative reporting that would have revealed him as a fake, he merely brought on TV a skeptic who rightly assumed Carlos was playing a trick with a ball under his arm. This demonstrates the media's lazy approach of just airing one opinion versus another. With a little more effort the reporter could have proved scientifically with reams of evidence that Carlos could not be doing as he claimed.

Reporting a Story because it is Being Talked About:
Randi knew that if he really wanted to generate buzz about Carlos, that he needed a story that people would talk about. So he planned to have Carlos (via his "manager") throw water into the face of George Negus on the nationally broadcast Australian Today show. Negus was the equivalent of Today's Matt Lauer and a household name. Sure enough after that incident, news of "Carlos the Great" was saturated all over TV and print media. Randi had successfully manipulated the media into proving all the free publicity Carlos could ever want.

Although this story is about a new age channeler, it should nevertheless be obvious by now just how dangerous it is to have a poorly informed public. More than ever, we need to put an end to supremely lazy and incompetent media and return to the days (if they ever fully existed) of intelligent, informative investigative news.

Mr. Randi, I think we are in need of another demonstration.

Rational Perspective link
http://foolsleftandright.blogspot.com/2 ... arlos.html

To provide a much needed alternative to the frustrating deluge of bias, irrationalism, ignorance, pseudoscience, partisanship and divisive polemics that permeates and confuses our culture...