Simple is seductive, yet so often wrong. In "Complicating the Narratives" Amanda Ripley (Solutions Journalism) writes about the need for reporters – and everyone else – to artfully:

• amplify contradictions – "set a tone for complexity [and] remind people that life is not as coherent as we'd like ..."
• widen the lens – "start a bigger conversation ... focused on broader trends or systemic issues ..."
• ask about motivations – "stop talking about ... 'positions' ... start talking about the story underneath that story, also known as 'interests' or 'values' ..." (including all of Jonathan Haidt's Roots of Morality: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity)
• listen better – build trust, pay attention to subtle clues, especially hesitations and things that people don't say – note "symptoms of deeper, hidden meaning ... words like 'always' or 'never', any sign of emotion, the use of metaphors, statements of identity, words that get repeated, or any signs of confusion or ambiguity ..."
• double check – "give the person a distillation of what you thought they meant and see what they say ..."
• counter confirmation bias carefully – do not "... repeat a false belief in an effort to correct it ..."

and from Ripley's final paragraph:

Journalists need to learn to amplify contradictions and widen the lens on paralyzing debates. We need to ask questions that uncover people's motivations. All of us, journalists and non-journalists, could learn to listen better. As researchers have established in hundreds of experiments over the past half-century, the way to counter the kind of tribal prejudice we are seeing is to expose people to the other tribe or new information in ways they can accept. When conflict is cliché, complexity is breaking news.

(cf Mantra - Open the Aperture (2018-10-30), Righteous Mind (2020-07-12) ...) - ^z - 2022-01-16