The issue of rationality in analysis is it is forced to take on the base assumptions of the thing it's analyzing. If you start from false premises you will reac

The issue of rationality in analysis is it is forced to take on the base assumptions of the thing it's analyzing. If you start from false premises you will reach bad conclusions. This is the difference between rationality and reason. Media literacy, in particular a rather (dare I say) postmodern approach to understanding the process of narrative construction, helps a whole lot to see through the ideological underpinnings. It actually helps quite a bit to triangulate an approximation of the truth by understanding not only the partisan bias in interpreting facts but also what different outlets might choose to include or not in their stories in order to further ideological arguments as well as how they might try to think for the reader to lead them from bare facts to interpretations that feel like facts.