ABSTRACT
What is reality? For Kant, realism had two forms: empirical and transcendental. Empirical realism contends that I can only believe in the existence of something if I see it with my own eyes. To cite an old adage, if a tree falls in the wood it only makes a sound if a hearing person or animal is in earshot. Transcendental realism contends that the falling tree will produce a sound regardless of anything being able to hear it, because sound exists independently of hearing, as physical perturbation of the atmosphere. In the psychology of news and other so-called “factual media,” it is essential that we consider the ways in which media act simultaneously as “windows on the world” and as vehicles for propaganda.
