EVERY day we see people saying things and firmly believe those things to be true. If they talk about 10 aspects of a sportsperson, these people are apt to believe that those 10 things are the truth. These people believe in so much of what they say that they are unable to realise that there are other beliefs and perceptions other than their own.

And these beliefs and perceptions drive their behaviours, even though some perceptions may be false. You see, perceptions are real for the people who hold them, regardless of whether these perceptions are right or wrong. Indeed, even if their perceptions are objectively wrong, there are some people who would still try to show that they are correct.

This concern of people to feel that they are correct has a lot to do with their perceptions of the subject matter at hand. So it is not surprising that a perception is one of the most powerful factors shaping human behaviour.
Ashleigh Brilliant said that “Seeing is believing. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.” Pitzer of the University of Minnesota makes the point that when people obtain information, they perceive that information. What does perceiving this information mean?
It means that these people try to make some sense of the information, they also try to interpret that information, they may try to define the situation to which the information refers, and then arrive at some conclusions. By doing these things, people develop a perception of whatever. Of course, in an objective sense, that perception could be right or wrong, depending on the quality of the information.
Your perception that you are the most popular journalist will influence you to write in a manner that you think will make you popular. Think about situations where as a journalist you have this feeling that you have to write in a ‘gossipy’ manner to become popular, like some columnists in the New York Times, contributors on CNN and al-Jazeera, or panelists on Bill Maher’s Real Time. However, regardless of whether that feeling to write in a ‘gossipy’ manner to become popular is real or imagined, the ‘gossipy’ writing in the newspaper to become popular is real. W.I. Thomas states: in the Thomas Theorem that “If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”
Even though the interpretation of the ‘gossipy’ writing may be incorrect in that it does not make you popular, that writing is real in its consequences, i.e., the ‘gossipy’ content is within the columns of the newspaper with all the good and bad results.
In this case where the ‘gossipy’ writing does not make you popular, it means then that you as a journalist are carrying a false perception. And a false perception produces behaviours with inappropriate results. In this situation, seeing is believing where you are seeing something false because of your false beliefs.