By John Stark
At a Western Washington University lecture last week, PBS News Hour co-anchor Jeremy Brown suggested that the wide range of politically-inflected news outlets–including both cable channels and websites–may be at least one of the causes of a divided nation.
I just can’t resist sharing my own thoughts on this topic, so I’m not going to. Here is a portion of my account of what Brown said, as written for the paper, with a few of my own observations added.
BELLINGHAM—A fragmented nation and a fragmented audience for news is making this country more difficult to govern, PBS News Hour co-anchor Jeffrey Brown said during a recent talk at Western Washington University.
A generation ago, before cable news channels and internet news sources, most people got their news from the same small collection of sources: three major television networks and a hometown newspaper or two, Brown said. People gathered around their televisions for the assassination of a president, a walk on the moon, and other major events.
“It was an age of mass media news, one audience sharing a common experience,” Brown said. “For the most part, the mass audience experienced such things together.”
(Stark: This was a different country in the 1960s. We had the media that technology permitted us to have. But we also had a very different generation of people running the country. My parents were (still are, bless ‘em) in many ways typical of that generation. The Great Depression and World War II helped to forge national unity through crisis. While that generation had the same broad range of ideological perspectives that we do, they were usually willing to set their own preferences aside and accept the decisions made by people in authority, while they focused on the economic opportunities offered by the post-war economic boom. )
Brown, featured speaker for the university’s Fall Family Open House Saturday, Oct. 27, contrasted that world with the one we live in today, in which Americans can restrict themselves to cable news stations and internet news sources they find most congenial.
“For the most part, we now live in the world of niches,” Brown said. He acknowledged that the availability of more choices is a good thing, but he also noted that the change seems to be part of a far more divided and bitter political atmosphere.
“If we only connect with like-minded people, how do we hear other views?” Brown asked. “It’s hard not to feel it has some relationship to the divisions around us.”
Brown said he has interviewed departing members of Congress from both parties who have told him they no longer want to be a part of an institution where compromise has become impossible and political parties are intent on scoring points rather than addressing national crises.
Brown cited some polling data that seems to show fear and bitterness transcending political and ideological boundaries. Pollsters have found that both Democrats and Republicans fear the loss of what they have and see their values as under siege.
“Each side sees itself as under siege,” Brown said. “Each side sees itself as losing ground. They can’t both be right. Or can they?”
(Stark: Yes, they CAN both be right. Conservatives see their once-prevailing cultural values mocked in popular culture. Liberals feel their values may be threatened by a conservative backlash. But most important, both liberals and conservatives know that their savings and their livelihoods are at the mercy of global economic forces that don’t care what party they belong to.)
What do you think? If cable television and the internet had never been invented, would our politics be any less divisive and bitter today? I don’t think so, although this is one of those questions where all answers are speculation. I don’t think proliferation of channels caused political divisions (and I’m not sure Brown thinks so either), although they certainly helped to fuel those divisions and deepen them. And I think those divisions would have become more evident anyhow, as the more team-oriented and self-effacing Greatest Generation surrendered the reins to their children and grandchildren, and a more difficult economy made everyone feel fearful and suspicious.
I also suspect that the new technologies simply enabled people to do something they wanted to do back in Walter Cronkite’s day. Agree or disagree?
One can only make a decision based on the information one has access to. Bad information leads to bad decisions. We are not privy to all the information available due to media bias. Why are we not given both sided equally? Media bias, if information is negative in their view, we either don’t get it, or we get very little, that information the media likes, we are overwhelmed with. If one wishes all pertinent information these days, one must research it ones self.
Don’t forget that, prior to the Reagan Administration, the televised news media operated according to much different rules than they do today (e.g., the fairness doctrine).
A democracy is supposed to be fragmented. So to answer the question, the New Media enhances democracy.
Without the New Media, would Obama have been elected? Or would we have just seen a mulatto with a name very similar to America’s greatest enemy?
The internet (I don’t have cable) allows us to get in-depth information within minutes that otherwise would have taken days to get back in the day, if at all. I doubt Obama would have been able to do what he’s done without it. Score one for the liberals.
Information that the liberals/feds don’t really want us to see is out there, too. Stats about the true demographics of America like whites are 63%, but that includes Near Easterners like Osama.
Or the true color of crime. The media/feds have hidden the racial identities of non-whites that commit crimes for 50 years. Now all one has to do is a 30 second search to discover the facts.
The New Media is good. Not great, as it’s used for evil, but it will keep everyone somewhat honest.
The “new” media kept us from knowing just who obama is, and they still admit they don’t know him. Ask the father of the young man killed the other day because obama withheld help! He knows obama, as do a lot of us!
I don’t watch cable news. The first big reason I turned it off was the concentration on crime, which almost seems intended to scare people off the street. Now, I perceive blatant corporate bias even in PBS and NPR, which I assume is owing to their pitching to suburbanite contributors and corporate managers. For example, I remember NPR’s Don Gagne sounded like a commie as a Wayne State undergraduate intern on Detroit public radio, and now he reports loyally on Republican politics.
50 years ago, in McGaw Hall, the philosopher Hannah Arendt told us not to waste our time reading newspapers. That we would be better off reading books.
The late great Gene Webb, in my last j-school class, recommended reading Science magazine to keep up with the science news. Science has evolved into a great publication that leads the reader through lay language nutshell summaries and interpretations of the most significant technical research articles.
Later, someone listed the influential publications in the US, including the New York Review of Books, and the Wilson Quarterly, which recently ceased publication.
A cousin who worked as an expat recommended reading the Economist newspaper to be informed about international business.
People of all colors have had a hand in shaping America, for better or for worse. Everyone who loves this country and cares for its people should have a seat at the table.
But first we need to overcome our prejudices about color, class, creed, gender, racial identity. While we are busy hating each other, the power of the people is being snatched away from us, until we will have no say at all.
I am truly appalled at the racism that exists in the Whatcom community, a community whose ability to survive these tough economic times has been an outcome of the shopping habits of our neighbors up north, as reported in the Bellingham Herald a couple of weeks ago.
Excellent suggestions, Boudou. But you forgot the Bellingham Herald Politics Blog, which you also seem to read regularly. Thank you.
RC–Huh?
RC and others: Thanks to the internet, we have access to much more information, for sure. How much of it is true? We have to figure that out for ourselves–or trust snopes.com.
It would be great if our students were educated on how to wade through all of the B.S. to get to the truth. I’m not so trusting of our media and the way info can be skewed. Taking fragments of speech out of context, for example, is a great way to write the news as you want to see it written, with bias, and this can influence others in negative ways. The truth is there, but often hidden. My strategy is to take in news from many sources and somehow piece together the real facts of a news story. I think that folks have more in common that we are often led to believe and we are all unified in wanting honesty from those in charge.
At the end of the day, what I do to help my neighbor will be the true unifying factor.
Of course media and technology has drastically changed the way we get our information and what we do with it.
From the Kennedy/Nixon first tv debate, and radio before that, media has been a major factor/tool in politics and susceptible to manipulation and mastering.
As for the charge that the media itself has an agenda and tries to slant information one way or the other, of course it sometimes does. It’s ran by humans after all.
I say we all seek out the information we want to hear, (for us democrats we call it truth) from sources we choose that re-inforce our ideology. All sides of an issue are out there, and those that choose to can educate themselves from a variety of sources and make informed intelligent decisions.
The fact that Fox or MSNBC present issues differently, therefore they make people think or vote in a certain manner is ludicrous. They just re-inforce the viewers on belief system.
John, your last comment addresses what I was thinking as I read your original post. The issue to me isn’t the proliferation of media outlets with agendas. I can’t even abide the sound of Hannity or Lumbaugh’s voice because they actually trigger physical reactions, but I’ve had to tune away from Rachel when she’s turned herself into a pretzel trying to eqivocate aberrant behavior by someone on the Left (thinking of someone whose name rhymes with “whiner”).
What scares me is how much people believe what they read on blogs versus on media sites, however imperfect the latter may be. I can’t talk to my brother, who is just right of David Koch now, after I asked him to unfriend me on FB and take me off his e-mail list. The last time he sent me an insane e-mail with thoroughly debunked hogwash, I’d just happened to read a NYT article that thoroughly vetted all the facts and disproved them, so sent him the link. His response: “Consider the source.” What in the hell do we do in such a situation?
We ain’t fragmented, and it ain’t happened since that Democratic Party Attack, 1961.
“I do not expect the house to fall– but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing, or all the other…”
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/scartoons/house.html
You democrats are loosers!
“The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail– if we stand firm, we shall not fail.
Wise councils may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later the victory is sure to come.”
Class warfare from the top down is the real dividing wedge, regardless whether American citizens are conscious of that or not. What news or faux news they consumer will fuel their loyalties one way or another. But the essence of the disharmony in the U.S. is the very real coporatization of so many aspects of our lives, including the corporate networks where most people get their information, propaganda, and spin. There’s no money in We the People but there’s plenty of money in We the Company. Most of us are not benefiting from the Company which is why most Americans actually have a lot more in common, a lot more that they agree on than they are willing or able to admit.
Of course Eric, class welfare, you the same old story of the D party forever, attempting to get someone else to pay their way forever.
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=30
#3, Predicts “House Divided Speech” by #16, of course where’s worst 43′s education example?
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html
Huh?…
Exactly!
And #15, Worst Ever
“…The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory…”
Besides Politics Blog, my favorite websites include the Guardian and Al Jazeera, for information that is not reported in US news because of the blinders the journals dependent on corporate advertising wear. When was the last time you saw an unbiased report on global warming or ocean acidification in a US newspaper? Has any US newspaper reported on the 2,000,000 incarcerated, 95% of them plea bargained on the advice of an overworked underpaid attorney, after being charged with multiple offenses with mandatory minimum sentences, in a system that lacks prosecutors and attorneys because of austerity imposed by Grover Norquist acolytes?
How do you plea bargin, with McEachran’s Judge Grant, former County Attorney from the official offices of prosecutorial misconduct, and malicious misconduct McEachran and Co?
We need another new Jail all right, like todays model one of the newest in the state, Walla Walla (1889), Monroe (1910) McNeil Island (1875) against Whatcom County’s brand new 1984 model?
Vote Dave Grant, county attorney…annointed to the office in his 1st term, by the County Council. Just retire shortly after an election filing date…you know the 4th Corner…where the voters dunce cap’s on tight!
Then there’s #44 Vote Has-Been
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203335504578086450730075938.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion
#43 get’s New Orleans.
#44 get’s Happy Halloween!
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
John, people will believe something eventually, even if it’s nothing. It’s always better if the something benefits someone.
Churches make converts in foreign lands when they give something. It’s far easier for the foreigners to believe something when they get something. Offer them nothing and they won’t believe anything.
Which came first: the politician or the church?
There is nothing new about a fragmented nation; James Madison wrote about this very issue in the Federalist No. 10:
“AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true….
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts…..
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm
A very good & educational read if you have the time.
AFT!!thesheepdog!!!
The problem is that the media is owned and controlled by the mega multi nationals who support the one party system that we have. They like it the way that it is. The masses are controlled and that is what they want.
It is very difficult to get news other than the news they want us to have. For me I read on line papers from across the nation and receive emails from many groups and individuals.
owl; the internet has changed that for anyone who uses the internet, newspaper are obsolete, their news is old news (unless they go local). As for electronic news, like TV, they are becoming obsolete because of live streaming on the internet where if someone feels they aren’t getting the whole picture from the alphabet networks they have other sources today.
Freedom is a great thing and choice is freedom and the internet brings that to everyone’s door who seeks it.
The way to bring change to the political system, two parties et al is by starting local, IMHO, like starting with a city council.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
But AFY, who taught Madison, everthing he needed to know?
The Spirit of 76…Thomas Paine.
“Some writers have explained…but this hath all the distinctions of a house divided against itself…But Britan is the parent country, some say. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young…Interested men, who are not to be trusted; weak men who cannot see; prejudiced men who will not see; and a certain set of moderate men, who think better of the European world than it deserves; and this last class by an ill judges deleberation, will be the cause of more calamities to this continent than all the other three…But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, than I ask Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on…But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderes, then you are unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant…”
Common Sense
“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all.” –Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824. ME 16:73
LB, TJ; he’s the man, don’t ya know!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
And what is a fragmented nation?
Prince Charming’s finest 1776.
“A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people…”
What’s a tory, a traitor in Manhattan, and a traitor when he got back to England too.
Go George Go!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuation_Day_(New_York)
We love those traitors…Manhattan…1776, what “IS” Fragmented
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_New_York_(1776)
Generally, strong movements fission. Weak movements consolidate. Perhaps, the divide in American politics reflects strength, and a strong challenge from outside, for example from an aggressive China or from passing a critical transition on climate change, would produce consolidation.
Very true Boudou!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Like when U-235 becomes U-236?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3KrdwnlBIs&feature=related
Great post, John. I enjoyed reading it.
Thanks for your short article. I would like to say a health insurance specialist also utilizes the benefit of the actual coordinators of the group insurance plan. The health insurance professional is given a summary of benefits searched for by an individual or a group coordinator. Such a broker does indeed is find individuals as well as coordinators which in turn best fit those wants. Then he shows his ideas and if the two of you agree, the actual broker formulates legal contract between the two parties.