In a divided country with views on almost everything colored by political leanings right or left, it’s time to seriously ponder whether U.S. journalists lived a decades-long delusion of objectivity into which they for a time sucked much of the country.
The question appears unavoidable as America becomes ever more partisan, and the reporting of today becomes more and more like that of yesteryear when “fake news,” or some version thereof, was the only news.
It wasn’t any better before then in the newly formed democracy, either. The 1780s to 1830s are historically known as the “Party press era.” “The yellow press” followed in the 1890s and continued well into the Twentieth Century.
Substitute the phrase “fear mongering” for the word “sensationalized” and the word “clicks” for “circulation,” and you’ve pretty much defined where we are today in the Internet Age.
“Trump’s Threat to Democracy,” the New York Times headlined a Nicholas Kristof column.
“Yes, Normal Republican Elites Are a Threat to Democracy,” blared New York magazine.
“Anti-Trump left a threat to American democracy,” declares The Washington Times.
Were Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United State to return today, he’d probably feel right at home. He might be even be Tweeting his anger late at night in the style of President Donald Trump.
Not to compare the two in any way – the record shows Jefferson could tell true from false even if he wasn’t always totally truthful – but Jefferson was the president who observed that “the man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
Trump would say the same today of CNN.com, the New York Times and others in the mainstream media.
Coloring everything
Were political partisanship circa 2018 limited to politics, it would be one thing, but driven by a media that can find division almost anywhere, it seems to have spilled over into everything.
Let’s stop right there. PGA tour golf and NASCAR? Can anyone find two sports more different from each other?
And “it turns out Republicans and Democrats don’t even like the same foods?” Really?
Obviously no one has told that to McDonald’s, the nation’s leading restaurant by a long shot. It does about $37 billion-a-year in business, almost exactly twice that of Starbucks Coffee at number two.
McDonald’s makes all that money by appealing to a broad cross-section of Americans, but that isn’t how the media sees it.
“Forget about getting consensus on health care reform; liberals and conservatives might never even agree on what constitutes the best french fry,” reports NBC’s Today. “The big takeaways: Conservatives are 38 percent more likely to prefer McDonald’s french fries, and they also opt for thicker steak fries. Liberals, on the other hand, like their pommes frites bistro-style.”
So let’s get this straight. A minority of conservatives are more likely to prefer McDonald’s french fries to other french fries and because of this the country can’t decide on a consensus on health care reform?
As Alaska’s offering to the national discussion – polebrity Sarah Palin, a divider not a uniter – would likely observe: WTF.
If Alexis De Tocqueville were to come back from the grave for a 2018 rewrite of “Democracy in America,” first published in 1835, would he really find himself writing about two distinctive species of Americans, the L-one and the C-one or the D-one and the R-one.
A nation divided
The focus on political difference has become so great Americans have forgotten how much they have in common.
Crenshaw’s column was directed at Saturday Night Live which had made fun of him for, among other things, wearing an eye patch to cover an injury suffered when he was caught in a bomb blast while serving on a Navy SEAL team in Iraq.
After SNL mocked his appearance – the “line about my looking like a ‘hit man in a porno movie’ was…a little strange” – Crenshaw wrote, a lot of the American right was outraged or professing to be so.
With a one-eyed vision colored by the carnage of actual combat, Crenshaw wrote that he “could not help but note that this was another chapter in a phenomenon that has taken complete control of the national discourse: outrage culture. It seems like every not-so-carefully-worded public misstep must be punished to the fullest extent, replete with soapbox lectures and demands for apologies. Anyone who doesn’t show the expected level of outrage will be labeled a coward or an apologist for bad behavior. I get the feeling that regular, hardworking, generally unoffended Americans sigh with exhaustion – daily.
“Was I really outraged by ‘SNL’? Really offended? Or did I just think the comment about losing my eye was offensive? There is a difference, after all. I have been literally shot at before, and I wasn’t outraged. Why start now?”
What Crenshaw didn’t do, but probably should have done, is point out the role of today’s media in trafficking in outrage culture. There is an awful lot of good and evil these days tied to differing views on how to achieve that goal of “economic prosperity” Crenshaw describes.
And if that isn’t the goal of everyone in this country, well then we’re collectively in a shitload of trouble because living forever on welfare with nothing to do is even worse for one’s mental health than being an idle-rich, trust-fund baby.
University of Chicago psychologist Christopher Hsee has studied idleness and found that it makes people fundamentally unhappy.
“People don’t always choose what’s best for them,” as the Association for Psychological Science notes. “No shock there. But why this confusion over business and idleness? Hsee believes it is rooted in human evolution. Idleness made a great deal of sense for our ancient ancestors, because conserving energy was crucial to survival. We no longer have the same survival demands, so we’re left with a lot of excess energy—which we like to spend in activity, business. Yet that idleness bias still lingers way down deep.”
Thus, given a choice, a lot of people stay true to their genetic programming and opt for idleness no matter how much it messes up their lives.
Those on the American right aren’t wrong for wanting to get people off welfare and working; it is good for them.
And those on the American left aren’t wrong for wanting to provide a safety net for everyone; help is something most of us need at some time, including a goodly number of the idle rich who spend their money on therapy or should.
Somewhere between helping people and sentencing them to work camps for their own good is a happy and necessary medium but you wouldn’t know it from the partisan divisions of the day in a society where political name-calling has become a sad sport:
That newspapers traffic in this sort of throwaway party-shaming undermines serious discussion of the political separations in a fracturing nation. But it has become a norm.
Crenshaw’s high-mindedness is, at least at this time, little more than one of a small number of voices crying deep in the wilderness.
How exactly did we get here?
Market forces
Much debate ensued about the fairness and balance of “fair and balanced” followed as Fox’s television ratings soared. Fox became the top-rated news network in the country in 2002, and it has stayed there almost ever since.
But it is no longer “fair and balanced.” Fox dropped that motto last year.
It has been replaced by “Real reporting. Real honest opinion.”
Why the switch has never been made all that clear by Fox, but it is possible the network decided market forces were again at work. In the Age of the Internet, consumers have a wide array of websites from which to choose their news.
And how many people really want fair-and-balanced news?
The sheer popularity of fake news, often obviously fake, during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election campaign appears indicative of a sea change in consumer demand. Fabricated stories favoring Donald Trump were shared a total of 30 million times, Stanford University researchers found.
Those stories were liberally spread by true believers bonding with other true believers, or by true believers trying to influence non-believers in a world where journalism increasingly looks like religion:
Pick your church, listen to your preacher, and trust in your faith.
It is a 2018 shift back toward 1818. How long this will continue and how much the journalism of today will come to mimic that of yesteryear will in all likelihood be decided not by journalists but by news consumers.
Journalism, like all businesses in a market economy, responds to the market. Fox News went on air as a more conservative version of other news networks because those other news network were out of touch with a significant segment of America.
Respected ABC News White House correspondent Brit Hume – the first name-brand, mainstream journalist to be hired by Fox in the 1990s – bought into a Fox News pitch that the “news as it was being presented by all the major mainstream outlets was not balanced,” the Washington Post reported in a story years later.
And today the same could be said of MSNBC as television news not to mention online news splinters into so many sources “of great equity or great evil, depending on your perspective.”
How long journalism will continue to fracture along partisan lines remains to be seen, but especially online, partisanship seems to be where the money is to be made. That does not bode well for those who cling to the ideals of those visionary first families of objective journalism.
The new New York Times has admitted to a “Trump bump” in circulation and online traffic due to its aggressive pursuit of the new president.
Her commentary could be read to say she didn’t think the Times as tough on previous presidents, and she offered a warning on this one.
“…In these polarized times,” she wrote, “in which distrust of the media is running higher than ever, it seems to me that every word the Times publishes and what its journalists say about Donald Trump on other platforms should be measured. This doesn’t mean holding back stories, mincing words, or publishing bland journalism that equates both sides or makes false equivalencies. It means not taking cheap shots, not publishing biased headlines (I’ve been keeping a collection of them), and not overreaching, which undermines the Time’s authority and makes people dismiss its coverage.”
The question then becomes simple: Can the Times continue to monetize the “Trump bump” without cultivating that “outrage culture” of which Crenshaw writes or will the market push it in another direction.
See Kristof and “Trump’s Threat to Democracy,” which reflects the sky-is-falling hysteria of too much journalism today both right and left. America survived a bloody Civil War. It survived two World Wars. It survived the divisive Vietnam War.
It can certainly survive Trump.
But the money of the moment might well be in suggesting it can’t, and the money has long colored American journalism.
Thankfully the country has survived that, too.
Categories: Commentary, Media
Another great article Craig, the comment section is getting out of hand though. Maybe the director of API lets a few of the residents comment here? He does like making nonsensical public statements, could be that’s part of the treatment process.
“Were Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United State to return today, he’d probably feel right at home. He might be even be Tweeting his anger late at night in the style of President Donald Trump.
Not to compare the two in any way – the record shows Jefferson could tell true from false even if he wasn’t always totally truthful – but Jefferson was the president who observed that “the man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.””
Now that, right there, is what’s wrong with journalism – dissembling. No matter because THAT is what it is for the most part no matter the stripe, especially when it comes to politics. Medred has as much of an ax to grind as any. That’s what gets him ya-ya’s.
Journalism is just another mouthpiece to the highest bidder. If somebody is being paid they are easily influenced. Nothing but Pravda.
i’d certainly confess to axes to grind, if you will, Monk. i dislike politicians lying. i dislike ignorance. i’m sure i’m sure there are other dislikes. they certainly influence any reporting.
unfortunately, i can’t confess to dissembling, and i can’t tell from your post whether you understand the meaning of the word: “to give a false or misleading appearance to; conceal the truth or real nature of.”
Trump, clearly from time to time, makes false statements that indicate either a.) he doesn’t understand the facts; or b.) he doesn’t care about the facts. i’d prefer to believe it’s the former and not the latter, but then it’s possible i’m being influenced by tendency toward benevolence, a sort of dull ax.
I think you have a partial handle on Trump’s BS. It’s obvious he doesn’t understand the facts, that’s clear, but the reason he doesn’t understand them is because he doesn’t give two shits about them.
As Alaska experiences its own unfortunate side effects of partisanship and political division:
https://www.adn.com/opinions/letters/2018/11/19/letter-i-will-not-resign/
https://youtu.be/1tk5dIiDT-w
Conspicuous by its absence from your column Craig, is 9/11 and the resulting Iraq war. While I was not around for Civil War, I was somewhat involved in Vietnam War, and my opinion is that 9/11 certainly belongs in there.
While Vietnam War had its presidential “lie” (Gulf of Tonkin), Iraq War had its own (yellowcake and aluminum tubes, etc.), and the only thing in common seems to be that both presidents drank Texas’ water. Must be something there that makes a “warmonger,” besides money IMO.
Bill,
We live in a system where Americans are pitted against one another….blues vs reds…left vs right…
This is a play book to devide and conquer the whole, while both “dems” and “repubs” elected to office answer to the same “man”….the Central Bankers. (Super Pacs)
Let’s not forget U.S. corporations supplied the Nazis with trucks, equiptment, oil & gas, tires, etc the whole time Hitler was advancing through central Europe.
Yes, 9/11…pearl harbor…gulf of Tonkin….”weapons of mass destruction”….were all false flag events.
Today the evils that perpetrate these disasters have turned to manipulation of weather and “geoengineering” to advance their position on earth.
Some sources blame U.N. resolutions like “Agenda 21”.
We are obviously living among global multinational firms with “hands” in economies all over the globe.
Declassified documents from Vietnam prove U.S. was “cloudseeding” to create floods along with spraying agent Orange on their own GI’s.
The question is what is next for a patriot of America that is aware of all these factors in play?
Last year (2017) over 9,000 wildfires were started in CA with over 170 in one day??
This is not due to lack of trimming trees since all one has to do is watch current drone footage of buildings that burned in highly “suburban” environments with water hydrants and concrete surrounding structures?
This is one of our country’s greatest threats and yes climate change (or weather modification and chemtrails) have a lot to do with this….lots of videos online from all over the world asking “what is sprayed in our skies”…
A tinfoil hat will not suffice in the coming years….
Perhaps if a “rake” comes with that tinfoil hat? Heheh!
Bill,
Seems like Americans will need N95 particle masks and “srivival shelters” for wildfires if this current pattern continues?
I just read that fires in Russian Siberia are up 1,000 percent from records of last several decades….
Not only has California seen record amounts of wildfire deaths and acres burned, but CO, UT, AZ, WA, OR have ALL seen record amounts of their forest burnt this summer as well as most of Europe.
WTF?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/photos-greece-europe-fires-2018-7
We won’t be trusting anyone without a “garden rake” in their hand, that’s for sure!
I do know that forest fires are a huge concern and also, WA did not have record forest fires this year, that BC did have and WA residents did suffered from the smoke. And we’ll get those garden rakes into the hands of concerned Canadians post haste.
Duped steve, DUPED!! What was that saying? Oh, I know “a sucker born every day”.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/the-stunning-statistical-fraud-behind-the-global-warming-scare/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/11/19/secretary-ran-zinke-trump-mismanagement-california-fires/
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a 2007 book by the Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein. In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal free marketpolicies (as advocated by the economistMilton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of “shock therapy”. This centers on the exploitation of national crises to push through controversial policies while citizens are too emotionally and physically distracted by disasters or upheavals to mount an effective resistance. The book suggests that some man-made events, such as the Iraq War, were undertaken with the intention of pushing through such unpopular policies in their wake.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine
Steve, assuming Klein is on to something here, what were these unpopular policies pushed through while we were distracted by Iraq War?
My own thinking is that we were distracted by 9/11 so’s we could enter a just war. Heheh! I say “just” here because Colin Powell made it so.
Bill,
Think Patriot Act and Ed Snowden for one, although many feel that on top of “mass surveillance” and “drone warfare” and “cyber attacks”…we have also seen mass evidence of “geo engineering” on the planet.
Here is a short clip where Oliver Stone speaks out on Snowden’s revelations and how most of the U.S. lies in Apathy….
https://youtu.be/HP4gzTuudks
So, Bill! Are you saying Iraq/Saddam did no possess WMD (Chemical/Biological agents)? I mean, very little research would prove you wrong.
Here is Don Rumsfeld’s take on WMDs and where they would be located;
“We know where they [Iraq’s WMD] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat..”
Well (we all know) they were not found there but we sure don’t want something like this to interfere with your “history lesson.” We were all concerned about that “mushroom clout.” Heheh!
31,500
Tons of chemical weapons the United States built up from World War I until 1968. Pressure in the 1970s caused the country to cease production of chemical weapons and eventually start destroying them…
44,000
Tons of chemical weapons amassed by Russia in that same time period.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/theweek.com/articles-amp/460030/americas-weapons-mass-destruction-by-numbers
Um Bill, tell it to the Kurds. Maybe they can shed light on it better than I can..
Steve, did the evil USA gas 182,000 of its own citizens? I don’t understand your comparison between the USA’s chemical stockpiles and Iraqs? I get the whole “blame America crowd” but, you lost me.
Another tid-bit Steve:
“More than 500 criminals are traveling with the migrant caravan that’s massed on the other side of a San Diego border crossing, homeland security officials said Monday afternoon.”
Warning: Eight minutes and 45seconds of truth that is “wrong think” that may cause you to explode in anger.
https://youtu.be/pEpUUU0e-Q0
Americans are the most propagandized people in the world because we don’t have news, we have a one-party propaganda machine.
https://youtu.be/tqqwTgk8ri0
Isn’t Fox floating in that same toilet?
Very good commentary. I will share. I knew Fox was bad but last week I was forced to watch MSNBC for many hours per day. YUK! What is a body to do?? Certainly not Facebook’s Newsfeed. NPR and PBS seem the only choice— still recognizing they have a bias, too. I share your desire for better balance and I admire your effort to research and expose the imbalance.
How exactly did you know Mary that Fox was “bad”? Also, MSDNC, PBS, and NPR are all floating in the same toilet along side CNN.
Nuff said….
Sebastian Gorka weighed in on the current state of the Democratic Party.
Gorka told host John Catsimatidis that when it comes to the Democratic Party, “the lunatics are taking over the asylum.”
“Bill Clinton and his ilk would at least rein in the loonies,” Gorka stated. “When you’ve got Kamala Harris comparing DHS and ICE to the KKK, which is absolutely disgusting, it’s what she did yesterday. When you’ve got [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez, who’s publicly calling for a socialist revolution … you understand that the Democrat Party has been taken over by radicals. John, today, a hard-core, pro-national security politician like John F. Kennedy would not be allowed into the Democrat party. That’s how bad things have gotten.”
Hitting the nail on the head . An inaccurately informed citizenry is a danger to our nation. Nice qoate by Jefferson . Thanks for putting in some history! You have an impressive ability to gather information and write a picture.