The news demanded by viewers only hurts policy, when the media complies, it creates a psyche that is dangerous for democracy.
This all started when a political blogger emailed me about my biggest frustrations with the media. I have been thinking about this for a while now, as you’ll be able to tell, and it felt good to get it written out. It's a longer read, but I hope it is useful. Enjoy!
In the modern western world we take for granted just how remarkable in the epic of history our media landscape is. For thousands of years, and even still in some areas or the world, governments actively work to silence people from disseminating ideas. The situation of the United States is so unique in its reversal of paradigm. Our government not only encourages, but relies on the free flow and discussion of ideas. This is so revered in our form of government it was codified in the First Amendment. No other industry is given a constitutional protection by our Framers, no matter how much President Trump wants to fight to protect coal. Perhaps the most eloquent discourse on the matter came from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in the Whitney v. California Concurrence:
“Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that, in its government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end, and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness, and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that, without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile; that, with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies, and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law — the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed. Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.”
It is clear then, that the function of media is to prevent, as Justice Brandeis says, an inert people. Bad ideas are avoided by thorough discussion of their faults, and good ideas are boiled up to the top of the discussion.
This view of media and democracy, which I share entirely, requires two participants: an effective media that serves as a platform for discussion, and an engaged citizen. Both must care about the truth above all other interests or the equation falls out of balance.
The biggest challenge with the media, then, falls with the former subject, in what I will call the “News Problem”, while the biggest frustration falls with the latter, in what I will call the “Audience Problem”.
THE NEWS PROBLEM
This problem is pretty easy to understand. People can simply get their information from so many different places; it used to be that case that being a news organization took a lot of resources: Broadcasting equipment, or a printing press at a minimum. Now, any Joe sitting in their Mom’s basement can throw together an effective looking website on wordpress, publish whatever they want, and appear to be at least a somewhat credible news organization. The competition for eyeballs has never been more intense than it is right now, and it will only get worse. The economics of the situation mean that the traditional media must adapt or die. Cost cutting has hit the news room so hard that news organizations can’t afford to put resources toward projects that aren’t cash cows. This, most depressingly, includes essential functions like investigative journalism, and government watchdogs. In order to stay in business, news organizations must forgo asking too many of the tough questions, and instead chase the headlines. As a result, news organizations must follow the story, rather than uncover one. If everyone is following the same story, what sets one organization apart from another? There are only two possibilities as far as I have seen. The first is that a media organization can fight to be “first” to break a news quip or get a detail. The second is they can deliver the news with a partisan bias, so that citizens who agree with them will, often unconsciously, default to them as their trusted source.
Those who choose the former will have their money come from being faster than their competition. However, if Brandeis’ philosophy is correct, being fast is unimportant, being correct is the key. While it is possible to be both, with dwindling resources, it is rare and extremely difficult. Just a few of the high profile mistakes in recent years are enough to make anyone who has ever worked in the news industry feel sick to their stomach:
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was reported dead after being shot in Tucson; she is definitely alive.It was also reported that she was shot by a right wing activist inspired by Sarah Palin; He wasn’t.Both Fox and CNN reported the Supreme Court had ruled Obamacare unconstitutional; It had only overturned the requirement that states expand Medicaid.It was reported that Nancy Lanza, the mother of the shooter, worked at Sandy Hook Elementary; She did not.It was reported that Ryan Lanza was the shooter at Sandy Hook; It was his brother Adam.The Boston Marathon Bomber was misidentified as a missing person, who had possibly already died.
Contrast all of that to the coverage of JFK being shot. Walter Cronkite constantly used phrases such as, “it is being reported”, “we have been told that”, and “we are as of yet unable to confirm”.
So bad are these failures of information that even the President and the FBI felt a need to intervene. President Obama advised the Press:
“In this age of instant reporting and tweets and blogs, there’s a temptation to latch onto any bit of information, sometimes to jump to conclusions. But when a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it’s important that we do this right. That’s why we have investigations. That’s why we relentlessly gather the facts. That’s why we have courts. And that’s why we take care not to rush to judgment.”
The FBI also felt the need to issue a press release urging reporters not to act to hastily.
As CBS News’ Scott Pelley put it, “The President of the United States and the FBI were telling [journalists] what [their] bedrock principles should be? Aren’t we supposed to be watching them?”
The problem is perfectly summed up, again by Scott Pelley, when he said, “In a world where everybody is a publisher, nobody is an editor.”
Obviously this creates a large problem for the Brandeis equation of democracy. How can we expect a people to be informed if their information source is getting it wrong? To be fair, what many refer to as the main stream media certainly gets it right more often than not. They perform a critical function, where almost nobody recognizes or thanks them for doing work that has changed the face of democracy, but if they get it wrong they are burned in effigy. The new technological landscape has created the situation that makes journalists feel they have to be quick rather than thorough. Where a generation ago voters expected to pay for a newspaper subscription, now everything is expected to be free. We get what we pay for.
The second method of adjusting to the new media landscape is a far bigger problem. In 1987 the Reagan administration effectively repealed what was known as the Fairness Doctrine. This was an FCC regulation that required broadcasters give equal time for someone to respond to allegations. Many may read this as a restriction on free speech; it certainly was not. Anyone could still go on air and say anything about anybody, no added restriction on content. The difference was that they had to allow that someone respond to what was said. This fostered discussion exactly as Justice Brandeis describes. After the Fairness doctrine was repealed the media saw partisan divides, and the political circles started down the road they are today.
Cable “news” channels started to pop up, and quickly separated themselves into partisan corners. This created a money making machine that depended on towing a party line. When the party line has to be held in order to make money, stories that embarrass the party are often ignored, and small details that are hardly significant, which may be embarrassing to the opposition party, are amplified. The evidence against this model is clear. Time after time, the least informed people in the US are those who get their information from partisan cable news cites.
Furthermore, it leads to 50–60% of claims made on partisan cable stations being, I guess, shall we say…less than true?
This partisan model also preys on human instinct, and leverages it to make money. It is a brilliant ploy, whether they are aware they do it or not, and I suspect they are. It uses humans’ evolutionary instinct to survive, the fight or flight instinct, and subconsciously sends the message that viewers need to hear what they have to say. A really good example of this is the coverage of the James Foley beheading by ISIS. Notice the difference in these two strategies. CBS relies only on the facts of the matter at hand, and what is known about it.
On the other hand, Fox incorporates talk about immigrants and refugees, the 20,000 fighters with foreign passports, recruiting of US terrorists, and follows this theme.
Now, this information, as long as it is all true, is worth knowing. However, it is also worth knowing that Americans are more likely to be killed by their own toddler finding a gun, their pet dog, and lightning strikes than by an Islamic Terrorist.
When placed in the context of an American journalist being beheaded, this information serves to create fear, rather than inform the viewer. The same information seems a lot less threatening when placed in the context of the actual threat it does not constitute for Americans.
The subconscious effect on one’s survival instinct is clear: If you do not get your information from us, you will be unaware of the constant threats and danger that surround you; keep watching us everyday, or you might not have the information you need to survive.
I single out Fox News only because this example is so obvious and clear, but they are by no means the only perpetrator. MSNBC often uses the same tactics, but seem to rely more on triggering anger rather than fear (in my observation), though the overall effect is the same. This tactic is common throughout all partisan media outlets, from liberal blogs to conservative talk radio. Given the track record of viewers being uninformed from these outlets, viewers would be wise to approach any news outlet that makes them angry or afraid with a healthy dose of skepticism, and a good amount of critical thinking.
This model for news creates another problem: there simply isn’t enough news in the world to truly host a 24 hour news station. So every small thing has to amplified, and opinion has to take a large role, often more prominent than fact. If a plane disappears, you can bet CNN will tell you about it for 16 hours a day for a week. In this instance Jon Stewart said it best, “If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.”
THE AUDIENCE PROBLEM
The news media is certainly not the one that shoulders all the blame. There is plenty of fault that falls on those who consume the news. Our collective appetites for the types of news described in the News Problem are what has created the demand for that product. I have rarely met the voter that consciously craves angry partisan banter at the expense of legitimate news, but without being aware we fall prey to it, and the only way for these news outlets to keep our attention is to take us even further down the partisan path, resulting in the type of separation we now see, where far too many Americans have been persuaded that the members of the other party are actively working to harm the country and dismantle our democracy.
Having worked closely with members of both parties I can personally say that both parties are, usually, working to make this country better; they simply disagree on what policy will accomplish that. Unfortunately, because of ideological separation, it is becoming more frequent that an elected official wants to do something just to gain a party advantage. It brings to mind Speaker Pelosi’s absurd remark that we have to pass the Affordable Care Act so we can find out what is in it. Think of the outrageousness of Senator McConnell’s statement on health care. He threatened that if enough Republicans did not come around, he will be forced to work with Democrats to fix healthcare. We have so thoroughly separated ourselves into our partisan corners that voters prefer a one sided solution (one which was, by almost every measure, an inadequate solution) rather than an effective solution from both parties. On an issue that affects 1/6th of our economy no less! In this case Senator McConnell believes that his voters would rather have a bad solution than a bipartisan one. Somewhere, the ghost James Madison is ordering the strongest liquor he can find to make it through this.
Why does partisan media create such a separation? There are two reasons. The first is what I will call single source manipulation. Typically, when people hear the word ‘manipulation’ they tend to imagine a deviant actor who works with cunning subtlety to control their actions; that is not the image that I intend to create here. This type of manipulation happens without any effort by a nefarious boogeyman. The way one thinks is simply altered by the fact that they only hear one point of view. No attempt to steer a viewers’ psyche needs to be made if they never hear an opposing voice. Think of this example; at the onset of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, 72 percent of Americans supported the invasion. I’m not even sure baseball and apple pie enjoy 72 percent support!
The problem lies in the information. Almost all news outlets, both partisan and main stream, were actively advancing the narrative that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; opposing voices were given almost no airtime. In hindsight we recognize that the information we were relying on was faulty, and that there were indeed voices that tried to warn us; we simply never gave them any bandwidth to make their case. With effectively no opposition voice, support for the invasion of Iraq was as high as political support gets. John Zaller, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, found the same phenomenon at play in the lead up to the Gulf War, and was even able to track the development of single source manipulation. Among voters who routinely kept up to date with the news, 76 percent (Seventy Six Percent!!!) favored an invasion of Iraq; for those who didn’t watch the news very often, only 23 percent supported the invasion.
Extrapolate that pattern out to nearly every policy or idea, and one can see just how big the problem can be if a viewer gets their news only from their preferred partisan outlet(s).
The second major reason partisan media creates such a separation among voters is what renown psychologists Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson refer to as the law of cognitive response in their book “Age of Propaganda”. The example they use, which I will borrow, because I am certainly not a psychologist, is of car ads. A viewer inundated with Chevy ads and Ford ads is unlikely to be persuaded that one is better than the other based on the ads. However, they are likely to think more about buying a new car, and think much less about using buses, trains, or bikes. This also happens when someone isolates their messages to a single partisan source. A liberal may not necessarily be persuaded that a single payer healthcare system is the solution, but they are far less likely to think of an alternative if the message they hear repeatedly is that every other country has a much better healthcare system than does the US.
The law of cognitive response says that the way we think can also be affected by how relevant information is to us, and how involved we are with the message. This is shown in an experiment by Petty, Cacioppo, and Goldman. Using arguments for or against a hypothetical comprehensive college exit exam they found that for those personally invested in the issue (they would have to take the exam prior to graduation) they were more likely to be persuaded by an effective argument, even if the argument came from a less than authoritative source; this was called the central rout of thinking. For those who were not personally invested in the issue (the exam would not affect their graduation) they paid far less attention to the argument, and were much more likely to be persuaded by an authoritative source; this was called the peripheral route of thinking.
This plays out in the real world too. It is one of the most effective tactics used by salesmen. Think about a vacuum salesman, or the latest “magic” health trend that will add years to your life and restore lost energy, vitality, and cognitive ability. Once you hear all the great things a product will do for you (as long as you have not been too skeptical up to this point) you have an incentive to believe the message; who wouldn’t want all those benefits? Once you have started down the peripheral route the salesman can throw all sorts of information at you, and you are motivated to believe it, especially if it comes from a doctor, even one without a medical degree!
In partisan media, viewers already agree with the political point of view of the chosen media outlet, and thus inherently have motivation to believe what they are being told. This being the case, they are much less likely to take the central route of thinking, and will be easily persuaded by “experts” or “insiders”. To prove the point, Fox News hired an expert to give on and off air opinions and tips about intelligence and military who turned out to be a fraud…TWICE!
Again, I do not mean to single out Fox News, liberal outlets are often equally as guilty. I highlight this example only because it shows that the partisan outlets can themselves be victims of peripheral route thinking. Here were what appeared to be two great assets that had great experience, were willing to agree with the partisan message on air, and do it consistently! Talk about striking gold! This was such an exciting find that they apparently did little background on their new hires before giving them a prominent role. Fox was motivated to believe them because they agreed with them, not because they were persuasive. If this can happen even to seasoned professionals who run a company that is heavily dependent on keeping its reputation, how much more easily can it happen to an unsuspecting viewer of a partisan media outlet (liberal or conservative) who doesn’t have the resources to do background and fact checking the way a media organization does? If we are motivated to believe something, we are far less likely to think critically about it.
I will leave you with one final thought that illustrates both single source manipulation and the law of cognitive response, perfectly summing up the Audience Problem.
Having worked in the fields of politics and journalism I am often asked, “why the news is so bad? Why is it that every time we turn on the news all we see is murder, rape, deadly car crashes, drug wars, and just the depressing stuff. Doesn’t it scare you that the world is so bad?”
My answer, until early this spring, was an unequivocal, absolutely not. It usually sounded something like this:
“Think about what they news is, I would always say. Something is newsworthy simply because it happens so rarely and infrequently that a company feels it necessary to dispatch a camera and a reporter to tell the story. That means that these awful and tragic events are the outlier, they are the rarity in our society. In fact, violent crime rates in our country have fallen dramatically, and remain near all time lows.
“At high crime peaks in the 70’s and 80’s the question a news editor had to ask was not ‘did somebody die today?’ because crime was so high too many people to tell about died every day. The question was ‘did somebody we care enough to tell the public about die today?’ Now, with crime so low, nearly every one of these stories makes it on the news. This is a good thing. It means that this type of crime is not common enough for news editors to be selective in the telling of it. I cannot imagine a world in which I turn on the evening news, and the lead story is about somebody helping their new neighbor move into their house. That would send the message that this act of kindness happens so rarely that it is worth dispatching a camera and reporter to tell the story; so rare in fact that it takes priority over someone being killed. That is the day I give up on humanity, and just play golf the rest of my life.”
This spring that all changed. In mid February I turned on the news, and I was scared to death by what I saw. This was just after President Trump had issued his first travel ban, which was struck down by the courts. President Trump was also running around talking about how 3 million illegal immigrants voted in the election. Of all people to question him, Bill O’Reilly asked Trump about the validity of his claims that 3 million illegal immigrants voted. Not just O’Reilly, but the Chairwoman of the FCC, the FBI, and multiple Secretaries of States asked for evidence for the claim. President Trump could not produce any. Instead he told O’Reilly, “Well, many people have come out and said I’m right. You know that.”
This is the logical equivalent of me gushing on about all the magical and healing qualities of Unicorns, and about how they are absolutely the greatest animal to ever exist. If you were to point out to me that no Unicorn has ever been found, pictured, or had remains unearthed, I might back up my claim by saying, “Ya, but Oreo’s have cream filling.”
Using one fact, such people having told you something, provides absolutely no evidence for another fact, such as illegal immigrants voting, when the two are not related.
Many people also said President Obama was not born in the United States; Many people also said President Bush blew up the World Trade Center towers; Many people also said the Holocaust never happened; Many people also said the moon landing was staged; Many people also said JFK was assassinated by the CIA; you get the picture.
That same week Public Policy Polling, admittedly a liberal leaning organization (though that does not necessarily cast doubt on this particular finding), found that 51 percent of Trump voters said the Bowling Green Massacre was a good reason to justify the travel ban that had been issued.
I happen to live in Kentucky, and have for most of my life. As most people know, there was no massacre in Bowling Green. But in both these cases facts are irrelevant.
It may be safe to assume that 51 percent of Trump voters also believe that 3 million illegal immigrants voted in the election. That means more than 30 million voters are convinced of these easily disprovable myths. Our Founding Fathers were wise men, and they designed a system of government that could not be ruined by one man. President Trump is not the problem, he is a symptom of it. We have had erratic and unqualified leaders in the past, and we will again. But what the Founding Fathers could not save our democracy from, is democracy. If we live in a society where 30 million people legitimately believe that there was a massacre in Bowling Green, and 3 million illegal immigrants voted in the election, then truth has lost all significance. Worse than that, many of these voters will say the the main stream media is the enemy for pointing out that these events did not occur. That is not a problem that can be fixed by the Constitutional system of government. If we live in that society, Freedom of Speech does not serve to dispel bad ideas and allow the good ones to rise to the top, as the Brandeis equation would predict. It does just the opposite. Because people are so deeply entrenched into their partisan views, Freedom of Speech now serves to eliminate discussion, and reinforce preconceived biases and beliefs, even if — and perhaps especially if — they are not rooted in facts.
So, for the first time, this February, I turned on the news, and was terrified. Indeed, just this week, a poll found over half of Republicans would support President Trump postponing the 2020 Presidential Elections due to voter fraud, for which he has provided no evidence of its existence.
We have self separated so far into our partisan corners that many Americans now block or ‘unfriend’ their social media contacts who happen to disagree with their views. If someone think different than we do they must be bigots or feminazis, fascists or libtards. Too many of us are offended by critical thinking, and abhor thoughtful, thorough, Brandeis discussions. Roughly one in three Americans now says that the other political party’s mere existence poses a threat to the nation’s well being!
We are long past the days where President Reagan and Tip O’Neill met somewhere in the middle for a compromise that helped the nation, and have moved a climate where Majority Leader McConnell must use bipartisanship as a threat, knowing voters will punish it.
All of this is not to say that partisan news serves no purpose. It is not in and of itself inherently bad. It can be useful to listen to the opinions of one side, rather than a consistently neutral view. Each side being able to make their own unfiltered argument is essential; this is the point of the Brandeis equation. The key is that we think critically about those partisan views, and for that matter, every view, and do not isolate ourselves to only that view. We must be aware of the propensity to fall into single source manipulation and peripheral route thinking as we consume partisan news, or we run the risk of falling into, as we have seen above, a world of alternative facts.
But, if people are unwilling to challenge their own thinking, to critically analyze their ideas, and to admit when they are wrong about something, than the fabric of democracy may be in jeopardy. If we cannot even rationally discuss good ideas, let alone dispel bad ones through our discussion, the Brandeis equation will fail. If that is to be the case, the Iraq War errors and other failures of democracy will not be outliers, they will be a yearly expectation.