If you’ll indulge a rant — if not, the title was fair warning.
I am so disgusted by the large portion of the media that idiotically parrots simplistic blather.
It might sound ‘neutral’, but it’s not — it’s opposing good change. It’s at war with it.
Two names that just grate on me as leading examples are David Brooks and Mark Shields, proxies for each half of the country, who every weekday for years say nothing.
Quick. Name something Brooks or Shields has said that’s been useful in their thousands of segments. I can wait.
This is “productized” news. It has a formula — do a few bits that fit the “facts” category — today, the XYZ bill passed. Republicans said blah, and Democrats said not blah. Then comes the ‘analysis’ segment where Brooks and Shields, or the pundit sponsored by some wealthy sponsored think tank, states the ‘common wisdom’ on reacting.
Just yesterday I had NPR on for a moment and they welcomed Brooks and Shields and I turned it off with prejudice. Later I turned on another news show, and they introduced guest David Brooks.
Sigh. I gave it a minute. It was something about how the inauguration speech.
Brooks offered the incredibly useful comment following; see if you can guess what the talking point phrases are hi picked for the day from these excerpts.
Answer #1:
You know, it struck me as very much a realigning type of speech, a speech that's really going to try to realign our politics. No longer the traditional arguments we've had over big or small government, but from bottom to top, rallying the people at the bottom against the people at the top, and a very bloody-minded view of the world, very zero-sum.
Answer #3:
Well, he's going to try to make it different. Again, the zero-sum thinking, if they're winning, we're losing. Second, a reorientation of our politics.
The other guest — in Shields’ role — was the actually not too bad E. J. Dionne, who said:
But when he uses this language, it sounds like he wants to take apart international systems, international agreements, international organizations that on the whole have served American interests quite well for a very long time, NATO prominent among them. And so when I heard that today, again, I think for those who are inclined to worry about Trump, his extreme nationalism raised those worries, it didn't appease them more or reduce them.
And this is where the interviewer resisted a discussion of the actual topic by the sort of ‘he said, she said’ simplistic ‘but not everyone agrees’ comment:
SIEGEL: But, David, nationalism is - it's a big flavor of the year, not just in the U.S.
There were useful discussions to be had. Notably, what policies are the best policies and why?
If that was too much, at least things like, ‘why is he doing what he’s doing’ etc.
But no, we’ll just go with, ‘but lots of people are doing x!’ without discussion whether it’s a good idea to do x.
That’s pounding ‘conventional wisdom’ instead of discussing the topic.
So everyone knows nationalism is rising — not whether it’s good or bad, and what to do if you agree or disagree, and useful information on who and why.
Well, the inauguration speech was discussed! Very useful!
Why can’t we have for years, no more Brooks and Shields or many others like them who fit the business model of the broadcaster and supply useful ‘product’ of blather, and instead have more useful and varied guest commentators? Why should Brooks and Shields have such a massive share of the airtime to say so little? When are the last times any of hundreds of outstanding authors I could name were guests on these shows to offer useful commentary? Why do you hear them a thousand times more than you hear, say, Nobel laureate inequality expert Joseph Stiglitz?
The propagandists — Bretibart, Fox, et al are part of the problem.
But so are the ‘neutral’ shows that offer little but pretend it’s useful discussion of issues, with permanent spots for the think tank-appointed pundits to spew the propaganda.
This is why things like Bernie’s offering FDR-type policies sound “radical”, because they’re at odds with that ‘common wisdom’ of right-wing ideology hammered into people daily as ‘mainstream’.
No reasons WHY the right-wing policies are right are needed or wanted — that’s the big lie in action, repetition establishing truth.
And it’s very hard to get around that. People’s brains literally shut off to things that sound ‘radical’ to them. They’ve done studies. People don’t much actually consider the other positions.
This is WHY, for example, civil rights needed years of ugly violence to get people to pay attention.
When did we ask whether Vietnam was really a good idea? Years after sending hundreds of thousands of troops.
It’s a self-fulfilling business model these media outlets have. Once a viewer accepts the Fox premise Fox is the one telling the truth, that’s what they want, for years. Same with NPR, CNN, whatever.
That’s why Fox failed its first attempt — when people could say, ‘that’s garbage’. But when they paid cable companies to carry it, so it wasn’t subject to ‘the market’, it built an audience. That’s what I’ve seen entertainers refer to when they get a new show and have to build that audience. If given time, it’s far easier for them to do so after it’s harder earlier on. Once that audience is established, then it actually compete in the marketplace, as our bad media does now.
That’s really the trick — media competition has money give a show a big advantage, and that makes the playing field one the monied interests want.
It’s not two sides argued in side by side articles on equal footing for the reader, it’s a millions of dollars anchor and studio polish aired nationally against a guy yelling at a webcam.
This is why need a BBC-like funded and independent media presence here. Government IS the solution for some things, Reagan was wrong.
A professor called for the government to fund independent investigative journalism as well to replace the devastation of newspapers — and he was right, especially now.
The truth not uncovered and reported remains hidden. That might help with the public’s opinion of government and others, but it’s not useful.
Did you know, for example, how powerful organized crime was in the 1940’s-1960’s era? One family, Carlos Marcello, had revenue similar to the biggest US corporation, GE. Across much of the country, governors, legislatures, judges and police forces were owned by organized crime, leaving citizens without justice. This massive problem was little reported — and is mostly forgotten now. History is whitewashed other than some idea there was some problem and some noir films.
Is that really the sort of thing we want to have repeat in the face of the new threats from powerful corporations out of control and their hired servants, the Republican Party in power?
At a time the people should organize and fight for improvement the ‘neutral media’ is a sort of restraint on any such movement, making it seem ‘radical’. That is great harm to our democracy.
And it’s not announced as what it is. People are told, that’s the free press! You have freedom! So things are great!
Decades ago, a top media analyst wrote a book to alert the public to a huge threat that the media had dangerously consolidated from the thousands of independent voices to about 50 companies.
Since that warning, the 50 have consolidated to 4 or 5.
At least we should be refusing to support bad media, supporting good media, and spreading the word. The market is the system now, and that’s all we can do.
Oh, and buy incredible books. We have an embarrassment of riches of incredible books with the truth hiding in plain sight, but only a tiny percent of people reading them.
Want a fun example? Read Stephen Kinzer’s book “Overthrow” and imagine that were taught in public school history. How do 98% of Americans hear about the information?
Of course, the solution isn’t really to ‘fix the media’ and get the public well-informed. Nice idea, never has been or is now practical. But things can improve — and the fact we can only do so much is why we really need the public organized and fighting for getting big money out of our politics, which basically defeats democracy. Something else you almost never hear from the media, who pocket the billions of dollars spent for those interests.
I’d go so far as to say it’s patriotic to take the actions above on media consumption.
/Rant.