The Diminishing Returns of Partisan News
Photo by Markus Winkler from Pexels
When I was growing up, there seemed to be a pretty significant emphasis on the independence of news media outlets. Objective reporting was something that was talked about quite frequently and emphasized in the media. The integrity of a news program, the reporters, and the anchors was important. It mattered. News was a public service and thought of as such. Even for physical newspapers that sold advertisements. I think most people agreed, at the time, that the responsibility of journalists was to protect the interests of the public.
The capitalistic pressures of modern society have since distorted what news has become. With increasing pressure on companies to “turn a profit,” we are now surrounded by so-called news sources that are anything but independent and objective. The internet has just made things worse. Search engine listings, social media algorithms, and click bait now drive what we see as “news” more than ever. Meaning most of what we see probably isn’t something someone might have considered news only a decade or two ago. What’s even worse is that some outlets have sold out both literally and figuratively. On one hand they are prostituting their brand to the highest bidder by placing brand-friendly content on their websites and social media channels. On the other, entire brands that used to be legitimate — even respected — news outlets have actually gone out of business and been purchased by individuals and corporations with very specific agendas. If you are not convinced check out Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast titled: “Lord of the Rankings.”
And, once again, technology companies are enabling bad behavior by taking the position that they are just a platform and not accountable for what people put on the platform or how people choose to manipulate their algorithms.
That’s a problem for all us.
I do not believe that there are actually two-sides to every story. There often aren’t. Facts are facts. The world is certainly full of nuance, but nuance can only be explored when you dive deeply into topics and subjects, usually when you ask the hard questions and try to put bias and preconceived notions aside. It is my opinion that the vast majority of conservative news outlets are not news at all. They are propaganda to support a small subset of conservatives who learned that by setting up the “we versus them” fallacy they can legitimize the propaganda that, ultimately, supports the narrative they wish to drive. News wasn’t inherently liberal as we were led to believe during the George W. Bush era under the brilliant strategy of Karl Rove. I say “brilliant” because he recognized something that started most of this. On the heels of the Bill Clinton Presidency — who was more traditional in his use of power to exert influence on the media behind the scenes — Karl Rove figured out that he could attack any news media outlet that didn’t distribute the narrative he wanted. By attacking the credibility of the news outlet he convinced a generation of young conservatives that the news media, as it was, was inherently biased. It was brilliant and completely lacking in morality. By creating the sense of moral outrage that he did, he was able to then push forward a narrative which has, quite literally, managed to mobilize an entire subset of the population to engage in political activism that is against their own best interests. It worked so well that it, simultaneously, drove almost every news outlet to bend over backwards to show that they weren’t biased in their reporting and therefore gave airtime to the propaganda the conservative right wanted to further anyway. This is something that the liberal side of politics, mainly the democrats, could never quite figure out how to do with any degree of competence.
The internet and technology companies just made it all worse.
I recently got a new phone because I dropped my old one, destroying the glass on the front. With the new phone, I decided to add a few new browsers and didn’t setup any accounts associated with those browsers. That meant that all the carefully curated content that Google was serving up in my news feed was gone. I also got in the habit of clearing my browser history, cache, and cookies weekly. And I started looking at the Google news feed. In the past I had filtered out all the conservative news outlets by choice, asking not to be shown any news items from any conservative news outlets. Now, I see all of it. And my concern for the fate of the human race only increases as a result. Below are just a few examples of why it is my opinion that we should all be concerned.
I decided to write this post because of a news story I saw a few weeks prior about the carjacking of a member of the U.S. Congress from Pennsylvania, Mary Gay Scanlon. Here are the articles that came up in the feed:
Source: Google News feed on my phone browser.
So what’s wrong with this? Well, just look at the headline from Fox News:
“Democratic congresswoman who sponsored police ‘reform’ bill carjacked in crime-surging Philadelphia”
And now compare it to the other two headlines. What’s the news story here? In my opinion the news is that a member of congress was carjacked and that her car was found in Delaware. You can glean that from the headlines. But why is the Fox News headline a cause for concern? Well, first, let’s evaluate the motives of Fox News. If you go by the website AllSides.com, it rates Fox News as RIGHT — the highest conservative rating on the scale it uses. If you want to explore this further, you can read more here about how this website defines RIGHT when it comes to bias. Second, let’s talk about what the headline is implying. Anyone, regardless of their political beliefs, would probably look at the Fox News headline and have one of the following take-aways:
That Representative Scanlon’s perspectives on police reform are some-how related to her carjacking.
And/or that Representative Scanlon’s perspectives on police reform are the direct cause of increased crime and her own victimhood in this case is direct evidence proving that.
And/or that Representative Scanlon deserves what happened to her because of her legislative positions on police reform. A sort of divine or cosmic justice, if you will.
While that last one might seem pretty dark, it is pretty hard to not think otherwise if you have maintained a passing interest in the debates around policing, abuses of police power, and the political rhetoric on both sides. JUST A GENTLE REMINDER THAT WORDS STILL MATTER FOLKS! If you exclusively consume Fox News, you are no doubt intimately familiar with the rhetoric around defunding the police and how much we should fear crime, particularly from people of color and immigrants. But mostly brown and black immigrants, or those who believe in Islam. The narrative still persists in conservative circles that the protestors across the United States — who were largely peaceful — were somehow a greater threat to our country than the literal forcible invasion of the capitol building on January 6, 2020 in Washington, DC. Third, it is generally accepted that the majority of people don’t actually read the articles. Which means when they “consume” a news story they are basically reading only the headline.
Of even greater concern is the fact that these articles are so well ranked in search engine listings. I did a quick Google Search of: “Mary Gay Scanlon position on police reform” and what comes up'?
The top four search listings are (see graphic above):
A Yahoo article which is just a re-print of the Fox News article. (Which makes me wonder, what they hell is Yahoo up to these days besides re-printing articles from other news outlets?)
The Fox News article.
A Washington Times article. The Times is ranked as LEAN RIGHT in the media bias rankings.
The actual page on Mary Gay Scanlon’s congressional website that shares her positions in her own words.
If the fact that her own page with her own positions comes up after three biased news reports on her being the victim of a crime aren’t unsettling to you, then I think our position may be worse than I thought.
I was going to stop there and show a couple of other examples of this in news stories I pulled today — as I wrote this post. I think the evidence I have shared so far proves the point I am trying to make, which is that biased news is intentionally driving a wedge between Americans. And, that wedge is making it increasingly difficult for us to have a civil discourse that is the foundation of a functioning government and institutions that support the common good. If a person truly believes that Representative Scanlon’s positions on police reform are somehow the cause — or even cosmic justice/karma — of her carjacking, I am not sure there is really a starting point to have any type of conversation with that person. But if we actually delve into Representative Scanlon’s views on Police Reform, we start to get to the substance of what she believes. I did just that by reading her position on police reform and the bills she is sponsoring or helped write. Here are the highlights of my take-aways, but don’t take my word for it, click on the link above and judge for yourself. I am also going to provide my own commentary as I think my personal experience, having worked as both a police officer on patrol and a detective in a large police department (over 1,000 sworn officers), I have some credibility to offer my perspective.
She believes that recent examples of unjust killings by police and private citizens in the name of “law and order” are disproportionately impacting communities with large concentrations of people of color, who are middle class or lower on the socioeconomic spectrum, and resulting in the death of innocent people.
I agree with her position. This is true. There is an inherent bias by all police against the disadvantaged. Police are expected to do far more than just enforce law, they act as social workers, drug counselors, mediators, friends, psychiatric counselors, and so many other things with little to no real training in most of them. Being a police officer is very hard, and instead of doing more to help policing we cut away all the social programs that would otherwise prevent police from having to deal with problems that they are poorly equipped and trained to deal with.
Systematic racism and hate, has contributed to this reality.
Again, I agree. There is a bias in policing against all people that develops over time. Police officers (I am generalizing here, but I think I am covered by the 80/20 rule) develop a negative perspective of all people and tend to see the bad because of what they have to deal with day in and day out. This leads to stereotyping when you serve a community where crime, drug & alcohol abuse, social problems, and poverty are all prevalent. Particularly when these communities have large numbers of disenfranchised people of color.
That the following interventions are necessary to “re-balance” the scales of justice.
Access to legal counsel for anyone arrested or in the legal system.
Condemnation of brutality, racial profiling, and the use of excessive force and militarized interventions.
Providing right to counsel in civil proceedings.
Establishing new national standards for policing.
Classifying the choke hold as excessive force and a civil rights violation.
Paying reparations to African Americans who are direct descendants of slaves.
Police Training and Independent reviews. Specifically, the bill she supports is one where police should be rewarded for training on sensitivity and diversity in addition to requiring independent prosecutors to investigate all police on citizen killings.
A bill to not allow the use of military resources for police actions within the United States.
A bill to authorize law enforcement to setup domestic terrorism units.
A bill to authorize a hate crime commission.
Training for law enforcement on responding to situations involving individuals with mental health issues.
Of the specific bills she has listed, I have issue with only one based on the research I did. Admittedly, I would need to do further research into the specifics of each bill because the devil is in the details. Many of the problems she is trying to solve are complicated with overlapping issues and may require more than one law to try to solve. In addition, the proposed remedies may have unintended consequences that need to be analyzed and understood. Something the United States Legislative branch is NOT known for. But I digress.
The classification of the choke hold as excessive force and a civil rights violation is one that I would disagree with as I see it written. I think, in the interest of officer and citizen safety, there is plenty of evidence that certain Jiu Jitsu moves, if performed correctly, can be used to help subdue and minimize the harm caused to a citizen or police officer. Sam Harris, has an excellent podcast on this with one of the Gracies (the Family who own and run a number of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu schools) that is worth listening to.
Those are the facts. If you agree with Representative Scanlon or not, the fact that she was the victim of a carjacking has nothing to do with her positions on police reform, racial justice, or law enforcement in America. To believe otherwise is to be ignorant of the facts.
But that’s not what those headlines would have you believe. And let’s face it, I am willing to bet that there are a large number of individuals who do believe the headline and all that it implies. If Fox News was intentional or not, it doesn’t matter. The damage is done every time someone sees that article and confirms their own biases.
As I write this post, we are in the middle of another COVID surge, brought on mostly by the fact that virus keeps mutating. Here are two more examples that prove my core thesis:
News stories about a judge blocking mask mandates for a Head Start program in Texas
The story here is that a judge overturned a vaccine mandate. But Fox News spins the headline as: “Another Biden Vaccine Mandate.” This is important, because the impact of that headline reinforces a few key ideas:
“Another mandate” conveys the sense that the freedoms of Americans are being reduced as a result of mandates to help stop the virus.
Biden is acting in a way that is not consistent with “right-thinking” Americans (both in the literal/political and figurative/reasonable senses of the word).
That these mandates are illegitimate.
I am never one to defend to our bloated legal system — which is badly in need of reform on all levels — but you can see how this headline just reinforces anger and more hate to the government.
Finally, in the same theme of COVID news, here is another news item:
News about Representative Ayanna Pressley testing positive for COVID
Of all the screen grabs from my phone, this one bothered me the most. Mostly because I am of the opinion that the implications of the headline from Fox News borders on misinformation. At a minimum it reinforces the misinformation talking points. The conclusions that the average consumer of Fox News can take away from the headline is, in my opinion, the following:
Many Democrats are testing positive for COVID.
That this somehow proves that masks and vaccines don’t work.
That the list is long, and therefore it proves that the anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and anti-safety measures stance is justified.
That second bullet above is pretty hard to swallow for many of us. But as I was writing this, I was reminded of a conversation that I had with a contractor who came to my house about six months ago to do some work. He started on about how “the COVID” was just a cold and probably less dangerous than the flu. I told him outright that a family member of mine died of COVID (this is true), which ended the conversation. But his set of beliefs, if some real life event hasn’t changed them since that time, would only be confirmed by reading that headline.
Words do matter. They matter a lot. Complex problems require smart people with understanding and the right information to solve. Solutions are not always easy to find and they are not always so black and white. Sometimes we have to settle for the imperfect “good enough” when faced with big challenges. The damage being done to social cohesion by media outlets, technology companies, and the idea of social media (I added this because the concept of social media is beginning to eclipse any one company, including Facebook) is immense.
These micro-suggestions become how we, as a species, understand the world. Our species is emotional and, largely, irrational. Confirmation of our biases leads to indulging in our own worst interests out of fear. A fear driven by the manipulation of others with agendas that serve a select few at the expense of the many. These indulgences will lead to fights that are rhetorical and will, before long, turn physical and lead to increasingly violent outcomes. Violence will lead to a destruction of the moral fabric of society that we have created to excel as a species on this planet and badly need if we want to continue to thrive.
It keeps me up at night.
- M
This essay represents the opinion of the writer and should be considered as such. Any statements about persons and organizations real, or imagined, are opinions.
Copyright © 2022 - Malcolm Bolivar. All Rights Reserved.