Here’s something I’ve been thinking about: Too many news sources is bad for America. Bloggers as news sources are bad for America.
Here’s why, oversimplified:
Most people still get their overall news from mainstream news sites: CNN, USA Today, their local paper, etc. But more and more are turning to partisan sources — Fox News is the mainstream example, but also from the thousands of news and political bloggers out on teh Internets. And most of the latter have a strong bent one way or the other.
People being people, they turn, naturally, to news sources that support their political leanings. They go to Talking Points Memo or Michelle Malkin or any of the other blogs spouting rhetoric. Or they tune to Fox News or Air America, listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch the Daily Show.
To appeal to their core audiences, those shows and blogs then lean more and more to one ‘wing’ or another. Moderate views, after all, don’t generate readers. Getting people riled up — even if you have to invent controversy — is what drives traffic.
The end result: We’ve become more polarized. You have blue news and red news, and a feedback loop among viewers and readers. Opinions are reinforced instead of examined. Compromise is replaced by confrontation.
Think about it. Hasn’t America gotten significantly more polarized since the rise of Fox News and partisan bloggers? Polarized news begets polarized people. We’re red and blue.
It’s a shame, because both sides –
Wait. See, I fall for it too. There aren’t two sides. There are dozens. Hundreds. But today we’re artificially being divided into two camps. Us and them.
It’s a shame, because being able to rationally consider other ideas is important. If you have knee-jerk reactions to everything the other guys do, well, you never learn. You become intellectually isolated.
It’s ironic that the proliferation of news and analysis and opinion has ended up not making us more thoughtful citizens and better news consumers; it’s made us more isolated, more insulated, and more partisan. And I really can’t see how that’s a good thing.
The Fray
Leland says:
For once, Gnomic is partially right. Blogging is free speech at it’s finest. Most blogs are all editorial, all the time.
The problem comes in from people that don’t know the difference between editorial and news content. That is the fault of all the news media. The Wall Street Journal is one of the last publications that still maintains clear lines between what is and is not commentary and opinion.
The television networks and most news papers have blurred those lines into a wide gray area. USA Today got really good at that during the last election cycle. Fox news clearly blurs the lines with shows like Fox and Friends. But all morning news shows do that.
The next time you want to smack Fox News, I challenge you to watch for a couple weeks. Take notes as to what was covered, who they brought in to talk about it and how long each got to say their piece. You might be surprised.
Lots and lots of people suffer from Fox News Blindness. After the show all they can remember was that Newt Gingrich or Dick Morris said [fill in the blank] on Fox News. What most people on the left cannot seem to remember is that those people were debating Ron Reagan, Speaker Pelosi, or Sen. Dianne Feinstein. (That is for expample purposes.)
No other network allows the free-for all style of debate that Fox News puts on daily.
Face it, when it comes down to debating facts, the feel good policies of the left fall apart when stacked up against hard facts in an open debate. As a result, the left doesn’t come out of too many of these looking very good.
As for Gnomic’s comment about crying for the dead, I am doing that right now. The Rocky Mountain News, a major daily in Denver that carried many of my photographs died last Friday.
I guess it is a business version of natural Darwinian selection. But it still hurts. I grew up with that paper. Some of my earliest memories are of my grandfather reading the “funnies” from that paper.
And a lot of really good people are on the street at a time that it is not good to be on the street.
gnomic says:
ROFL! Fox Noise as good journalism!
Leland, you SO just proved my point.
(still laughing)
LLL says:
I can’t believe you folks don’t see that all news outlets are partisan. Just to varying degrees. Fox does lean right, rare in these days. So most folks don’t see the likes of NY Times as leaning left. If you don’t think the NYT leans left then you probably lean left yourself and see it representing your “moderate” views.
gnomic says:
Actually, no.
Many news organizations are partisan today as they have discovered that pablum = mindless viewers = more ad revenue. But not all news organizations are partisan.
I was peripherally part of one of the first independant reviews of news to measure partisanship and the independance of news. While many at the time (89-90) leaned one way or another, most were within the margins for accuracy and independance. Those that were not were generally WAY outside the margin (Faux Noise for example). The study was very intellectually rigourous and contained a wide spectrum of viewpoints. Amazingly, they were very consistant in thier judgements. However, when the exact same data was given to non-journalists, the corrolation to the persons viewpoint was stiking – people viewed the news that they agreed with as accurate and what they disliked as biased – INDEPENDANT OF THE NEWS SOURCE. In other words, they were judging the news more than the reporting of the news. The results were the same for each side of the political spectrum, but the more extream a person was, the more bias they found. Moreover, when the same news stories were attributed to a different source, peoples views of the exact same stories changed.
The study used both attributed and non-attributed stories that “disclosed” the news organization.
Bias therefore is primarily a function of one’s own perspective and personal bias.
Over the years, this polarization has crept into formerly very objective news organizations as the standards have been lowered either explictly or implicitly by growing bad journalism.
The study has been repeated many times with similar results. The bias is in fact completely predicable based on the sample of people.
But it is unfair to tar everyone with the same brush. In fact, it is most likely oneself that is the source of the bias.
larryr says:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2006-01-19-web-20_x.htm
web2.0 IS GOOD FOR US!!!–at USA Today—
oh the power of google to do evil:)
gnomic says:
You have fallen into the trap of your past. Reporters and journalist bemoan the advent of blogging and the impact it has had on the one true source of news. Alas!
B.S.
Blogging is not news. Blogging is the exorcise of free speech. The Internet simply makes our opinions available to a wider audience.
Human nature, the long decline of educational standards, irresponsible politicians, and fundamentalist preachers are what have polarized our national discourse and made an entire generation unable to debate, to recognize a coherent idea, to apply owns own intelligence to what one reads in order to pick the elements of reliable information from the morass of gross stupidity.
And those same reporters and journalists that have elevated entertainment to news, that repeat press releases and talking points verbatim, that have sold their credibility and their souls to the highest bidder of the lowest standard decry that bloggers are working their side of the street for free.
This viewpoint is nothing more than the jealousy of intellectual whores.
Evolution will take care of this issue in the long run. The marketplace for ideas has gone dry as the marketplace of opinion has taken over. But as we see with CPAC and the GOP, it takes ideas to survive in the long run.
Soon you will find a market for bloggers and newspapers that subscribe to fact checking and intellectual rating services as the economics of the Internet (both money and time) drive people to make distinctions. You already can see the early stages of this in aggregation services like Treehugger or Huffingtonpost and rating services like Digg.
And newspapers will die and deservedly so. They offer nothing that can’t be found for free. They lack facts, meaningful analysis, depth or quality. As newspapers have fallen, journals like The Economist or New Scientist have picked up paying readership.
The market is working exactly as it should. The intellectually and informatively slow and weak are dying off amid an explosion of new alternatives as the Information age moves to mass customization in its lifecycle.
Don’t expect me to cry for the dead. They made their decisions. And the stupid will flock to the stupid — and will die off in the long run from intellectual inbreeding. Those of us that seek out new ideas, real facts, and honest debate will survive.
And evolution doesn’t care if you agree or not.