COLUMN: Media polarization is killing democracy
My roommates and I have an exaggerated pathological aversion to virtually anything heard on Fox News. From Bill O’Reilly’s tetchy trash talk to Sean Hannity’s self-righteous sermonizing, we loathe it all.
Paradoxically, it’s the most-watched channel in our apartment.
Oh yes, I’ll admit it. We dig Fox for its entertainment value – the rhetorical pathos, the anger, the touchy-feely stuff. But the news? No, that we have a hard time buying. So, we sit around the television set like a pack of wolves, ready to pounce on every bit of right-wing drivel the channel dishes up.
It’s a great way to bond – especially if your politics are to the left of center. But for those on the political right, Fox News is a serious channel.
As The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley put it, “On an ordinary news day, CNN is like a sip of iced tea. Fox News is a gulp of Jolt Cola.”
Conservatives gravitate to it like moths to flame, propelling Fox into the upper echelons of network viewership. During the Republican National Convention in August, Fox News ratings soared, with more viewers watching the spectacle on Fox than on ABC, CBS or NBC.
“…More people watched Zell Miller and Dick Cheney on Fox than on ABC and CBS combined. CNN’s ratings dipped so low it fell behind MSNBC,” Stanley reports.
Now this, per se, isn’t cause for alarm. But consider these statistics released last year by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, or PIPA – a consortium organized through the University of Maryland.
PIPA polled more than 3,000 Americans for their thoughts on the alleged nexus between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and international opinion on the war. About 18 percent of those surveyed cited Fox News as their primary source of information. And on matters of current affairs, many of these respondents were – honestly – at sea.
Listen to media columnist Brian Lambert writing in the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press: “On the question of a link between Saddam and al-Qaida, a frankly startling 67 percent of the Fox News primary-source crowd believed this to be true … On the question of whether we have found weapons of mass destruction, a matter of enormous controversy heavily reported in every major source, 33 percent of Fox News watchers somehow still believe that we have … [and] On the matter of world opinion, 35 percent of Fox News-viewing respondents believe world opinion supported the U.S. war with Iraq.”
If you’re breaking into a cold sweat, you’re not alone.
Many on the political left are growing increasingly concerned with Fox’s unimpeded campaign of misinformation. And they’re striking back with their own brand of rhetoric, turning the media into a political battleground, with all the nastiness and viciousness implicitly contained in that analogy.
This poses a more serious problem – one that threatens the welfare of our democracy.
Author and Utah State journalism historian Mike Sweeney explains: “[In a democracy] it’s better to have a general consensus – a bell curve shape, instead of a roller coaster shape with humps on the left and right, and a dip in the middle. Why? Because in the bell curve nearly everyone can support consensus-type decisions. They all feel a part of the process and the outcome. Nobody says, ‘He’s not my president.'”
In the present scenario, with polarization driving a wedge between Americans holding differing political views, nearly half the public feels disenfranchised – deprived of a voice.
“Elections,” Sweeney observes, “have become a Zero-Sum Game, and the system is self-perpetuating – losers feel screwed, and decide that when they’re in office, they’ll work to undo the works of the other party.”
Democracy, in this mêlée between Left and Right, is reduced to a cantankerous game of ping-pong, instead of a meeting of intelligent minds committed to the advancement and well-being of the state.
This mudslinging cannot continue unchecked.
As educated consumers of the mass media, we ought to temper our acceptance of commentators who seem adamantly committed to a particular agenda. I’m not suggesting that we boycott a deeply held opinion; only that we refuse to take it at face value, or tolerate a commentator who thrusts it upon less aggressive, and perhaps less informed, readers and viewers.
Former Vice President Dan Quayle was right about one thing.
“People that are really weird,” he noted, “can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.”
We can’t sit back and let that happen.
Leon D’Souza is a senior majoring in print journalism. Comments can be sent to leon@cc.usu.edu.