With election cycle looming, let’s brace for the storm

By Logan Jones

The nation is a year away from a presidential election, which unfortunately means everything you know is going to be extra obnoxious for the next little while.

Cable television will air campaign ads promising a 2016 with cancer-free bacon and free student loans. Facebook will devolve into a series of political arguments resembling a particularly spirited YouTube comments section. Tumblr — well, I don’t actually know what Tumblr will do since it’s kind of tough to imagine it being any more insufferable than it already is, but you get what I mean. For the next 12 months, it’s pretty much all bad.

We’re so used to that, it’s become an overlooked cliche. Mainstream media fails spectacularly in some way — people like me criticize it, others go a level deeper and hate on those people criticizing the media, and ultimately everyone agrees to move on because we’re all sick of the story.

For a specific example, check out the recent GOP debate. Republican candidates criticized CNBC for asking stupid questions, because I guess we’re all still pretending objectivity in today’s media is still a thing. A day later, this alleged scandal’s pendulum swung the other way as CNBC defended itself by asserting that candidates running for president should be able to handle stupid questions, which does sort of make sense. Then the media as a whole blew it up into something to talk about throughout the 24-hour news cycle.

After a week of this garbage, anyone still talking about the GOP debate sounded a lot like a paranoid uncle, and less like someone who might actually have some valid points.

Here’s the thing — cliches only ever get to be cliches because there’s an ounce of truth to them. Just because people give the media an inordinate amount of criticism doesn’t mean at least some of it isn’t deserved.

It’s important that we be able to criticize the media without it falling on deaf ears.

When Troy Aikman broadcasts a Dallas Cowboys game, everyone just kind of rolls with the fact that he’s biased beyond what should ever be allowed on national television because it’s football. It’s entertainment. It’s annoying — sometimes borderline excruciating — but it’s still mostly harmless.

But when Time Warner is revealed to be one of the Clinton campaign’s largest contributors — giving some credit to the idea that today’s media lands somewhere between liberal and super-duper liberal — we tune it out just like we try to tune out Troy Aikman.

That same amount of bias we find laughable in Sunday night sporting events exists in mainstream media, and people treat it the exact same way. Claiming the media is biased against your political views generally makes the people around you put you in a mental box labeled “kind of crazy about politics” and then be extra careful not to bring up the subject ever again.

That reaction is understandable with all the nonsense noise that surrounds literally every aspect of politics, but it also means when a potentially significant critique of the way we get our news comes across the wire, nobody is going to be listening carefully enough to hear it.

— Logan Jones is a junior majoring in journalism, because “being a hater” isn’t a major offered here at Utah State. Contact him at Logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu or on Twitter @Logantj