The last two postings
reviewed the elements of the right-wing information ecosystem that features Fox
News, Breitbart News, and such pundits as radio host Rush Limbaugh. Some commentators include The Wall Street
Journal in that list, but this writer does not.[1] Those postings heavily relied on a Pew
Research Center report, “Partisanship, Propaganda, & Disinformation,” and that
report overviews its findings as follows:
The leading media on the right and
left are rooted in different traditions and journalistic practices. On the conservative side, more attention was
paid to pro-Trump, highly partisan media outlets. On the left side, by contrast, the center of
gravity was made up largely of long-standing media organizations steeped in the
traditions of practices of objective journalism.[2]
It is this chasm that serves
as the topic of this posting.
Specifically, it focuses on the liberal or left side of
this divide. But before describing that
media link, a contextual point should be made.
When one considers the left, one should recall the structural difference
between it and the conservative side. The
right with its political party, the Republicans, and the left, with its political
party, the Democrats, are based on two distinct structural arrangements. And that distinction centers on how
concentrated or diverse each of the parties’ structures of support is.
As previously pointed out in this blog, the right, as compared to the left, has a more unified set of interests. They consist of business interests (large corporation officials and small business owners), agricultural related groups, religious groups (especially members of fundamentalist denominations), and nationalist/populist groups. Of late, many blue-collar workers, who have fallen victim to foreign labor competition and have lost their jobs, have also joined the right.
It
is the shifting of this last group that seems to have tilted the scale in 2016 within
various toss-up states, such as Pennsylvania, that secured the Electoral College
vote in Trump’s favor. Of course, those
following the politics of today asks: can
the right maintain those political vectors and replicate their victory in 2020?
Given the central policy thrust of the right – a probusiness
agenda – and that some of their groups’ interests do not coincide with that
agenda, the party has had to hit upon other messaging to capture the allegiance
of these other, particularly labor, groups.
They have seemed to hit upon identity issues or stated another way,
issues surrounding “Us vs. Them” conflicts, to gain their support. Hence, Trump’s anti-immigrant language seemed
to appeal to voters that should have voted Democratic if the elections were
purely based on economic issues.
Other
manifestations of this trend beyond immigration has included drudging up ongoing
points of contention such as those related to gun or race inspired violence. The last two postings review the right-of-center
side; this one attempts to address the left.
On that alternate side, one has a different structural makeup. In short, that side is a more diverse collection
of interests.
Groups
on the liberal side include more traditional labor workers particularly those
who belong to unions, immigrant groups, members of other minorities such as people
who belong to the less populated religious groups (e.g., Jews who comprise less
than 3% of the US population), and higher educated groups especially those of
academia or the technological industries.
That is not to say people in those groups are all in with the Democrats,
but their numbers tend to support the party of FDR and JFK.
And since this other side is more diverse, more
compromising needs to occur so that the party can generate a sense of unity
that is essential to consider it a political party in the first place. In part, that includes it having an
information ecosystem – common symbols, terminology, and other forms of
messaging – that allows for that party to formulate the necessary positions on
the vibrant issues of the day.
That
demand in a more varied landscape, in effect, helps the party avoid more messaging
– and accompanying proposals – that its more extreme members might want. And associated with that concern, this
avoidance also demands that their information sources, the sources they cite in
formulating their arguments and accounts of what is happening, also avoid extreme
or ideological positioning.
Central
to those endeavors is for those sources to be objective, and, in turn, they need
to avoid biased methodologies in gathering and reporting their information. Ezra Klein writes about this score,
On any given question, liberals trust
in sources that pull them left and sources that pull them toward the
center. In sources oriented toward
escalation and sources oriented toward moderation. In sources that root their identity in a
political movement and sources that carefully tend a reputation for being antagonistic
toward political movements.[3]
In other words, they seek
varied sources and aim to acquire a balance so that the resulting utilization
of information can facilitate the anticipated need to compromise. And, in turn, that encourages a news industry
to develop in such a way that it can take pride in avoiding any affiliation
with what one might consider a “liberal ideology.”
The
various entities, for example The Washington Post, The New York Times,
CBS News, etc., do not want to be known as the “liberal” or left-wing press. They just want to be known as THE PRESS. They self-identify themselves as the unattached
arbiters of the truth. They work on developing
their protocols – openly published – that are designed to come as close as possible
to being unbiased in their processes by which they acquire their information
and in the substance of their reporting.[4]
This
is further supported by journalist programs in the institutions of higher learning
and by national review entities dedicated to overseeing the press, i.e.,
evaluating them, and publishing their findings.
And yet another layer of institutional factors guaranteeing an objective
press is how journalists seek and attain their professional rewards.
That
system is organized so that advancement of individual journalists is attained by
securing positions in those entities that are most respected for their
standards of objectivity. That would be
positions in newspapers such as The New York Times or The Washington
Post or on one of the national news networks.
So,
in sum, the right relies on a narrower array of information sources; the left
relies on diverse sources. This does not
prohibit either side of accusing the other of promoting FAKE NEWS. Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins write, “Although
each party’s elites, activists, and voters now depend on different sources …
the source of this information polarization is the American conservative
movement’s decades-long battle against institutions that it has deemed irredeemable
liberal.”[5] Yet, despite this accusation, bias seems to
be a central attribute of the right.
The
reader might question the above, but this posting certainly points out an area
of concern for which civics instruction needs to address. Students will continue to rely on readily
available sources of information. With
the Internet, that variety has mushroomed.
Beyond what this and the last two postings point out, a lot of informational
sources fall way short of what any reasonable criteria would deem
responsible.
Given
what Andrew Marantz reports concerning social media,[6] that should give one pause
as to the degree of irresponsible messaging students can read and view through
their handheld devises. And, therefore,
this concern should be one that teachers should consider acceptable for
classroom study and that effort should include the function relatively unbiased
news reporting has in maintaining a healthy polity and in promoting good citizenship.
[1]
While the Wall Street Journal has had a traditional conservative, pro-business
editorial bent, it has maintained high journalistic standards. This is true for numerous conservative papers
around the country. The point of concern
over the Wall Street Journal has emanated from the fact that the Murdoch
family bought it some years ago. While that
enterprise, under the leadership of Rupert Murdoch, owns Fox News (which is
definitely part of the right-wing information ecosystem), it seems to have
honored, to date, the operating standards of WSJ which its audience has
grown to expect.
[2] Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler, “Partisanship, Propaganda, & Disinformation: Online Media & the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,” Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Library (n.d.), accessed August 19, 2020, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/76a9/3eb0bed8ff032c44186678c5279f20cc5ff8.pdf?_ga=2.230250332.1151241653.1597869609-1463880478.1597869609 .
[3]
Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New
York, NY: Avid Reader Press, 2020), 236.
[4] To this writer this claim of objectivity is not
entirely accurate although he recognizes the main actors see themselves in this
light. What this writer believes is that
that industry is like any other, is biased toward making a profit. As such, its practitioners choose story lines
or issues that glean the largest audience possible to the neglect of issues
that more centrally and more extensively affect the common good. The writer further feels that as in
education, a value free approach is not possible since choices need to be made
over what to and what not to cover.
[5] Matt Grossmann, and Daniel A. Hopkins, “How
Information Become Ideological,” Inside Higher Education, October 11,
2016, accessed August 27, 2020, https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/10/11/how-conservative-movement-has-undermined-trust-academe-essay .
[6]
Andrew Marantz, Anti-social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the
Hijacking of the American Conversation (New York, NY: Penguin Random House, 2019).
