Baby, It's a Wild World

The Problem

Our country has reached an unprecedented level of political partisanship. In a recent story on NPR.org, Andrea Seabrook cites a Congressional Quarterly report that found 2009 to be the most partisan year in recent US history (they began their analyses in 1953). According to the study, 72% of Senate votes in 2009 were partisan, with a majority of Democrats voting against a majority of Republicans, the highest percentage in history. But it is not just our government that is plagued with partisanship. American society is also growing increasingly divided.

I believe there are three major reasons for this division, although they are inherently intertwined. First, there is a widening gap of partisanship in Washington, driven by politicians who are more interested in reelection than issues. Second, I believe that as a result of the information age, the practice of selective exposure, or choosing which sources of information one exposes oneself to has grown exponentially. With millions of sources available on the internet and the prevalence of 24-hour news media, the public is able to pick the news, or more importantly the opinions, that it wants to hear. Lastly, I believe that the increasing partisanship of the mainstream media has and will continue to drive the schism of the right and the left. By selectively reporting on stories they know will play to their viewers emotions and be agreeable with their beliefs, stations like MSNBC and Fox News will only exacerbate the problem of partisanship in the current political climate. It is the responsibility of these three entities to work to repair this fractured situation in their own respective ways.

The Divide, Part 1: Politics

It can be debated whether the increasing partisanship of the government is a cause or a result of a politically divided society. I am inclined to believe it is a result. In my opinion, politicians in the past were less constrained by special interest groups and by constant media coverage. To illustrate this point, my memory is drawn to a particular anecdote in Senator Ted Kennedy’s book True Compass in which he remembers an encounter early in his Senate career (circa. 1963) with Virginia Senator Willis Robertson. Robertson, after delivering a speech fervently in favor of a bill, voted against the same piece of legislation. When asked by Kennedy why his vote conflicted with his speech, he replied, “Well, Senator, in my state, the people are evenly divided on this bill. To those who favor it, I send my speech. To those who are opposed, I send my vote.”

Today, it is unlikely that Senators could get away with such ploys. Accountability in government is a necessity, but only to an extent. Sometimes it may be in the interest of a Congressman’s constituency or even his personal convictions to vote outside of his party’s lines. Yet in today’s polarized climate, any vote that defies party standards is seen as a betrayal and as a potential detriment to reelection. As I mentioned in a previous post, “John McCain recently voted against a bill that he co-sponsored ‘that would have formed a task force on the deficit to try to force tough choices on Congress.’ Facing a challenge from a Tea-Party sponsored candidate in his upcoming Senate race, McCain was forced to vote against his own bill so as to not alienate potential voters.”

Indeed, a trend of polarization to the left or the right is evident. But if this trend is the result of a divided society, where is the root cause? The answer lies in the increasingly partisan news media.

The Divide, Part 2: The Public and Selective Exposure

In the past, news was much simpler and much more objective. Before television and radio, people would open the pages of a small number of major news publications, such as the New York Times, for their daily news. Later, with the advent of television, there were very few options in news, limited to the major networks like NBC, ABC, and CBS and a viewer’s preference was largely motivated by who they would rather hear talk for an hour. In 1980, CNN was launched as the first 24-hour news station, only the beginning of the media barrage to come. In 1996, Rupert Murdoch and American CEO Roger Ailes launched Fox News, whose “Fair and Balanced” news and commentary has since drifted strongly to the right. As a counterweight, MSNBC became increasingly liberal in its reporting and its commentary with personalities like Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow being balanced on Fox by Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and now Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

In addition, the internet has opened a floodgate of information on political news. In my personal opinion, this overload has furthered the sectarian divide by allowing readers to chose partial and biased (and sometimes blatantly false) news sources. In her article, “Media Use and Political Predispositions: Revisiting Selective Exposure,” Natalie Stroud defines selective exposure as “the selection of media outlets that match [a person’s] beliefs and predispositions.” She also acknowledges, “as people’s media options increase and they find outlets offering more congenial perspectives, the potential for selective exposure arguably increases.”

A 2004 New York Times article about selective exposure outlined the issues of “Media Myopia.” The author acknowledges the problem that selective exposure can have on our political climate in reporting on the opinions of Cass Sunstein’s book, Republic.com.

“Democracy, he argued, depends in part on people's being exposed to information they would not necessarily have chosen for themselves. So, too, might the concept of gut rationality be endangered in a filtered world, where people see only what they want to see, hear only what they want to hear, read only what they want to read.”

Yet the problem of biased media is a cyclical one. As certain demographics of voters trend towards certain news outlets, those news outlets will in turn become more biased in an effort to attract viewers of a similar persuasion. This self-perpetuating cycle has led us to where we are today and could prove even more divisive in the future.

The Divide, Part 3: The Media

Particularly in the last decade, the divide between liberal and conservative media has become more apparent. Fox News, one of the most controversial entities when it comes to media bias, is an example of a network that has shown an increasingly conservative trend. Originally, Fox was more subliminally conservative, trying to portray itself as truly “Fair and Balanced,” with shows like “Hannity and Colmes,” attempting to give two sides to each story. “Hannity and Colmes” eventually became just “Hannity,” and Fox has since begun to hire conservative heroes, such as Glenn Beck in January of 2009, and Sarah Palin in January 2010. The story is the same with MSNBC on the left.

Both sides have recently reached new lows. Commentators and pundits have resorted not only to reporting news with a biased tone, but also to directly criticizing each others’ reporting and taking cheap shots at their counterparts. Not only does this detract from actual, important news, it also further entrenches the opinions of its viewers that the other side is fundamentally wrong.

In addition to solidifying these polarized beliefs, the media has adopted a tactic for enticing viewers which proves most dangerous to the future of our political climate: playing to the emotions of the public rather than to their intellect. The emotional appeal has long been a tactic of political campaigns, for instance the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry that managed to paint a war hero as an unpatriotic dissenter. As Drew Westen asserts in his book The Political Brain, “[emotions] can motivate the worst in human nature, when people come to associate entire classes of people with emotions such as rage, contempt, and disgust. And as we have seen, emotions can distort the way we reason.” However, where the media has historically been the objective voice of reason, it has recently succumbed to similar emotional appeals. Glenn Beck is notorious for such appeals. Known for whipping up tears to show his love for America and his fear that it is being destroyed by liberals, Beck is also a major driving factor behind the Tea Party movement, a movement driven predominantly by emotional dissent for government and little by actual fact.

And in this appeal to the emotions of the public, the media has toed the line of the ultimate faux pas of journalism: false reporting or reporting of fiction. For instance, in efforts to enthuse and energize the recent conservative movements, Fox News has repeatedly reported exaggerated numbers of attendees at political events and a Sarah Palin book signing, sometimes showing footage of wholly unrelated gatherings. Fox also was responsible for pandering to the emotions of its viewers last summer when it advanced Sarah Palin’s concept of “death panels,” the baseless idea that health care reform would involve panels of doctors deciding whether elderly people lived or died. MSNBC has also been accused of falsely reporting racist quotes by Rush Limbaugh and misrepresenting the intent of armed protestors at political rallies.

The Solution

The road that we are on is a dangerous one. We have seen, in recent attempts to pass legislation, the detriment that partisanship plays in our political arena. In order to amend the partisan schism and to achieve any semblance of the political system we once had, all three parties above must be held responsible.

First, our politicians must focus on policy, not politics. Instead of refusing to vote independently of their parties and suffocating legislation in an endless quagmire of filibusters, it is the responsibility of our representatives in government to do what is best for the American people, not for themselves and their reelection campaigns. It may take an act of political courage like those outlined in John F. Kennedy’s book “Profiles in Courage,” to break the current cycle. It may take a joint, bipartisan effort to agree that policy for the people should be most important. Whatever it may take, it is a necessity.

Secondly, it is the responsibility of the media to provide the public with facts, unbiased and without political editorial comments. In an article entitled, “Hyper-partisanship: What the media could do about it,” Richard Doak suggests to the media that,

“The next time a bill passes Congress, devote most of your stories to telling readers what's actually in the bill. You might even quote the actual wording of the legislation and consult disinterested experts about its effects. Skip the snarky quotes from partisan combatants. Describe the legislation and let the readers decide for themselves what to think about it. If lawmakers have nasty, partisan remarks to make, let them be entered in the Congressional Record, but journalists should feel no obligation to treat boilerplate talking points as news.”

If the media is able to curb the amount of political bias and appeals to emotion in its broadcasts, the public will be able to better form their own opinions on issues. They would be able to make decision using their guts and their brains, rather than their hearts.

Lastly, it is our responsibility to interpret the information that we hear accurately and take media reporting with a grain of salt. Additionally, the public must do some research of political news on its own rather than having it fed to them by their favorite news outlets. We must educate ourselves, form our own opinions, make our own decisions and write to our Representatives and Senators about our feelings on issues. We, the People, have the undermining political role in our country and it is our responsibility to prevent its demise.

Bibliography

Doak, Richard. "Hyper-partisanship: What the Media Could Do About It." Des Moines Register 14 Feb. 2010: Web.

Goolsbee, Austan. "Lean Left? Lean Right? News Media May Take Their Cues From Customers." New York Times 10 Dec. 2006: Web.

Harwood, John. "If Fox Is Partisan, Its Not Alone." New York Times 01 Nov. 2009: Web.

Kohut, Andrew. "More News Is Not Necessarily Good News." New York Times 11 Jul. 2004: Web.

Seabrook, Andrea. "CQ: 2009 Was The Most Partisan Year Ever." NPR 11 Jan. 2010: Web.

Shakir, Faiz. "Fox News Displays...." ThinkProgress 18 Nov. 2009: Web. <http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/18/fox-crowd-shot-palin/>.

Stroud, Natalie. "Media Use and Predispositions: Revisiting the Concept of Selective Exposure." Political Behavior. (2001): Web.

Westen, Drew. The Political Brain. New York: Public Affairs, 2007.