Media or Religion?
Key tenets of America are freedoms of the press, to choose, and of religion. The interesting dynamic of human nature is how we tend to choose religion and the press in similar fashions. Now I realize not everyone ‘chooses’ religion per say. Many people are raised in a religion from childhood and that’s what they continue as adults. Others do choose religious affiliations later in life, but this writing is not intended to debate religious followings. It is intended to highlight the fact that as we grow older, we tend to gravitate to media coverage that tells us what we want to hear. Most people don’t attend services or follow a religious belief because they fundamentally disagree with what they’re reading or hearing. The same holds true with media.
To use the term, back in the day, ‘news’ coverage was much more neutral on tv. You would get the basic news of the day in a very similar fashion from any outlet. For decades, your choices on tv were maybe 3 outlets. There were plenty of local print publications across the country, but national tv coverage was very limited. It was also fairly neutral from a political point of view. Any opinion pieces were limited to short segments slated towards the end of a broadcast perhaps. News reporting was neutral for almost 40 years, not because of any cultural dynamic, but because the FCC said it had to be.
The Fairness Doctrine as it came to be known was an FCC regulation in place from 1949 to 1987 when it was repealed. This doctrine essentially mandated that broadcasters had to cover news or other issues from both perspectives thereby providing a neutral playing field for reporting.
Since the doctrine’s repeal, the media landscape has never been the same. Rush Limbaugh came on the air in 1988, Fox News hit the airwaves in 1996 and so on and so on.
All the while, people in our country have also been aligning themselves with the media outlet that suits their ideological needs. It’s no coincidence that CNN’s ratings do better during a democratic adminsistration and Fox News’ ratings surge during a republican administration.
What is the cost of this dynamic to our society? Whenever someone consumes content from their preferred source, that’s all they see, hear and believe day in and day out. One person lives in a conservative media world, while another lives in a liberal media world. All the while, both sides of the media are fighting for ratings and pushing the envelopes. The collateral damage is the people watching. Most aren’t fact checking what they hear but rather are taking it as gospel. it’s no accident that the divides in our society reflect the same chasms we have between our different media outlets.
Who’s reporting in the center? No one. As long as there’s a ratings game in the news business, there won’t be anyone reporting in the center.
People align to their information outlets in the same manner as they do religion and some believe it just as passionately.
I’m for free speech 100%, so the key question is how to engage our citizens to spend more time fact checking on their own. A lot of people won’t do it. It’s just human nature.
If our country gets to a place where nobody believes in absolute facts and only believes what one side is telling them regardless of truth, our democracy will fail. All it will take is the right autocratic minded person with enough popularity and power over the people with a message of revolution, and it will be gone.
In religion, many things are taken on faith w/o concrete evidence of truth. That’s a very dangerous way to view the events happening in our country. Take the time, check the facts, don’t believe everything at face value. It could save our country some day.