Politics, Dog Whistles, Bias and News
News media can only protect democracy if it can shed any hint of bias and dedicate itself to all of it's readers and viewers in an effort to bring them all together under the single tent of being informed. Picking sides has led to this polarized mess we are in today.
CNN has a great track record for it's original programming. Raised on Television (S1 Ep1 2016) was of great interest because, I can say I was also raised on television starting in the 1950's. In the first installment that covers each decade of TV, there were one, short prophetic segment about the news business and the beginning of Ted Turner's 24 hour CNN,Cable Network News that went on the air March of 1980.Ted Turner would say it would stay on the air and ,”sign off when the world ends.” He would also say , “people loved news and we got lots of it,... CNN was a break through.” A short time later John Heilsmann ( at Bloomberg) would warn, network news would be recognized as a profit center as foreign corporate entities would begin to buy up the news division on the major networks. Those working in those network newsrooms were “freaked out.” Tom Sales of the Washington Post would say, “I worry about people who are only interested in money and power getting a hold of television.” Time has past, network news/entertainment and culture looks very different and passive compared to today's cable news.
Recently a very brave Michael Smerconish host of a very good CNN Saturday current events commentary show also reflected on the dangers of the news business and the emphasis on revenue and ratings being good for business but not for the country.
The news people love is turning to hate. It is aiding and abetting hate on a daily basis in a blind pursuit of ratings and revenue.
Canada's cable and network news I think is very fair and informative, the best it has ever been for sure.
So all media worries about the future when any new thing happens and these worries often reach extremes. The newspaper business was bought and sold several times over,both in the US and Canada over the last few decades with similar fears. Newspapers shed their radio station assets under threat from the government in Canada and likely would not be in such a bad state today if they kept diversified in radio. Both radio and newspapers suffered separately.
The idea of corporate media is not a new one and it has the legitimacy of being a fact.(some are hearing conspiracy dog whistles)
It has only been recently a point of real interest since 2015/16 ,with not only the election of Donald Trump and the rise of right wing parties in Europe. These are also facts.
It is said that deindustrialization of Western countries has led massive job losses in some areas and economic gains in others. Machines have replaced people in high wage,high cost countries and people in larger and larger numbers have been suffering to a point that even young people are scrambling in the gig , ride share, food delivery economy The losers since the 1980's have been languishing and growing in numbers since that time. Bruce Springsteen's music is a testament.
The nature of news especially in the cable space has become confrontational and polarized. Polarization is bias. ( also a dog whistle for the biased) Whether liberal or conservative, bias is bias. News as information is for it's viewer or readers in all of it's degrees. That is what is missing and we are seeing the consequences with battling political parties trying to get control of now billions of government dollars in tax dollars and issuing of billions and trillions of dollars of contracts and debt. It is not only the money that is worrisome. It is also the effects of the governed and we see the governed getting more and more restles. The middle class is getting hollowed out and falling to what politicians and media should be calling income equality but in reverse.
The the low cost, low wage Far East has gained jobs lost by the West. No question there. Media has come to be scrutinized more and more, It makes people mad just fallowing he news. The goal of informing people has shifted to a every unhealthy gear. Fox and CNN have taken a high volume political atmosphere and amplified it to a painful and unhealthy decidable level.
One CNN commentator cannot get through a sentence without using the words,lied, liar or lying and sometimes using all three in the same sentence. Watching cable news is like watching a train wreak, you just can't take your eyes off of it, and it is doing real damage making people, who were not already mad , very mad. This is not the roll of news media, you don't see it in newspapers, nor network news, nor government sponsored BBC or CBC. I have criticized the CBC in the past and they seem to have taken a hard look at themselves and separated themselves with abundance of caution from past suspicions of bias.
CNN and FOX need to do the same.
The fusion of online social media has created narrow news/fiction lane that borders on brainwashing.
This is new media crossing into ever more uncharted territory where more foreign interference has reached critical mass. The US Capitol Insurrection is a scary event, a warning. It is also a confluence of several cultural and technological tributaries joining at a critical point in history.
I have observed rise of political correctness (the basis of complaint) and how it seems to be a point of ever increasing complaint crowning with the Trump campaign from the beginning. Even though he lost his reelection, he gained a lot of votes from his previous election. That is a warning. PC has turned into a monster from a humble beginning. Conversations are the basis of forming opinion, stifling conversation is having unintended consequence and they are growing to political instability. Opinion by Ken Gigliotti
Topic: Politics,Dog Whistles,Bias and News (Read 1183 times)