Why The Media Landscape in the United States is hard for Democracy

I recently created a BlueSky account. The Twitter clone is as welcoming as social media can be. Mostly librarians and lefties like me at this point. I’ll give it about 5 years before it’s invaded by trolls and bots and becomes as untenable as X. It will eventually be bought by a billionaire and become a wasteland like X and Facebook are now or it will be shut down to eliminate competition.

Free speech is a necessity for a liberal society. X is not that and will not be as long as Elon Musk thinks his voice is more correct than anyone he disagrees with, and he uses his influence to diminish anyone not in the MAGA verse.

Conversely, everyone moving to another platform seems like self-sorting. To me the whole point of expressing my opinion online is for the opportunity to change someone’s mind or at least help them understand my reasoning and concerns so I can understand theirs. I still have an X account. I don’t have many followers (2500), so I haven’t been plagued by trolls so much as sex workers and porn sites. I do want my ideas out there where they might spur some thought and maybe even give a Republican a reason to vote for a moderate Democrat. I think by segregating ourselves into like-minded groups we delude ourselves into believing what’s said in our bubble like “Who could vote for Trump?” “X will die” and other wishful group thinking.

Has the internet & social media been good for our country or society? Our free press has always been a vulnerability, it is an opportunity for nefarious people to inject false and harmful ideas into the public domain, but the truth has mostly won by being right. The old adage “You can fool some of the people some of the time…” is true until possibly today when the massive overpopulation of mis and dis information in conservative media may have the ability to fool most of the people most of the time. It doesn’t help that foreign and domestic forces have been pushing false ideas for a long time. Not just conservatives but Vladimir Putin and other despots are waging a battle on our airwaves.

American citizens have been arranging themselves into like-minded groups since the end of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s. I’m old enough to remember when the local news was 20 minutes with no commercials. 10 minutes news, 5 weather, and 5 sports. The national news was 15 minutes also no commercials and “that’s the way it was”. Broadcast stations were required to report news of the day to keep their broadcast licenses. They were also required to clearly identify opinion pieces, and present opposing opinions to every editorial they broadcast. And no one company could own more than one media outlet, radio, TV, or print in any single market. The doctrine abided by the First Amendment and was able to restrict ownership because of the idea that money is not speech. How quaint.

That brings me to the reason I started thinking about this subject. During the election I wanted to watch Rachel Maddow. I use a Roku device instead of cable TV. On Roku I can get Fox News, Fox Nation, Onan, Newsmax, and a plethora of other conservative and offensive opinion programming for free with apps. And all channel aggregator apps have most of the conservative channels, but not MSNBC. Each Fox and Sinclare local stations have an app for Roku, Amazon Fire stick, Apple Home, LG TVs, Visio TVs, and any other brand of smart TV you can buy. All the apps are free and do not require a subscription, though they’d like you to have one. Why is there not a similar variety of progressive news apps available? I don’t know, I only know that I cannot, watch MSNBC on my Roku. Even with the Peacock app and a subscription MSNBC is limited to 10 minutes or segments, not the entire program. MSNBC should be free. At least it should have its own app and its own subscription if desired. Other liberal options are Democracy Now and that’s all I can think of at this point, there may be more. This is just one example of how conservative media is taking over all media.

Sure, I can get CBS, NBC and ABC for free. Traditional mostly honest news is what I watch most of the time. I wonder how free and honest these outlets are when they are owned by the same billionaires and billion-dollar conglomerates that own conservative news. And so many of the stories are driven by what happens on Fox and other GOP outlets.

Now with the naming Brendan Carr as the next Federal Communications Commission chairman, we must wonder if there will be any “honest” news broadcasts in the future. It may be too late to try to change the media landscape in the immediate future. Threats to fine and cancel broadcast licenses for networks because Dear Leader doesn’t like the coverage is a real possibility with the new administration.

One of the late-night shows mentioned that one of the top Google searches before election was “Did Joe Biden Resign?”. Which brings us to how poorly all news media is informing citizens. I looked it up and Joe Biden was not in the top 25 searches. Neither was Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. The only news related items in the top 25 was the “Hurricane Milton” followed by “When is election day”. To me this is pitiful. First, it was a failure of the Harris campaign to not know where Americans get their news and information. More importantly this is a failure of corporate news not informing and in fact misinforming their audience. Some news corporations are okay with this. American citizens are poorly informed at best and more likely misinformed. It’s not their fault.

A free press is often described as the fourth branch of government. Like the courts, and now the elected government, it has been taken over by people whose mission is not to inform the populace, but to deliberately mislead, and to mold it into willing subjects. There have been studies of how misinformed Fox News viewers are vs traditional news.

Confirmation bias is one factor in explaining our polarized media and misinformed citizenry. Another idea is that people don’t think they need to know what is in the news. They feel what happens in Washington, or a far-off war does not affect them directly, and that they don’t have the knowledge, time, or energy to delve into these issues, so they accept the ideas and solutions that are convenient, entertaining, and fit their existing opinions. People are mostly disengaged because, making a living, raising children, and life is big and complicated enough already.

The Democratic party does not and should not control the media, but conservatives control most of the media. And right-wing media is united. The same talking points are repeated endlessly on all the platforms and eventually make it into country music and entertainment deepening conservative ideas. The next four years will be dark times, and the voters could rebel unless they’re convinced that their hardship is worthwhile or necessary. The GOP has the media power to convince them this is normal and right.

We, the United States, needs to decide how to inform ourselves, the citizens, truthfully and with a wide range of ideas. We need to invest in honest media. The question is how? Subscriptions? This model creates more sorting by ideology. Government funded? Maybe, but funding PBS & NPR is already difficult. Another billion-dollar corporation or individual? This seems most likely but that provides the same suspicion newspapers and the networks are already fighting against. Public media like NPR, PBS and ProPublica are supported by foundations. Perhaps more and new foundations with expressed commitment to not interfere with the journalism created by news outlets is the answer.

ProPublica.org is a good example of quality investigative journalism and traditional networks and newspapers do a good job of creating interesting and informative stories and diverse opinions. The biggest problem is most people don’t watch or read them. Distributing these stories into more news feeds and social media is necessary to get more people accurate news.

Beginning in the 1960’s conservatives started calling all media liberal, left wing, and slanted. Of course it wasn’t true, there were conservative newspapers and commentators in broadcast. But the idea began to stick as the world became more complicated and mistrust of government and institutions became common. We progressives need to identify media that is slanted conservative media and misinformation. Encourage people to find other sources and guide them to honest news. There should be a segment or story every day about how conservative media is misinforming people. Most people are smart enough to understand biased media when they see it, but a little push wouldn’t hurt. More importantly, there should be media literacy and logic classes taught in high school.

Liberals tried to counter conservative radio in the 90s with the Air America Radio network. The problem was we were too late. Corporations run by conservative CEOs like Clear Channel had already bought up most of the local radio stations and had a competitive advantage, AAR didn’t have deep enough pockets to win markets. Another issue was liberals do not like to be angry, sorry for the generalization. We want to be informed, not pissed off. And NPR already existed.

The United States needs to have a media that respects the first amendment and provides a wide variety of ideas. The problem we have with the vast array of media outlets is, it is impossible for everyone to hear all of these ideas. People self-sort into media silos where in some cases we’re told to not trust people who do not listen to your station or share your ideas. To me this is why we are so polarized and why a criminal narcissist can become President.

Recently I watched the documentary Join or Die joinordiefilm.com on Netflix. The film discussed the book by Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. His research hypothesized that in person communicating, talking to people face to face is an essential element in a healthy society. Studying the regions of Italy in the 60s he concluded the difference between healthy well-run governments and failed governments was not the leaders, education, or wealth, It was the fact that the successful provinces had more people participating in clubs, churches, and community groups. Something completely unrelated to governance but provided the citizens with the practice and training of working together.

Maybe, in order to unify and heal our wounded country we should shun the media altogether. Turn off the TV, get out of the house, and talk to your neighbors, join a club, volunteer. Unsubscribe from social media and stop worrying about what the trolls and people you haven’t seen in a decade think. If we, or at least more of us, engaged in person with our local communities, it could influence our fellow citizens for the better. Afterall, we know The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

 

Whatever happened to the United States?

It seems in recent years our countrymen have been inclined to call our great country something other than what it is, or at least used to be. The United States of America is the name of our country. Our country is a collection of states inside the American continent. America is a nice short name but is not accurate.

There is nothing wrong with calling ourselves America. We are Americans after all. We live in the American Continent. However, so do Canadians, Mexicans, Argentinians, and Cubans for that matter. It seems kind of presumptuous of us, or any country’s citizens to claim the entire continent.

I just remember our leaders ending speeches with “God bless these United States of America” instead of “God bless America” Perhaps it’s my memory. Didn’t John Wayne in a soliloquy at the end some WWII epic declare the promise of the United States of America? In modern times, we had George W. Bush close with his unmistakable Texan “God bless Amerika”. President Obama quickly closes with “God Bless America” like a linguistic fist bump to the country. Donald Trump expelled “God Bless America” like we’ve just been licked on the face by St Bernard. President Joe Biden asks for blessings for our troops. A worthy ask but somehow none of these have the weight of “God bless the United States of America.” There should be a dramatic pause before, and after, before the speaker surrenders the podium.

The United States won World War II and developed the modern world order. If we want the glory and respect of the old days, we should go back to that identifier.

Perhaps it’s subconscious. Maybe we don’t use the words United States, because we are feeling less united. Even the initials U.S., US, invites unity. We should use it more often. That is in fact the elephant in the room. We are not united any more.

It seems we are being divided more and more every year. Black v. white, gay v. straight, religious v. agnostic, urban v. rural, and red v. blue are just a few of the ways we are splitting ourselves from each other. The conservative v. liberal is the most pronounced divide. This trend has been studied and talked about for years, and was born before the 60s, during the FDR era, and perhaps before that.

It almost seems like nearly half of us don’t like, or don’t trust the other half very much. We don’t think they are doing their fair share; they are trying to take the country away from us, making it harder to be who we want to be, removing our entitlement, our “God given right as Americans” is under threat.

People listen to dog whistle radio stations, watch TV infotainment and disinfotainment, where the news is presented in perspective of the audience. Facts are not facts unless my favorite talking head says so and he can twist the reality to match my/his opinion and reinforce the fear and victimhood I am entitled to. The divisions have gotten so, that people are physically moving to places where they live among like-minded people. We have “safe” states, blue and red, safe districts, urban and rural.

Franken Delano Roosevelt said many years ago, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Perhaps he is just as right now as he was in the depths of the depression, maybe more. The fear we are instilling in ourselves is more insidious. There is not one big monster or force to be afraid of, there are a thousand things, some small, some large, all of them are abstract and hard to find a definite solution. Answers are a matter of opinion, and no one can agree on what to do. And my opinion matters as much as yours even if it has been discredited years ago in a previous argument because the world is different, things are more extreme, and we are afraid. We can’t even agree on the outcome of our choices and our elections. Well… Buck-up kiddos, if we don’t get our poop in a group things are going to get much worse.

A big part of the problem is that we have divided ourselves between religious and non-religious / not Christian. Years ago, most of us were white Christians. That is not the case any longer and that is the deepest divide. While it may be advantageous for Christians to believe the United States was founded to be a Christian nation, certainly founded by people with Christian upbringing, it is not true that the founders intended the nation to be ruled by Christion theology. Simply because if you allow that, who’s version of “Christian” do you use? Whose prayers do you allow in schools? Thus, the founders made a point of allowing room for other faiths and for no faith. They understood that the United States would attract people from all over the world. It was already happening in 1776, people of Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths were arriving in this country and there needed to be and still needs to be room for them.

The constitution and rule of man-made law is to be the religion of the state. Many people believe it secondary to religion, and that’s okay. The founders just wanted a clear line between state law and religious practices enforced by choice. The difference between law and sin.

With so many important issues that our nation and our human civilization must deal with on a global scale, disease, climate, and containment of dictatorial regimes. We need to develop more unity, more togetherness, more ability to accept each other as we are, as God made us, and not as we wished people to be. In the infamous words of Ben Franklin, "We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately" is as true now than it has ever been.

We need all the ideas available to solve some of these problems. Political discourse is a national brainstorming session. Everything should be allowed. Anyone who diminishes another citizen’s idea is truly the one who is not being patriotic.

We all know each other through family, work, church and civic organizations. We get along with people we know, even if they have a different political perspective. We must try to extend that goodwill to people we don’t know personally; try to empathize with what they think and acknowledge their fears and concerns.

Discussing politics and each other’s ideas after we know what and why they exist is necessary for a healthy republic to exist. But be open minded and express your ideas. Do not be afraid; just practice the philosophy of Teddy Roosevelt, “Your right to swing your arms begin at the end of my nose.” Let your opinion be known but don’t insult people who disagree. I have to admit this is hard to do and I fail regularly.

Let me borrow from President Obama’s farewell speech “So regardless of the station we occupy; we all have to try harder; we all have to start with the premise that each of our fellow citizens loves this country just as much as we do; that they value hard work and family just like we do; that their children are just as curious and hopeful and worthy of love as our own.”

Perhaps if we were to start describing ourselves as united as in the United States of America, perhaps then we’d remember that we are part of something bigger, that we have and are building this country with all our divisions, flaws and disagreements we belong together. Maybe saying it would help bringing us together in some way.

My sincerest wish is that God, Allah, Yahweh, Buddha, the stars, or the Force bless the United States of America.