Why do we, as consumers of news, bother paying so much
attention to what is reported on the various news outlets? I ask this not in
the partisan sense, but rather in the “why bother” sense. I spend at least a
couple hours every day trying to stay up-to-date on the news across various
fields of interest, but I find that, more often than not, I am reading other
people’s opinions and analysis. One of my favorite websites for political news
is RealClearPolitics. This site offers a fantastic collection of articles that spans
the entire political spectrum. It has links almost daily from the Huffington
Post as well as from National Review Online.
Over the course of the past several months I have found myself
eschewing more and more the left-leaning political sites and favoring the
right-leaning sites. (Full disclaimer: my political leanings are a mix of
conservative and libertarian) There are some instances where I will just look
at the source of an article or the author of an article and I will immediately
dismiss it because I know what the article will say without having to read it. The
rare times I catch myself reading an article on a left-leaning site is when a
new author publishes on there, the title captures my attention, or I want a
laugh. I am sure that many of my left-leaning friends do the same thing as me
from the other side of the aisle.
I say the above because I finally stopped and asked myself
why I was not reading the left-leaning sites anymore and focusing almost
exclusively on the right-leaning sites. The answer hit me light a blinding
flash of the obvious. It is because I am reading a collection of opinion pieces
and not real news, and I don’t want to read the writings of people who bash
what I believe in because it is their opinion. I ask myself why I would both
reading Eugene Robinson’s analysis on a topic and come away feeling angry or
upset when I could read Thomas Sowell’s analysis and come away agreeing and
feeling “smarter.” This single thought helped me understand and draw my own
conclusion about the current trend in news media. Too much of modern news is
designed to provoke an emotion from people, and the side that provokes the
emotion people want to feel is the side that does better.
Look at most any article published today that disagrees with
one’s political leanings and that person will see about 15-20% of the article is
fact-based or actual “news” reporting while the other 80-85% is personal
opinion and analysis. If the article agrees with their political leanings, the
person will see the opposite.
How did this happen? If people want to understand why politics
is so polarized, maybe they should start at trying to understand this
phenomenon. I understand the value of bringing people as much information as
possible, but is there really enough news out there for a half-dozen 24 hour
news channels to fill up every bit of their time with actual news?
2 comments:
Welcome back!
I think what you are talking about is a result what you as a conservative espouse: market competition. With the expansion of cable TV and the Internet, people had choices for the first time. Those editorialized comments you speak about became more and more obvious and laced with political banter than before. This certainly does not mean that this did not occur prior, it was just not as noticeable because it did not need to go to an extreme to be consumed.
I think the major difference in the end of the day is the intent. I think anchors and reporters alike previously attempted to hide their own biases as much as possible and present as fair a representation as possible. It did not always happen, but there was an attempt. Now, the goal is only to provide the news in your personal slant. Why did that occur? Competition. Anyone can report something unbiased, there is no competition and no market appetite for it. Unfortunately, it does not appear likely it will reverse.
I think a new question may be, were anchors and reports of yesterday as good and unbiased as we remember? Did they only report the news? They had no competition, so how could they be the best?
I understand fully the role that competition has in the news and I think competition is a good thing.
What I am really asking, though, is whether the current version of the news can really be considered "news" when it is so blatantly partisan so much of the time?
Is so much money swirling around in the organizations that are supposed to inform the public a good thing?
More questions for thought than anything else.
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