Media Warfare is the Message

The recent Whitehouse media offensive on Fox News is not necessarily a new political communications stratagem, but it is perhaps unprecedented in its public stridency and deliberateness. While President Obama, himself, has kept his distance from the partisan wrangling, his proxies have leveled a full-fledged, unabashed indictment of the cable channel and its claims of journalistic legitimacy. This very public action is not only a grotesque manifestation of the hostility that seems to invade all modern political debate, but it signals a new, more ominous chapter in the evolution of media politics.

As I stated in my introductory post below, and as a recent New York Times article points out, the problem is much bigger than Fox News- the deleterious trend of media polarization signifies the wholesale coarsening of American political discourse and a dangerous contraction of the public sphere. Whether you're liberal or conservative, we should all be concerned as citizens of a democracy- a system of government grounded in intelligent and rational debate amongst its people and elected officials.

Often, the most critical component of compromise is the ability to genuinely listen and appreciate the opinions of others. This uniquely human faculty is a candid recognition of our own fallibility and an affirmation that the best way forward is usually arrived at through the contribution of many individuals with varying opinions. It seems we are approaching a pivotal point where the institution of democracy is serving more as a veil of legitimacy for those in power than as a philosophy for guiding political practice. "Democracy" has become an empty justification for an explosion of invective and the preservation of an atmosphere of mutual enmity that invades all discussion and decision-making. It seems to me that the current media landscape, particularly cable news and radio, is, if not the root of the problem, certainly public enemy number one.

With the unfortunate decline of print journalism, cable news is now the dominant information space where public opinion is created, modulated, and crystallized. The punditocracy, whether Sean Hannity or Keith Olbermann, has laid claim to the public mind, seducing its audience with rank sensationalism, infantilizing propaganda techniques, and the toxic pretension of condensing an incredibly complex world into a handful of snarky soundbytes.

Of course, the most insidious aspect of this dynamic is that this is what sells. People do not want to sit through an hour long exposition on the current state of the Afghan insurgency, they simply want someone to tell them that we're winning the "War on Terror" while waving the American flag and flashing a few stock images of AK-toting mujahideen. In doing so, a very complex problem is reduced to an easily digestible meme that reinforces the viewer's value system. It feels good to have a reputedly "smart" person pat you on the head every night and say "you are, in fact, right... again." And this is the real problem: no one wants to listen to or hear anything anymore that conflicts with their highly insulated view of the world. Cable news, whether right or left, has constructed two alternative (and grossly opposite) realities for their viewerships- realities where political opponents are represented as the very picture of evil. Not only are various politicians repeatedly tarred and feathered, but the media orgs themselves continually malign each other with the dignity and tact of spoiled middle school girls.

To take a quote from the consummate sage of democratic principle John Dewey:

"A genuinely democratic faith in peace is faith in the possibility of conducting disputes, controversies, and conflicts as co-operative undertakings in which both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself, instead of having one party conquer by forceful suppression of the other - a suppression which is none the less one of violence when it takes place by psychological means of ridicule, intimidation, instead of overt imprisonment or in concentration camps."

I just wonder where we go from here?