Who's peddling fake news? Everybody!
by digby
Margaret Sullivan wrote a great column in the Washington Post about the notion that half of American now believes the media is peddling fake news. She quotes some of her angry readers, including one who says he voted for Trump just to spite the liberal media even though he knows Trump is a buffoon. (Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face...)
Anyway, Sullivan took up the advice of some of her readers to get out into the country to talk to people whom these readers were sure would back up their view that nobody believes the fake news media anymore. What she found was quite interesting:
Just as Hastings suggested, I would go to diners, flea markets and pizza joints. I’d pull up a bar stool at the irresistibly named Paulette’s Blue Collar Inn. I would shop at Dick’s Sporting Goods, with its large gun department. I’d go to Mass at Most Precious Blood Church. And I would listen.
By the end of my journey, I had interviewed 35 people and chatted with dozens of others. I found very little of what I feared most. And I discovered that some stereotypes about the way heartland Americans view the media don’t quite hold up.
She shares her discussions with several people and it's mostly what you would expect. People say they don't like the "attitude" and the bickering they see on TV and they think the print media is full of lies. This is true especially the ones who don't vote and don't follow the news. Even the ones who pay attention are jaded but they aren't as angry or hostile as the readers who send emails calling Sullivan the c-word.
To me this is one of those subjects for which everyone (and I would include myself) is going to have a cynical response. If someone asks me about the news business I will readily admit that I think right wing media is propaganda and that mainstream media is too often driven by corporate profits and group think and that left wing media can be blinded by naive ideology. I don't dismiss any of it out of hand, not even the right wing which I observe keenly because it's so powerful. But I'm not going to cheerlead the media --- and I'm part of it! Why would anyone?
But mostly, I think it's just a reflexive response, like "politicians on both sides are in it for the money" or "Washington is out of touch." It's what people think they are supposed to say because it's contentious. Only the most argumentative among us want to mix it up over politics and media in this country. It's a social minefield. Most people aren't that emotionally invested. So they say "oh they're all a bunch of liars" and move on.
Sullivan consulted an expert, Tom Rosenstiel, the author of seminal journalism books and the director of the American Press Institute, who said that most people like their own media, the same way they like their own congressman. I suspect it's the same way they think their own town or state is great it's just that the rest of the country is going to hell in a handbasket. (James and Deborah Fallows have a new book coming out that gets into that subject that I'm anxious to read.)
Anyway, it's a good lesson for all of us to keep in our heads. If you spend a lot of time on social media, you are probably not getting holistic view of how politics plays out in every day life for most Americans. Sullivan thinks of the people she interviewed and concludes, "if we follow their advice — if we pursue fairness, depth, accuracy — we may not save a democracy that so many feel is under siege, and we will still probably get our share of obscene phone calls and emails, but we’ll have done a job that’s worth doing."
I won't be dropping the "attitude," myself. It's who I am. But on the whole that sounds right to me.
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