Speaker 1: Pushkin Hi listeners, you know that hero on Revision is history.
Speaker 1: We ask a lot of questions about the systems that
Speaker 1: have shaped our worldviews. While we're hard at work on
Speaker 1: our new season, we wanted to share another podcast that
Speaker 1: hits these points and asks big questions too. It's called
Speaker 1: seneon Radio, and today I'm bringing you an episode from
Speaker 1: their aptly named new season, The News. Some have called
Speaker 1: the news media the oxygen of a functioning democracy, but
Speaker 1: if that's true, America's lungs are in rough shape. Many
Speaker 1: Americans say they don't trust the media. The business model
Speaker 1: for local journalism has all been collapsed, and we all
Speaker 1: know about the barrage of misinformation that flows from our
Speaker 1: splintered media escape. You can't separate the state of our
Speaker 1: news media from the other profound crises that America keeps
Speaker 1: on failing to solve. Hosted by John Bewen and now
Speaker 1: in its eighth season, the two time Peabody Award nominated
Speaker 1: show explores the roots of this crisis and asks what's
Speaker 1: really wrong with the news. It's an eight part series,
Speaker 1: so you'll want to check out the rest, but for now,
Speaker 1: here's episode one. Find Seat on Radio wherever you get podcasts.
Speaker 2: All right, we're rolling.
Speaker 3: Good sir, here we go. Asian markets are mostly down today.
Speaker 4: That's dangerous flash flooding ripping through parts of Milwaukee.
Speaker 3: This is a box news alart.
Speaker 5: This is our camera angle.
Speaker 6: From our Americans if we want to be are inundated
Speaker 6: with news from countless sources, some of New York Times.
Speaker 6: I'm Michael la Welcome back to One American News.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for and at the same time, we're
Speaker 2: stuck in a deep information crisis the news.
Speaker 6: It seems like we're helpless to solve our problems. It
Speaker 6: doesn't help that we have no shared narrative and few
Speaker 6: shared facts.
Speaker 7: What is happening right now in the world and what
Speaker 7: just happened to my friend Charlie Kirk is a battle
Speaker 7: of sheer evil versus goodness.
Speaker 8: To me, Fox News just not They don't tell the
Speaker 8: whole story.
Speaker 2: I consider myself a centrist.
Speaker 6: I'm not particularly interested in the MSNBC.
Speaker 9: What I'm saying is, don't try me today, Scotty.
Speaker 2: York Post, big questions. A whole lot of us don't
Speaker 2: know what's true. Oh, we firmly believe and will fight
Speaker 2: you over things that are not true.
Speaker 3: Let's get rid of these voting machines.
Speaker 10: There's a half a dozen people, whether it's a House
Speaker 10: or Senate Larry, that are up here as we speak
Speaker 10: that did not get elected.
Speaker 2: It was all bogus.
Speaker 11: Just so people understand, wind and solar only work when
Speaker 11: there's wind and sun.
Speaker 7: We don't have technology to store the energy from wind
Speaker 7: and solar.
Speaker 3: So if you make yoursel.
Speaker 10: I'm very disappointed in the mainstream media, and that's all
Speaker 10: I'll say about that.
Speaker 6: It's hard to imagine putting the toothpaste back in the tube.
Speaker 6: And maybe there's no golden age to return to anyway.
Speaker 6: So now what change your eye?
Speaker 2: Hey? John?
Speaker 6: You know our little montage could have just kept on going.
Speaker 2: I better stopped now because I feel like you're gonna
Speaker 2: get us in trouble, you know what I mean. We
Speaker 2: got hundreds thousands more news and news ish outlets to
Speaker 2: choose from.
Speaker 6: We are a wash in media, at least some of
Speaker 6: us are, but we don't seem very happy about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, everybody's mad at the news media. And if
Speaker 2: I'm being honest, yeah, like I get it right, because
Speaker 2: if you look around, so much of what passes for
Speaker 2: news out there is like not that good. In fact,
Speaker 2: a lot of it is trash.
Speaker 6: We could easily find people who would disagree with you
Speaker 6: or me about which acts of journalism are the trashy ones.
Speaker 6: But no question about it, people are not happy. According
Speaker 6: to a Gallup poll in twenty twenty five, only twenty
Speaker 6: eight percent of Americans had even a fair amount of
Speaker 6: confidence in the major media. Seventy percent of us say
Speaker 6: we have not much or no confidence at all.
Speaker 2: That crisis of trust is a huge problem for American journalism,
Speaker 2: and it's not the only problem.
Speaker 6: A lot of people at first blush might not care
Speaker 6: about a media crisis, especially if they think the media sucks.
Speaker 2: But people need the media to live, right. They need
Speaker 2: to know what the status of their healthcare is. They
Speaker 2: need to know what the weather is, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, and if there's going to be like like
Speaker 2: an earthquake. They need to know if their rights are
Speaker 2: going to be violated, right, I mean, it's just like
Speaker 2: something that you need to live your everyday lives. And also,
Speaker 2: how are you going to run a democracy where the
Speaker 2: people are supposed to govern ourselves if we don't have
Speaker 2: the information, if we don't have any shared sense of
Speaker 2: what's going on out there.
Speaker 6: That's more or less what Thomas Jefferson said, Our good buddy.
Speaker 6: Wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted
Speaker 6: with their own government.
Speaker 2: That's good because I only try to say things that
Speaker 2: Thomas Jefferson said, you know that about it. That's when
Speaker 2: I checked the child every time before I say so,
Speaker 2: Did Thomas Jefferson say this? Okay?
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly right. We've picked on him a number of
Speaker 6: times on this show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean, look, he was right. You know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying, being a slaveholder, a racist. That don't
Speaker 2: mean you're not right about anything.
Speaker 6: Right, But yeah, does anybody here think that the fourth estate,
Speaker 6: the news media as it's now constructed, is doing its
Speaker 6: job that Americaans are well enough informed to be trusted
Speaker 6: with our own government. From the Keenan Institute for Ethics
Speaker 6: at Duke University, Welcome to sin On Radio Season eight.
Speaker 6: I'm John Bwen, producer and host of the show.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm Chinjerrakumanika, excited to come back as.
Speaker 6: The co host, jenj. You are an award winning podcast
Speaker 6: maker Empire City on civil Unruly Subjects and seen on radio.
Speaker 6: You were my co host for seasons two and four,
Speaker 6: and you're a professor at New York University's Journalism School
Speaker 6: with a PhD in Mass Communication and Critical Media studies,
Speaker 6: so you're officially an expert on the thing we're here
Speaker 6: to explore this time around.
Speaker 2: Finally, you know what I'm saying. We in my lane.
Speaker 2: Now you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: You got the paper credentials. This time we're calling this
Speaker 6: season the News. We're going to take a hard, deep
Speaker 6: look the troubled state of the news media in the
Speaker 6: US and how that crisis relates to the other profound
Speaker 6: problems we seem unable or unwilling to solve.
Speaker 2: Another key thing we're going to do is sort through
Speaker 2: the various crises in our news and information system and
Speaker 2: the most common reasons people say they're pissed about the media,
Speaker 2: and we're going to ask what's really wrong? Is it
Speaker 2: what we think it is.
Speaker 6: We will do some history along the way. We might
Speaker 6: challenge some mythology around journalistic tradition in America and parts
Speaker 6: of US history itself for that matter, in ways that
Speaker 6: could also shed light on how our news media are
Speaker 6: failing us in this pivotal historical moment.
Speaker 2: And eventually we're going to talk about solutions what it
Speaker 2: might look like to unbreak the media, because the thing is,
Speaker 2: this stuff really matters. The stakes are about as high
Speaker 2: as they could be.
Speaker 6: Media are so much a part of our lives that,
Speaker 6: in a real sense, we're made of media. The media
Speaker 6: helps to shape a society but also act as a
Speaker 6: mirror showing us who we are.
Speaker 2: And John, like I have a confession. We talk about
Speaker 2: people being angry at the news media, and of course
Speaker 2: folks are angry for wildly different reasons. But what I'm
Speaker 2: looking at so called journalism that I see is completely
Speaker 2: false and dishonest. I find myself getting mad at the
Speaker 2: people who consume that news and believe it, Like why
Speaker 2: y'all drinking and kool aid?
Speaker 6: I know what you mean. And let's put a pin
Speaker 6: in that thought, as they say, right now, before we
Speaker 6: go further, just a quick note for the grammar purists.
Speaker 6: Yes you will hear us do that thing that a
Speaker 6: whole lot of people do now where we say the
Speaker 6: media as if it's one thing.
Speaker 2: Right, but the word is plural, and we'll never lose
Speaker 2: sight of the fact that the media is a tangled web,
Speaker 2: not a monolith.
Speaker 6: Here in episode one. Let's start with us, not Tender
Speaker 6: Eye and me, but us, everybody who consumes news media,
Speaker 6: whether you take in a ton of it or hardly
Speaker 6: any what drives us as we try to inform ourselves?
Speaker 2: That's the question, you know what I'm saying. I mean,
Speaker 2: we talk so much about whether we can trust our
Speaker 2: news sources, but can we trust ourselves.
Speaker 6: I've spent some time over the last year or so
Speaker 6: in a corner of North Carolina talking with folks about
Speaker 6: a lot of things, their politics, what their lives are like,
Speaker 6: and about the news.
Speaker 2: And why'd you go to that particular place.
Speaker 6: It's a good question in one sense. We could have
Speaker 6: gone almost anywhere. But as folks will hear throughout the season,
Speaker 6: this patch of North Carolina, which is not far from
Speaker 6: where I live, is a compelling place to see some
Speaker 6: of the most pressing problems with our news media and
Speaker 6: some impressive efforts to respond and fill the gaping holes
Speaker 6: in the system. By the way, Chenje, you know, I
Speaker 6: think it's safe to say some of those news consumers
Speaker 6: you're frustrated with live in this place.
Speaker 2: Ah Well, in that case, let me take a deep breath, Hi,
Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear what you.
Speaker 7: Found all your favorite country played back to back to
Speaker 7: the eighth.
Speaker 2: Country he.
Speaker 6: Saw. We're going to refer to this part of North
Speaker 6: Carolina as the border Belt. It's an old term used
Speaker 6: over the last century for a tobacco growing region that
Speaker 6: ran along both sides of the North and South Carolina border.
Speaker 6: A lot of the tobacco's gone now. The farms grow
Speaker 6: corn and soybeans and other crops. The radio signals in
Speaker 6: these rural counties come from a ways off, mainly the
Speaker 6: bigger cities of Wilmington and Fayetteville, and they sound like it.
Speaker 2: So get your Wednesday off to a good storm with me.
Speaker 4: Gilbert bays on Newstox exporting w FNC turn left on
Speaker 4: the North Carolina forty one south.
Speaker 6: I spent time just on the North Carolina side in
Speaker 6: a cluster of counties Scotland and Robison to the west,
Speaker 6: Bladen and Columbus to the east. This place is racially diverse,
Speaker 6: with large white, Black, and indigenous populations, and long struggling
Speaker 6: North Carolina ranks in the bottom half of states in
Speaker 6: per capita income. In the border Belt, folks make twelve
Speaker 6: to twenty thousand dollars less than the state average. There
Speaker 6: are a lot of manufactured homes, trailer parks, single wides,
Speaker 6: double wides, the kind of dotted everywhere was good.
Speaker 2: Enemy with surprised guests, music and mortgage all in the
Speaker 2: breakfast club weekday mornings Ontville, there's still number one station
Speaker 2: for hip hop and R and B, the big stick
Speaker 2: Boxy ninety nine.
Speaker 6: Most of these counties are also what are called news deserts.
Speaker 6: That means they have no more than one local news source,
Speaker 6: and often the surviving newspapers have shriveled to a few
Speaker 6: pages of mostly sports and features. They don't print a
Speaker 6: whole lot of news.
Speaker 8: And John, you want to come in or you want
Speaker 8: to sit on a porch.
Speaker 6: I talk to a range of people in the Border
Speaker 6: Belt about their media diets.
Speaker 8: I usually sit here and have my coffee, and I'm
Speaker 8: sitting here on the couch and I'm watching the news
Speaker 8: local stations which are located in Wilmington, but they carry
Speaker 8: this area.
Speaker 10: I don't watch a lot of news, but what I
Speaker 10: watch Newsmax or Fox.
Speaker 8: I try not to get my news from social media
Speaker 8: too much, but sometimes I'm scrolling through Twitter and I
Speaker 8: see something and it catches my eye.
Speaker 12: I still think that a lot of our people get
Speaker 12: their information from their local radio station too. Whatever they
Speaker 12: play in between songs and stuff like that, whatever top
Speaker 12: of news update.
Speaker 6: We're gonna spend more time getting to know this guy,
Speaker 6: Ethan Jordan. I find him in Columbus County. He's driving
Speaker 6: a big John Deere tractor pulling a planting rig down
Speaker 6: the road near his family's place. I can just leave
Speaker 6: it here. I climbed the ladder to his two person tractor.
Speaker 3: Cap you got enough room to make it work.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, how you doing good?
Speaker 10: Nice to meet you here.
Speaker 3: Let me get indoor a little bit better, so ran.
Speaker 6: Ethan's in his late twenties. He has reddish brown hair
Speaker 6: and a round face. He and his family raised corn, soybeans, peanuts,
Speaker 6: and beef cattle. On this April day, he's planting corn
Speaker 6: right here.
Speaker 10: Will we farm total twenty two hundred acres between me
Speaker 10: and my dad and two employees. I believe if you
Speaker 10: get back, I'm the eighth generation at Jordan Farman on
Speaker 10: this land that we're on right now.
Speaker 3: Actually, this is so many regional fall we're on.
Speaker 6: In front of Ethan in the cab are a half
Speaker 6: dozen screens. They monitor the seed and fertilizer. He's dropping
Speaker 6: the weather conditions, the technology that's doing the driving, Yes.
Speaker 10: Sir, that's my GPS, which controls the auto year. As
Speaker 10: you see, I'm not touching the steerwheel and it's steering.
Speaker 6: And for the long hours he spends in the tractor,
Speaker 6: he also has media handy.
Speaker 10: I know, I have Fox News on this iPad and
Speaker 10: I will watch Fox News from time to time. And
Speaker 10: it's not Newsmax's that ad that has all the news
Speaker 10: in it.
Speaker 3: Well, you see, I have Fox News here, but there's
Speaker 3: an app that I can't call the name of right now.
Speaker 6: He finds it his go to news aggregator.
Speaker 10: Right here's this app right here, matter of fact news
Speaker 10: break news break app.
Speaker 3: And it kind of you know, I guess it goes.
Speaker 10: Through your algorithm of what you look up and stuff
Speaker 10: like that, because if you look at mine, talks about
Speaker 10: farmers react to Trump's tariffs, tells me about the local
Speaker 10: news news and so that I have that that pops
Speaker 10: up and it'll be anywhere from CNBC to WCT the
Speaker 10: daily Daily Beast, I don't know, but anyway, it just
Speaker 10: shows you know, local and national news and if it's
Speaker 10: national news. It's more related to what I look up,
Speaker 10: which is obviously farming's, you know, agricultural related topics.
Speaker 3: It's where I get a lot of my news from.
Speaker 10: To say I actually sit down and watch the news,
Speaker 10: it's kind of hard to say.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 10: We'll watch it if something interested is going on on
Speaker 10: the iPad, if I'm in a trat to running it.
Speaker 6: Ethan lives with his fiance. He's a lawyer. There's a
Speaker 6: local newspaper, the News Reporter, out of nearby Whiteville, that
Speaker 6: comes out twice a week. Ethan sometimes looks at its website,
Speaker 6: but he and his fiance don't subscribe.
Speaker 3: And I've lived by myself.
Speaker 10: I lived out of my parents' house for now going
Speaker 10: on the fifth year, and I can say I've.
Speaker 3: Honestly never had a newspaper in my house or even
Speaker 3: picking one up. I know, there's not want to have
Speaker 3: been in my house. My parents get one every week.
Speaker 6: But for local news, he relies on Facebook, which includes
Speaker 6: reports from nearby outlets and comments from the community. He
Speaker 6: mentions a recent criminal incident in a nearby town.
Speaker 3: We're sitting there talking with a group of friends, and
Speaker 3: where'd you read that at? Oh?
Speaker 10: If you go on Facebook, look at WWA wise post
Speaker 10: about it, but look at the comments and you can
Speaker 10: see the video, So now you kind of you know,
Speaker 10: you look at Facebook, cause yeah, the papers and you
Speaker 10: know they'll tell you about it. But a lot of
Speaker 10: times you can read through the comments and find somebody
Speaker 10: who actually lived it and see their opinion, and you know,
Speaker 10: sometimes opinions are biased, but you do get kind of
Speaker 10: seen more of a real live feeling by reading the comments.
Speaker 10: So a lot of my news not gonna say I
Speaker 10: trust Facebook by no stretching, no matter, because everybody has
Speaker 10: a different opinion, but you can kind of see the
Speaker 10: gist of what's going on.
Speaker 6: Ethan votes Republican, along with everybody in his family and
Speaker 6: their neighbors. He says, Historically, this region, white folks included,
Speaker 6: voted for Democrats. Until ten or twenty years ago.
Speaker 10: We were all Democrats and in all of a sudden,
Speaker 10: we woke up one day and we're Republicans.
Speaker 6: As much as we all rely on the media to
Speaker 6: get information and to decide how to vote, it's worth
Speaker 6: highlighting what Ethan says when I ask who he voted
Speaker 6: for in the North Carolina governor's race in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Four, Mark Robinson, Yes, I did.
Speaker 6: You may remember hearing about Mark Robinson, no matter how
Speaker 6: far you are from North Carolina. He was the Republican
Speaker 6: nominee who lost to Democrat Josh Stein. Robinson made international
Speaker 6: news for inflammatory statements he apparently made, including on a
Speaker 6: porn website maligning Martin Luther King, defending Hitler, questioning the Holocaust,
Speaker 6: and calling himself a black Nazi. Ethan tells me he
Speaker 6: had to choose between the two candidates, suggesting it was
Speaker 6: a vote for his preferred party, but he also says
Speaker 6: this about Robinson.
Speaker 10: I had met him personally, So I mean that's you know,
Speaker 10: that's I look at politics different than some people. You know,
Speaker 10: you got diehard Republicans, you got diehard Democrats, you got
Speaker 10: diehard Livers.
Speaker 3: And there's other parties on them. You know, there's a
Speaker 3: whole list of Now.
Speaker 10: I look at the ones like that that I've personally
Speaker 10: had shook her hand or met him personally.
Speaker 3: And I had met Mark Robinson.
Speaker 10: He spent some time down in Clumbs County, and I
Speaker 10: had met him personally.
Speaker 3: So he probably didn't remember my name or know who
Speaker 3: I was, but he called my name one time. He
Speaker 3: shook my hand.
Speaker 10: So, I mean, if you feel like you got a close,
Speaker 10: little personal connection with him, that's kind of way I
Speaker 10: look at whether you're a Democrat Republican.
Speaker 6: Maybe there's still special power in what comes to us
Speaker 6: not from a screen, but through in person experience, the
Speaker 6: way people use to learn most of what they knew
Speaker 6: about the world. Despite his conservative views, Ethan says he
Speaker 6: finds Fox News too far to the right at times
Speaker 6: when it harps too much on gun rights or undocumented immigrants.
Speaker 6: But then a network like the NBC will annoy him
Speaker 6: even more in the other direction.
Speaker 10: When you're in the election, it was always negative on Trump,
Speaker 10: negative on Trump constantly, you know, this, that and the other,
Speaker 10: and you know, and I kind.
Speaker 3: Of look at it. I'm like, well, everybody's not perfect.
Speaker 10: But when y'all were pro forward Kamala, you were pro Kamala, Like,
Speaker 10: I can find problems with her too, just as good
Speaker 10: as you can find with Trump. It's kind of you know,
Speaker 10: if you don't tell the story, tell it on both sides,
Speaker 10: tell the bat pros and the cons of both, not
Speaker 10: just constantly.
Speaker 3: Over and over and over and over again. And that's
Speaker 3: where I'd get irritated. And not want to listen to it.
Speaker 6: Hey, Tene, what are you thinking so far?
Speaker 2: Well, I gotta say I really like listening to Ethan,
Speaker 2: you know, and I'm not mad at him. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you said to me, white North Carolina farmer who
Speaker 2: votes Republican, I feel like I was going to picture
Speaker 2: somebody very different, somebody who's maybe not as open or
Speaker 2: really just has their mind made up. Now I would
Speaker 2: like to hear Ethan explain why he voted for Mark Robinson,
Speaker 2: who's a Holocaust denier who called himself a black Nazi
Speaker 2: for governor. So there is that part, yeah, But putting
Speaker 2: that aside for a second, just listening to him, I
Speaker 2: got a feel for where he's at, even though we
Speaker 2: only heard him for a few minutes.
Speaker 6: You wouldn't vote for the people he votes for, you're saying,
Speaker 6: But he comes across as a sincere person doing his
Speaker 6: best to make sense at things, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like based on the information he has, you know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. When he talked, it's about the news.
Speaker 2: He pays attention to. He sounds real familiar to me.
Speaker 2: He wants the facts, he wants fairness, and when the
Speaker 2: news tells them something very different, from what he and
Speaker 2: the people around him think is true. Then it sounds
Speaker 2: unfair or oversimplified that makes him want to change the
Speaker 2: channel or tap over to a different source.
Speaker 6: We said this episode was going to be about us,
Speaker 6: those of us on the receiving end of the news.
Speaker 6: I talked to an expert who has fascinating insights into
Speaker 6: our biases as news consumers, including how changes in our
Speaker 6: society have amplified those biases.
Speaker 4: Often when I'm talking about this to audiences, I'll say,
Speaker 4: you know, how many of you would say that your
Speaker 4: main goal as you're engaging with the world is to
Speaker 4: be accurate in what you perceive. And everyone raises their
Speaker 4: hand and I'm like, actually, it's not, Actually, you're wrong.
Speaker 6: This is Dana gal Young.
Speaker 4: I'm a professor of communication and political science at the
Speaker 4: University of Delaware, where I direct the Center for Political Communication.
Speaker 6: Young studies how people process information in connection with our politics.
Speaker 6: She wrote the recent book Wrong, How media, politics and
Speaker 6: identity drive our appetite for misinformation. Danna says, when you
Speaker 6: turn on a cable news and opinion channel or go
Speaker 6: to a news website, you're bringing along deep desires needs
Speaker 6: really that go well beyond wanting accurate information, your.
Speaker 4: Goal is not to be accurate, because your goal really
Speaker 4: is survival. And there are three areas that sort of
Speaker 4: speak to survival needs, that serve as sort of the
Speaker 4: underbelly of human survival. They all facilitate action, because in
Speaker 4: order to survive, you need to act in your own
Speaker 4: survival interests. So those three needs are comprehension, control, and community.
Speaker 6: As we go about our lives, we want to feel
Speaker 6: that we know so basically what the hell is going
Speaker 6: on in our world, and we want to feel some
Speaker 6: ability to control what happens to us. But Danna says,
Speaker 6: maybe even more important than comprehension and control is that
Speaker 6: third C word community.
Speaker 4: And this simply captures the notion that we are social
Speaker 4: animals who do not exist truly as individuals in a vacuum.
Speaker 4: We only exist embedded within a social context. And that
Speaker 4: has to do with how we were able to survive historically.
Speaker 4: Even here in the US. That notion, even of ardent individualism,
Speaker 4: is itself, believe it or not, a group norm. We
Speaker 4: are individualists because everyone around us also prizes that value
Speaker 4: of individualism, which I think is kind of hilariously ironic.
Speaker 6: So Jung says, as we take in the news, we
Speaker 6: do so consciously or not, as members of the social
Speaker 6: groups we identify with, and in a country that's bitterly
Speaker 6: divided politically, most Americans identify with a political team. We
Speaker 6: might as well be wearing our team's uniform as we
Speaker 6: go looking for news.
Speaker 4: That means that when we comprehend the world, we're going
Speaker 4: to comprehend the world the same way that our team does,
Speaker 4: and we're going to want to comprehend the world in
Speaker 4: ways that make our team look good.
Speaker 6: Dana is talking about general human tendencies in part, but
Speaker 6: it hasn't always been like this, She says, Historical trends
Speaker 6: in the US in politics and the media have helped
Speaker 6: to intensify our divisions. These changes have made Americans less
Speaker 6: open to information we don't like and more vulnerable to
Speaker 6: miss and disinformation. To start with, she points to the
Speaker 6: sorting of the political parties starting in the middle of
Speaker 6: the twentieth century.
Speaker 4: Up until the fifties and sixties, our two major political
Speaker 4: parties were actually quite mixed in terms of policy positions,
Speaker 4: in terms of the kinds of people who identified with each,
Speaker 4: in terms of where those people lived in terms of
Speaker 4: the religious identification of the people within the parties. And
Speaker 4: part of the reason that that was the case was
Speaker 4: because there was this great compromise that was made on
Speaker 4: the issue of race in the United States.
Speaker 6: That's a nice way of saying the two parties were
Speaker 6: pretty much in sync white supremacy wise.
Speaker 4: Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party had members,
Speaker 4: elite members within them who supported the idea of states rights,
Speaker 4: who supported the idea of the disempowerment of African American people.
Speaker 6: As millions of black people migrated out of the Jim
Speaker 6: Crow South, populating northern cities and turning into voters, that
Speaker 6: put pressure on the Democrats and gave them an opportunity.
Speaker 4: And we ended up with that sort of great racial
Speaker 4: realignment where the Democratic Party became the party of civil
Speaker 4: rights and the Republican Party became the party in opposition
Speaker 4: to that movement.
Speaker 6: Most black people moved from the GOP, the Party of Lincoln,
Speaker 6: to the Democrats. Most white Southerners and other conservative white people,
Speaker 6: many of whom had been Democrats, joined the Republicans. Other
Speaker 6: kinds of sorting followed. Evangelical Christians and people in rural
Speaker 6: places turned mostly Republican, while secular and city people grew
Speaker 6: more overwhelmingly.
Speaker 4: Democratic, such that the Republican Party of today is overwhelmingly white, rural, Christian,
Speaker 4: and culturally conservative, and the Democratic Party today is overwhelmingly
Speaker 4: racially and ethnically diverse, secular, acts, gnostic, urban, suburban, and
Speaker 4: culturally and ideologically liberal.
Speaker 6: Research has found that increased homogeneity within a political party
Speaker 6: serves to crank up the emotional temperature for those on
Speaker 6: that side.
Speaker 4: There is something primal in us that happens when we
Speaker 4: look like our team, we live like our team, we
Speaker 4: live in the same places as our team, we worship
Speaker 4: like our team. There's something really primal that ignites in
Speaker 4: us because we have such good group fit. That is
Speaker 4: what has happened in American politics. And it's happened in
Speaker 4: a way that is not symmetrical, because, as you may
Speaker 4: have noticed, as I described it, in the Republican Party,
Speaker 4: those identity categories are far more homogeneous than they are
Speaker 4: within the Democratic Party. And so the engine runs fast
Speaker 4: and furiously on the right in the US right.
Speaker 6: Now is the engine of visceral us against them sentiment.
Speaker 6: But that's not just a Republican thing. Political scientists have
Speaker 6: documented an increase in what they call affective polarization.
Speaker 4: And that is simply the extent to which regular people
Speaker 4: members of the public dislike members of the other political party.
Speaker 4: That does seem to be pretty equal across the parties.
Speaker 4: Democrats don't like Republicans, and Republicans don't like Democrats. It's
Speaker 4: not necessarily that we become more radical on our position
Speaker 4: on gun ConTroll or abortion. It's more that I just
Speaker 4: hate people who feel opposite me or which is interesting,
Speaker 4: so change.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, what Dana Gal is really saying is
Speaker 2: that news consumers in the US are less open minded
Speaker 2: than ever, less willing to be persuaded by information conflicts
Speaker 2: with what we already believe.
Speaker 6: Yes, now stir in the social media algorithms that feed
Speaker 6: us rage bait and in general are fragmented, often blatantly partisan,
Speaker 6: us against them media environment. I grabbed a couple clips.
Speaker 6: This is Sean Hannity of Fox News and Rachel Matdow
Speaker 6: of MS Now. Notice in each case, the talk about them,
Speaker 6: They the other side.
Speaker 13: They want you to feel pain, they want it.
Speaker 6: They want you to pay more at the pump, they
Speaker 6: want your energy bills to be hired.
Speaker 5: The chief threat among them now is not the rioters
Speaker 5: and the coops, but the slick political professionals who are
Speaker 5: turning their considerable talents to laundering violently revolutionary claims that
Speaker 5: America's elections aren't real.
Speaker 2: So when all the talk about so called political polarization
Speaker 2: in America, there is a tendency to think that the
Speaker 2: fragmenting of the media into a thousand sources all saying
Speaker 2: different things, that's the problem. And if we could just
Speaker 2: go back to a time when everyone watched Walter Cronkite
Speaker 2: or Peter Jennings, we'd come together again.
Speaker 3: As a nation.
Speaker 6: And I'm just going to guess, partly bring your tone
Speaker 6: of voice, but also knowing you that you're not really
Speaker 6: buying it. Professor Kumanika, for one thing, I know you
Speaker 6: well enough to know you don't believe there was once
Speaker 6: upon a time when the major media told the American
Speaker 6: people the unvarnished truth on all the important questions.
Speaker 2: Right when was the media telling people the truth about
Speaker 2: white supremacy and how pervasive it is, the truth about
Speaker 2: US history and how brutal it is, or the truth
Speaker 2: about US behavior around the world. Right in the way
Speaker 2: America's economic system works, why folks are struggling to get by,
Speaker 2: And also this idea that Americans used to agree on things,
Speaker 2: that we really ever had this consensus as a society. Nah,
Speaker 2: I mean that was more of a consensus maybe among
Speaker 2: white people, especially white men, middle class and above, who
Speaker 2: held all the power in the country.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But lots of other people who didn't fit that
Speaker 6: description and saw a very different reality were just left
Speaker 6: out of the public conversation for the most part.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if you kind of are sure you want
Speaker 2: some receipts on that, I encourage you to go check
Speaker 2: the other seasons of this podcast.
Speaker 6: But there are other reasons to doubt that somehow reversing
Speaker 6: the splintering of the media, if that were possible, would
Speaker 6: help Americans to find common ground on what our problems
Speaker 6: are and how to solve them. First of all, it
Speaker 6: seems a lot of us have gotten this somewhat mistaken
Speaker 6: idea about just how siloed the news media are. This
Speaker 6: whole idea of the echo chamber. Here's danigal Young again.
Speaker 4: By and large, political scientists and communications scholars have come
Speaker 4: away from the empirical evidence with the conclusion that the
Speaker 4: echo chamber is largely a myth in that people are
Speaker 4: not only seeing content that supports their side.
Speaker 2: So the usual idea of the echo chamber is that
Speaker 2: people on different sides of the political divide aren't even
Speaker 2: exposed to voices from the other side.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the idea that you only hear right wing voices
Speaker 6: on right wing media and likewise on the left.
Speaker 2: But Danagaile is saying, that's not how it works. If
Speaker 2: you watch ms now we used to be called MSNBC,
Speaker 2: you see a whole bunch of Donald Trump and his
Speaker 2: allies and what they have to say about things. And
Speaker 2: if you watch Fox News or look at his website,
Speaker 2: you'll see a ton of content about Democrats and the left.
Speaker 2: Like that's actually like the major thing that they're doing
Speaker 2: is getting people outraged about what the left is doing.
Speaker 6: So the question is not do opposing perspectives get covered,
Speaker 6: it's how are they presented. Here's what Danna said.
Speaker 4: You are seeing claims. They're being made by the other side,
Speaker 4: but they're often present to you, perhaps shared by someone
Speaker 4: who's on your side, right who says, look at how
Speaker 4: awful these people are. This is the kind of thing
Speaker 4: that they're saying over on that other network. Here is
Speaker 4: what they're saying, and it is a moral violation. It's
Speaker 4: a violation of our moral order.
Speaker 6: Dana brought up an example, remember when Katanji Brown Jackson
Speaker 6: was being confirmed for the Supreme Court in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 6: In your understanding, what does critical race theory mean?
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 9: Senator? My understanding is that, well, I remember Republican senators
Speaker 9: on the committee asked her a bunch of questions about
Speaker 9: her views on CRT, which was like the conservative rage
Speaker 9: issue at the time, and Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas,
Speaker 9: asked her about an anti racism book This suggested babies
Speaker 9: can be taught to be racist.
Speaker 4: Do you agree with this book that is being taught
Speaker 4: with kids that the babies are racist?
Speaker 2: So he had a black nominee for the court, and
Speaker 2: lots of the questions were about her views on race.
Speaker 6: To Danagal's point about the echo Chamber issue, MSNBC as
Speaker 6: it was called at the time, the heavily pro democratic,
Speaker 6: anti Republican cable channel, gave these exchanges a lot of attention.
Speaker 6: I mean, there's no question that Ted Cruz figured prominently
Speaker 6: on the so called you know, left leaning channel, along
Speaker 6: with analysis like this from a democratic political strategist.
Speaker 13: This is about her being a black woman, basically casting
Speaker 13: her as a radical, as a black radical who is
Speaker 13: out to get white people. I mean, quite frankly, it
Speaker 13: looked like I saw Ted Cruz commit a hate crime
Speaker 13: in that hearing.
Speaker 6: Gim Meanwhile, over on Fox News, Sean Hannity brought Cruise
Speaker 6: onto his show that evening.
Speaker 2: Ted Cruise was with a senator.
Speaker 6: And invited him to talk some more about his grilling
Speaker 6: of the judge.
Speaker 4: And when it came to critical race theory, she didn't
Speaker 4: want to answer the question.
Speaker 2: So it's an interesting clarification that Dana is making. Right.
Speaker 2: She's saying, no matter how much you're in your news bubble,
Speaker 2: you're still hearing voices and ideas from the other side,
Speaker 2: maybe a lot, but that doesn't really change the fact
Speaker 2: that people are getting wildly different views of the world
Speaker 2: if they're watching Fox News versus MS. Now, whether you
Speaker 2: call them echo chambers or not, really it just highlights
Speaker 2: how crucial framing and analysis are in presenting what's happening
Speaker 2: out there.
Speaker 6: There's another common idea that people are strongly influenced by
Speaker 6: the media they consume, especially if it's news that we
Speaker 6: think of as strongly biased. That whole My uncle Ned's
Speaker 6: right winger because he watches Fox News idea.
Speaker 2: But it's more complicated than that. Did Fox News turn
Speaker 2: your uncle into a right winger? Or did Uncle Ned
Speaker 2: turn the Fox because he already had right wing views?
Speaker 6: This whole discussion can almost make you wane if it
Speaker 6: even matters what the media reports.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean there's another reason to wonder about that.
Speaker 2: It has to do with our hobbled, corrupt system of government.
Speaker 2: There was a study in twenty fourteen by scholars at
Speaker 2: Princeton Northwestern.
Speaker 6: Twenty fourteen, so back when I think, well, let's say,
Speaker 6: when more Americans felt reasonably secure that the US had
Speaker 6: a functioning democracy.
Speaker 2: Right before the Trump administration launched this newest assault on
Speaker 2: democratic norms. It was before the Congress basically newted itself
Speaker 2: and let the president decide everything. But even then, this
Speaker 2: study found that there was almost no relationship between what
Speaker 2: American citizens wanted according to opinion polls, and the policies
Speaker 2: we get from our government. Large majorities favor higher taxes
Speaker 2: on rich people, more gun safety laws, stronger action on
Speaker 2: the climate crisis. And that's just listening a few things
Speaker 2: a year after year, our representative government doesn't deliver what
Speaker 2: the people want.
Speaker 6: We did a whole series season four, The Land That
Speaker 6: Never Has Been Yet, about the ways America's democratic system
Speaker 6: of government was designed from the start to be not
Speaker 6: too democratic and to stemy the will of the majority
Speaker 6: of the people.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not all media, but can't let the
Speaker 2: media off the hook. Journalism is a core mechanism of
Speaker 2: a functioning democracy, right. The real problems with the way
Speaker 2: our media system carries out this crucial role. Some of
Speaker 2: those problems are structural. We'll have a lot more to
Speaker 2: say about that change.
Speaker 6: When I told people we were working on a season
Speaker 6: on the news media and the country's information crisis, some
Speaker 6: people said, oh, so it's going to be about AI
Speaker 6: and how we can't trust what we see and hear anymore,
Speaker 6: you know, think AI photos and videos especially. Other people said, oh,
Speaker 6: so it'll be about the Trumpian attack on news companies
Speaker 6: in the First Amendment.
Speaker 2: And I mean, look, all that stuff is wild, no
Speaker 2: doubt about it. But at the same time, I don't
Speaker 2: think anybody thinks this all started with AI, right, I
Speaker 2: think it goes back a little further than that. So
Speaker 2: those things will definitely come up. We're going much deeper
Speaker 2: into the structures and forces that have shaped the American
Speaker 2: news media for a much longer.
Speaker 6: Time, and it can all seem pretty daunting. But I
Speaker 6: don't know about you. I'm not ready to throw up
Speaker 6: my hands and say we're doomed. The news is just
Speaker 6: a way to amuse ourselves, and it can never change
Speaker 6: anything because the system's rigged and anyway people are hopelessly
Speaker 6: dug in and won't listen to facts they don't like.
Speaker 6: There are so many examples where journalism has made a
Speaker 6: difference and is making a difference. Information comes out and
Speaker 6: shifts public opinion, leading to change that affects people's lives.
Speaker 2: Look, yo, let me tell you something. As somebody who
Speaker 2: literally like, this is what my degree, this is my job.
Speaker 2: Nobody gets mad or at journalism in the media in
Speaker 2: me right. But at the same time, most of what
Speaker 2: I know about the world comes from journalism, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean? When I see ice kidnap somebody, that's
Speaker 2: because a journalist reported on it. When I know that
Speaker 2: like it's about to snow, or that there was an earthquake,
Speaker 2: it's because you know, I didn't see it. Myself usually,
Speaker 2: and I think, as angry as we are, the end
Speaker 2: of the day is we have to have journalism because
Speaker 2: we have to know what's going on in the world
Speaker 2: just to live our everyday personal lives. If we're fired up,
Speaker 2: a person who's fired up about social justice or feels
Speaker 2: like something wrong, chances are everything that you know that's
Speaker 2: getting you angry is something you learned because of some
Speaker 2: kind of journalism or media. So I think we can
Speaker 2: be infuriated about it, but we actually have to solve
Speaker 2: this problem.
Speaker 6: Here's a taste of what's to come here in season.
Speaker 4: Eight with local county commission races.
Speaker 5: Here I tried like to dig in to find out
Speaker 5: where people stood, because I'm not going to vote if
Speaker 5: I can't get the information.
Speaker 6: Now, I recognize sadly that the worst and press corps
Speaker 6: is all too often the praetorian guard of the left.
Speaker 13: No wonder people hate the media depends what one means
Speaker 13: by left wing.
Speaker 6: You know, I mean, wait a minute.
Speaker 2: If you even address the issues of climate change and
Speaker 2: environmental destruction, that signifies a strong left leaning philosophy.
Speaker 13: One thing that can be heard for us to imagine
Speaker 13: is that a lot of news you would actually get
Speaker 13: in church.
Speaker 11: The early founders, they truly believe that democracy was impossible
Speaker 11: without a free press and a press that people could
Speaker 11: actually access.
Speaker 13: So today we rededicate a part of the airwaves which
Speaker 13: belong to all the people.
Speaker 8: When you're suddenly fighting with thirty channels instead of just
Speaker 8: two for eyeballs, you start to get the rise of
Speaker 8: political entertainment.
Speaker 6: You're doing theater when you should be doing debate, which
Speaker 6: would be great. No, it's not honest.
Speaker 4: The new report is raising alarms about the state of
Speaker 4: American democracy.
Speaker 2: I wrote a piece before the elections saying, if Trump wins,
Speaker 2: blamed the New York Times, and I meant it.
Speaker 6: And eventually we'll wrestle with what to do about it. All.
Speaker 6: The News was created and produced by me John Beewin,
Speaker 6: with chenjer Ei Kumanika and story editor Diane Hodson. Assistant
Speaker 6: producer Arlene a Revolo. Fact checking by Anna Pujoel Mazzini.
Speaker 6: Music by Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band, Michelle Osis,
Speaker 6: Alex Weston, James Nathan Jones, and Jason Hill. Music consulting
Speaker 6: by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music. You can find transcripts
Speaker 6: at our website Scene on Radio dot org. The show
Speaker 6: is distributed by our friends at PRX. Scene on Radio
Speaker 6: comes to you from the Keenan Institute for Ethics at
Speaker 6: Duke University