Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [61]
American Democracy, Mass Media, and the Politics of Language
Does contemporary media exclude “speaking truthfully,” parrhesiastically , in American politics?
The manipulation of language in political dialogue is an obvious obstacle to substantive criticism of political orthodoxy. Part of the power of Colbert’s style of political satire is contextual; it relies on the general dissatisfaction of voters with contemporary media and politics. The Colbert Report is modeled on the cable news show with disaffected “talking heads” slanting the news in a partisan direction. This kind of cynical dissatisfaction is expressed on cable news programs that engage their viewers with news “analysis” already constructed for partisan audiences. These pundits represent the worst excesses of partisanship, “framing” information in ways that reinforce such dissatisfaction and detract from informed political dialogue.
In journalism, this practice is called “slanting,” while in politics it’s called “spinning.” Framing, via slanting and spinning, is standard operating procedure in media presentations of information. And it severely inhibits critical and substantive analysis of the status quo. Since both media practitioners and politicians frame political issues in language that promotes affective, emotional, or otherwise irrational analysis for its audience, this tends to promote dissatisfaction with both media and American politics. The excessive reliance on framing, spinning, and slanting information on cable news networks and by politicians is the primary target of Colbert’s political satire.
This “politics of language” controls the outcome of communication between media, politicians, viewers, and voters. For example, media practitioners and politicians rely extensively on sound bites developed for popular consumption by political marketers using focus groups. Individuals participate in such focus groups with the good intentions of civic-minded voters, but the outcome of this market-driven political medium is the self-fulfilling prophecy of an impoverished political dialogue.
Both media practitioners and politicians engage in the manipulation of language in order to emphasize particular controversies that highlight strengths, downplay weaknesses, and castigate the opposition. Media-driven politics elicits information from viewers and voters alike, but closer analysis reveals that manipulation, distortion, and outright falsification actually describes the relationship between media and its representation of public sentiment. Voters often provide feedback to both media and politicians through focus groups that allow political marketers to develop a “language” that connects politicians with the interests and attitudes expressed by their constituents.
Political marketers create the language of politicians from the very words used by voters in these focus groups.120 Yet voters consistently complain that politicians cannot be trusted because they say only what they think will be popular with voters. They call politicians “flip-floppers” but themselves rely on the very same sound bites and slogans given to them by media practitioners and politicians. Either voters are “flip-floppers” and politicians merely reflect their inconsistencies, or politicians “flip-flop” because they want to engage different voters who want different things at different times, or even incompatible things at the same time! Either way, the relationship between media practices and American democracy suffers from inconsistency, incoherence, and intellectual schizophrenia.
Media Culpa
Substantive criticism of political orthodoxy