That Used to Be Us_ How America Fell Behind in thted and How We Can Come Back - Friedman, Thomas L. & Mandelbaum, Michael [147]
This new-media environment reinforces hyper-partisanship in Washington, because the new media generally aim at smaller audiences than the old. Talk radio and cable television are not trying to attract people from different points on the political spectrum, as the three networks and the major newspapers did when they had a virtual monopoly on news dissemination. Instead, they target one end or the other of that spectrum by offering programming that reinforces the opinions that viewers or listeners already hold. This so-called “narrowcasting” is the secret of Rush Limbaugh’s success, and of the success of Fox News and MSNBC as well. Conservative programs on talk radio and cable television have bigger audiences than liberal ones—perhaps because, as surveys show, there are more self-identified conservatives than liberals, perhaps because, unlike liberals, conservatives feel that the mainstream media does not serve them properly. Limbaugh surely entertains his listeners, but that contributes to the problem.
The new media seek to capture audiences by presenting news as entertainment and politics as sports—a kind of “PSPN” alongside ESPN. The USA Network has a slogan that refers to the offbeat stars of its comedies and dramas: “Characters welcome.” That could be the slogan of cable news and talk radio as well. They offer the public outsize, quirky, passionate, controversial personalities. Not for them the dry, on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other style of discourse. Unfortunately for the country, such a measured, dispassionate, sometimes even boring approach is the appropriate one for the complicated issues of public policy that will determine the American future. Aiming as they do to entertain, the new media thrive on conflict. Indeed, the programs they present often bear more than a passing resemblance to professional wrestling, with stock heroes and villains, exaggerated feuds, and, since the programs are explicitly either liberal or conservative, a predetermined outcome. At times, all that’s missing are the Tarzan outfits and fake body slams.
This is not a useful model for public debate on the serious issues the country now faces. As Jon Stewart put it in an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC (November 11, 2010): “The problem with the twenty-four-hour news cycle is it’s built for a particular thing—9/11. Other than that, there really isn’t twenty-four hours of stuff to talk about in the same way. The problem is, how do you keep people watching it? O.J.’s not going to kill someone every day. So that’s gone. So what do you have to do? You have to elevate the passion of everything else that happens that might even be somewhat mundane—and elevate it to the extent that this is breaking news … You begin to lose any meaning of what breaking news means.”
Cable news does not exist in order to bridge the partisan divide but rather to thrive on it, feed it, and inflame it. Those who watch cable news shows and listen to talk radio learn that the people on the other side of that divide are foolish, hypocritical, and sometimes wicked—not that the problems the country faces are complicated, difficult, and urgent.
The new-media outlets have relatively small audiences. In 2010, prime-time programs on Fox averaged about two million viewers (although some programs had as many as three million), and the numbers for MSNBC and CNN were even smaller: 764,000 and 591,000, respectively. Most blogs and websites attract a trickle of visitors at best. Yet they help to shape our public life because they matter a great deal to our public officials.
In sports, when a player is frustrated, distracted, and confused by an opponent to the point that he performs badly, the opponent is said to be “in his head.” Similarly, the new media are “in the heads” of American politicians. All the elected officials with whom we spoke for this