|
|
|||||
Good News: The Daily Me is a stop on the way to richer discussionRecent reports about a preference for reading news and opinion pieces from sources we agree with has raised alarms, including a brief and informative posting by Joshua-Michéle Ross on this Radar blog site. Surveys highlight an undeniable trend: as weblogs continue to post alternatives to the mainstream media and people's viewing habits are shaped more and more by invitations from friends ("gotta check out this video!"), we are cocooning ourselves in worlds of information that reinforce our existing prejudices. Our personal choice to exercise the prior restraint of free speech in news reading has been dubbed the "Daily Me." I'll plead guilty right away. Sometimes I happen upon a thoughtful article by a conservative commentator that rips away the progressive lenses through which I read up on the issues and (perhaps) jump to conclusions. At such times I think--gee, I should get more of this diet. But usually I let Eric Alterman read and summarize the right-wing press for me. So I agree we have a problem, but I don't lament the end of the "shared cultural literacy" or "common point of reference" that we've lost. I wonder what the commentators who utter such complaints want us to return to. Are they nostalgic for the years during which Americans got all their news from three TV networks, when papers and magazines across the country slavishly took their cues from Time Magazine and the New York Times (as Noam Chomsky would demonstrate) concerning what news was fit to print? The government and other established forces managed to cover up enormous crimes in those years, such as the transfer of Nazi leaders to South American by the Office of Strategic Services and its successor, the CIA, to carry out torture and repression. This particular outrage was well-known on the left but completely blacked out in the mainstream press, until John Kerry lifted the veil a bit in the 1980s with his hearings on the drug-contra connection. (And even progressives trailed along with the fiction during the George W. Bush years that his staff introduced torture into American policy. It's time for a revival of Costa Gavras's 1973 film State of Siege.) I find much to like in the current environment, where investigations and proposals on the left, right, and everywhere in between are easy to find. But putting on blinders does create a breeding ground for irresponsible reporting and junk science, which are reaching epidemic proportions. That's why we need to hoist ourselves out of our comfortable milieux. Bias is nothing new. Religious and political establishments have been burning books (and their authors) ever since written language was invented. Most of our knowledge about alternative movements (such as heterodox Christian sects) comes from scholars' historical analysis of the vituperative screeds written by the orthodox. Critics of the current situation don't realize how much we have moved from the orthodox to the orthogonal. We live in different worlds and even speak different languages. The tower of axioms, historical citations, and interpretations built up on each side--the narrative, as social scientists like to call it--has become so powerful that we can't productively read another side's viewpoints because we interpret the language and events through our existing prisms. In the US, for instance, thinkers on right and left hail the country's founders, but what we take from their writings and behavior is completely different. Madison, Paine, Jefferson, and others provide plenty of grist for both the current left wing and current right wing. So just following the writings of people with whom you disagree, while a good start, is not enough. To really listen requires a new attitude. I'm hopeful that this will come about. It's not because we'll all put on humble sackcloth and love our enemies as ourselves. It's because we'll be forced to listen as our opponents exert their power. In the woefully divided Senate, Republicans have held up laws, administrative staffing, and judicial posts by a variety of tactics. The filibuster is not the most effective tool, although it is the best-known; usually obstructionists rely on novel exploitations of committee rules. This exercise of power to stop government from functioning when they lack the votes to get what they want is a way of forcing their views on the table. At any particular point one can attribute a particular Congressman's action to a lobbyist's donation, partisan angling, or political deal-making, but a prolonged and widespread campaign of such tactics must reflect a point of view that has some following in the country. Whereas Congressmen can sabotage a majority agenda through procedural subtleties, less powerful people do it by blocking a door, throwing a stone, or even strapping on a suicide belt. The lead actors can't necessarily be dissuaded from obstructing doorways or judicial appointments. But we have to understand them and the people whose causes they claim to represent in order to find a way out of the jam. All sides of an issue use media to recruit to their cause, so they must at some point reveal their logic and subject it to debate. Everyone is vulnerable to soft power at the source. But as I pointed out, it's not enough to hammer on the facts from your point of view, because the entire way you view the language and the context is anathema to your opponents. To change their minds or undercut support among their base, you have to mentally enter their world. In another article I've suggested one technical system that might help. The necessities of power, then, rather than the weak urges of good will, eventually will get us to listen to each other. And having all the materials at our fingertips will help. Too much news is good news.
|
|||||
© 2012, O'Reilly Media, Inc. (707) 827-7019(800) 889-8969 All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing on oreilly.com are the property of their respective owners. |
|||||
Comments: 1
Bill [ 2 December 2009 06:00 PM]
This is the type of thoughtful post on broad issues that keeps me coming back to O'Reilly Radar despite not understanding much of what it is about at times.