America’s Balkanization by the Media

America’s Balkanization by the Media

By Frandley Denis Julien

In his now famous address given at the Sorbonne University in 1882, the great French philosopher Ernest Renan defined one of the main attributes of a nation as the “present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form”. The United-States has experienced its share of sad moments throughout its history, from slavery to the civil war, to segregation, to McCarthyism. However, the greatness of this country has always stemmed from its peculiar ability to come out of those predicaments stronger than when it entered them. Most Americans expected last year’s election of the first Black President to be contemporary to the inauguration of a new era, one marked by better race relations, and more importantly, a shared vista on the future that would allow the greatest country on Earth to become even greater by reducing the asymmetries that get in the way of a better sharing of the national pie. However, the enthusiasm was short-lived, since the political debate today is closer to a cacophony than it is to a pondered national dialogue where disagreements agreeably expressed would produce a consensual vision. This paper will address the responsibility of the mainstream media in leading astray what was supposed to be an enjoyable national debate.

The mainstream media has progressively sacrificed the integrity of news and information on the altar of the promotion of its anchors. One who follows the news cannot miss the fact that our television and radio stations broadcast more promotional spots designed to sell their hosts to the public, than they do to promote the accuracy of their news. The underlying reason behind that switch is the fact that they bring us more opinion than news and information; it is therefore critical to them that we trust the anchors whose opinions we are expected to accept, even when they are in disharmony with our own. That shift from news to opinion has even revolutionized channels like Headline News which initially prided itself in broadcasting “‘round-the-clock news”. Today, that channel has an impressive line-up of anchors, from Nancy GraceNancy Grace who diligently bestows her guilty verdicts on the public square like in the good old-time, before the court system has a chance to hear the cases, to the colorful Lou DobbsLou Dobbs whose tunnel vision is confined to the disadvantages of immigration, to the far-left Joy Behar. As a result, instead of broadcasting news 24/7 like it would do it up until a recent past, Headline News is bombarding us with the opinion of its hosts. The other stations do exactly the same thing. They recruit a small group of pundits who clash every night in what is a show of mastery of the techniques of rhetorical deception, since the positions of the pundits can be predicted on every single topic before they even start to speak. That practice borders arrogance, when after a major event—a presidential address for example—the pundits spend hours explaining to the public what the President had just said in plain English. This new approach by the media comes with serious risks. Recently, CNN’s Campbell BrownCampbell Brown was citing a new poll according to which most Americans distrust the media, which is understandable because more and more people are becoming aware of the fact that opinion is eclipsing news and information.

The American society is being balkanized by the media, according to a model similar to religious affiliations. In today’s America, very few media outlets strive to be objective. One will always be amazed to see how the same event is differently reported by Fox News and MSNBC. While Fox News prides itself in tilting rightward every piece of news, going as far as having its host lie blatantly every night, MSNBC does exactly the same thing on the left. All this would have been laughable if such stations did not have so strong a following that every single “truth” they utter is echoed by the viewership with blind allegiance. Unfortunately for the country, those two Television stations have reached a religious-like status. In stark contrast to the past, when people used to watch the news to get informed, now we choose our media outlets according to the same thought process presiding over our choice of a church to attend the Sunday service: we choose what we want to hear, and decide what channel to watch accordingly. With that unfortunate faithfulness to the media outlets comes an understandable emotional investment. Those who subscribe to that tendency have relinquished their ability to think by themselves, and delegated said ability to the media. The latter, conscious of its newly acquired power, intends to maximize it. That is why most conservatives haven’t read Obama’s healthcare proposal, since Sean HannitySean Hannity and Rush LimbaughRush Limbaugh have already leafed through it for them. They went on and organized protests again points that exist only in Hannity and Limbaugh’s version of the proposal. Liberals did exactly the same thing during the Bush administration: they relied on Keith Olberman’s tirades to assess Bush’s performance on every single issue; since Bush was named the “worst person in the world” on a regular basis, none of his actions could have been positive, even those that Obama decides to maintain today. What signal was America sending to Al-Qaeda and Muslim fundamentalists, when a major news outlet was naming the country’s president the worst person in the world? Haven’t those excessive behaviors opened the door to the vicious attacks president Obama is currently sustaining when he is being likened to Hitler? Haven’t we entered a vicious circle of political vendettas that are tearing apart the nation?

The press has replaced consistency and ethics by sensationalism, shallowness and entertainment. Following the sad murder of Yale graduate student Annie Le and the arrest of Raymond Clark, an edition of Larry KingLarry King with Dr. Phil sitting in for Larry was entitled: “Inside The Mind of A Killer”. Before he could even enter a plea, Dr. Phil had condemned Clark and promised his viewers a trip inside his mind. At the end of the show, the viewership knew nothing more about Clark than Dr. Phil’s and his guests’ speculations. During a previous edition of the same show, the guest, Natalie Cole, publicly reproached to Larry King, the exaggeration of her kidney disease in the announcement of the show, referred to as a near-death situation, in order to boost ratings. As a result of this deliberate penchant from the media to legitimate sensationalism, it is progressively losing its credibility, which is very unfortunate, given the amount of positive work a trusted media could do in an era marked by its ubiquity. The shallowness manifests itself through a group of convenient guests regularly invited by hosts like O’Reilly and Hannity; those pundits’ job is to agree with the main arguments of the host, while blanketing his exaggerations with their supposed expertise; In return, they can be invited each time they are promoting their “books”. A gentleman like Rush Limbaugh illustrates very well the entertainment aspect of the tragedy. Having no filter between his brain and his mouth, he thrives in controversy. However, he has reached such a level of leadership among hardcore conservatives that he has had high ranking Republican officials apologize to him publicly, on his show, for having hurt his feelings. A good observer will remark that Mr. Limbaugh has hurt his party more often than he has helped it in recent years, in his constant quest to boost his ratings through controversy. Drunken by his overwhelming power, Mr. Limbaugh has lost sight of the interests of his party trumped by his insatiable need for overexposure and its corresponding immediate financial gratification.

In sum, in this era where the media is ubiquitous, one would expect Americans to be better informed than ever. That’s not evident. The rumors affecting Obama’s healthcare proposal prove the opposite; never in the history of this country has a proposal been so available, yet most conservatives rely on Limbaugh’s distorted reading of it to make up their mind. By abusing the first amendment and failing to practice self-censorship for the sake of ratings, the media is dividing this country. After the demonization of Bush, now it’s Obama’s turn to be painted as a socialist by people who would greatly benefit from his policies, had they taken the time to read them by themselves, instead of reading them through a manipulative third party. When this basic sacrifice, namely the wisdom to hear the argument of the opposing party with an open mind, is missing, one cannot realistically expect our town hall meetings to be anything more than occasions to nurture and express unjustified hatred nourished by ignorance. And Renan’s desire to live together has no point, if we don’t find a common ground beyond which our differences vanish to allow the accomplishment of the E Pluribus Unum ornamenting our coins.