NOBODY in the media likes to say it — insulting your audience is usually not good for building circulation — but one of the major underlying problems of today’s politics is that growing numbers of the electorate have closed minds. Minds that are shut down tight, and with ears open only to hearing those who sound just like them.
In a nation built upon debate and discourse — and compromise — for so many to have become so rigid in their beliefs, so unwilling to even admit there is “another side” to anything, helps explain why the currently visible gridlock between the two major political parties may defy any attempts to break it with the power of reason.
That’s the actual message in a new study from the University of Georgia, and it means that democracy is heading for some real trouble — probably already there, for that matter.
Barry Hollander, an associate professor at UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, analyzed five national telephone surveys conducted from 1998 to 2006 by the Pew Center for the People and the Press. The trend is marked, disturbing and explains an awful lot about the ascendancy of certain media outlets.
THE STUDY focused on what sort of “news” television viewers sought out but the finding probably applies to print and radio choices as well. If you favor McCain/Clinton/Obama and see a headline reading “McCain/Clinton/Obama a total idiot” do you read it ... or skip it?
The fact is, McCain/Clinton/Obama may indeed be a total idiot on the topic discussed but if you believe your favorite is the greatest thing since sliced bread, you’re not going to even look at facts to the contrary. Not everyone is like that (thank goodness!) but apparently growing numbers are.
The study concentrated on Fox News, which has the reputation of having a distinct right- wing bias, and CNN, regularly criticized (often by Fox viewers) for having a liberal bias. It found that in 1998 some 18 percent of Democrats and 14 percent of Republicans watched Fox News regularly while in that year CNN’s viewers identified themselves as 27 percent Republican and 25 percent Democrat.
By 2006 — a pretty short span but tracking the absolute rigor mortis that has set in regarding national politics — some 36 percent of Republicans watched Fox regularly while the number of Democrats had fallen to 19 percent. Over at CNN, the GOP-aligned viewers had fallen to 19 percent while those of Democrats had edged up to 29 percent.
“REPUBLICANS have dramatically dropped news sources that they perceive as being biased against their position,” said Hollander while noting something even scarier to those who put hope for solutions on a battle of ideas and not political parties. He found the portion of the audience not locked into political partisanship — probably the majority — was now watching less news than ever. Perhaps this is because they have less and less trust in the impartiality of what they see, hear, read?
And, he added, the increased partisanship of remaining news audiences thus encourages networks to cater to political preferences, in turn speeding up the trend toward a red/blue division ... and providing those left paying attention more reinforcement of prejudices and less challenge to their beliefs.
The study also noted that persons who are not regular consumers of news — and this new research indicates more of those may be being “turned off” to keeping current — are also less likely to vote. Hence, those really interested in going to the polls are increasingly “partisans” with rather closed minds. That may help explain the recent near 50/50 split across the country in presidential elections no matter what’s actually been happening.
CERTAINLY THIS trend helps to explain the reactions drawn by the dwindling number of media outlets, including our own, that insist on presenting “both sides” of issues and whose stated own opinions are, if not always “middle of the road,” certainly unpredictable or even perplexing to those who have already made up their minds about everything — that’s it, the end, not going to listen to you anymore.
Those who read our letters column regularly will see us alternatively accused of being Neanderthal conservatives or flaming liberals — not because of our own opinions but because the newspaper actually allows thoughts from all political spectrums to appear.
This is a saddening trend, though hardly novel. In the early days of this country (there being no electronic media) nearly all newspapers were vehemently partisan and sought only an audience of like minds. Of course, there were often several competing newspapers in larger towns then (yes, including Rome) and not the one now left standing in most places and trying to serve all citizens equally and fairly.
TV and radio, it should be noted, still have to find ways to carve out a viable segment of the total audience while being safe in ignoring many or even most members of “all.” For them, “the town square” is the whole country.
ADD IN “SPIN,” which amounts to lying by leaving out pertinent countervailing facts, and the current gridlock becomes easier to understand. The result, of course, is “preaching to the choir” — futile in that it converts nobody and leaves the status quo permanent.
The “cure” is the same as it always has been (and perhaps involves spending more time reading this newspaper and similar). It is having a mind at least a little bit open, the ability to use common sense and reason, and, most of all, developing individual opinions and positions instead of trotting along in the middle of some herd.
Perhaps we are preaching to our own choir here — after all, most who read this space tend not to be of the closed mind variety — but try it. You may like it.
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