In his quest to “save American democracy” last year, Brian Stelter said this:
“I think, big picture here is the concerning trend line here. People are going more and more into their own echo chambers, more into their own bubbles, especially Trump voters.
It is a threat to democracy that these people are in echo chambers and they’re getting fed a diet of lies essentially.”
Brian Stelter wants you to believe that Trump voters live “in their own bubbles,” while the sinking ship called CNN is an “all inclusive” resort where people of all political persuasions come in search for “the truth.”
If you have not been in a coma for the last 5 years, you know that story is as solid as Chris Cuomo – Don Lemon friendship. US legacy media is less truthful and objective in their news coverage than Soviet media ever was. There is not one conservative (or honest) journalist currently working for CNN, Washington Post, or The New York Times – and MSNBC does not employ anybody who is not a certifiable lunatic. CNN’s “daily expert panels” are just a dozen out-of-tune instruments contributing to the same sickening far left cacophony. NYT fired their own editor after he so much as dared to expose their readers to a difference of opinion. Here, here, and here are just a few illustrations of how the legacy media expects total conformity of thought.
Legacy media is an outreach arm of the Democrat Party, and The Democrat Party does not tolerate any dissent. You can be a devout liberal, but the minute you step outside the official party line, you will be eaten by your own pack of hyenas – that fact came as a surprise to Jon Stewart, but nobody else living on Earth. It is as they said in Soviet prisons: “any step outside the line is treated as an escape.”
But I will commit a sin by, for once, agreeing with Brian Stelter’s point: conservative media have become an echo chamber as well.
Fox News was created in response to the legacy media becoming more and more ideologically left leaning. Traditional Americans needed an outlet that covered the news objectively, from different perspectives, and did not impose a political ideology. Initially, Fox served these people well.
While mostly targeting traditional Americans, Fox appealed to all reasonable people who were not blinded by ideology. People who looked for straight news without an opinion could tune in to Fox Report. O’Reilly Factor vigorously challenged the offenders of both parties. Hannity and Colmes was a duel of completely opposite ideological viewpoints. On the Record was home to the most insightful political commentators who often disagreed on many issues. Fox programming was honest, informative, and thought provoking.
Today, Fox has become just another agenda driven network. To their credit, Fox greatly differs from its liberal counterparts in two ways. First, Fox’s sources are largely reliable, and they do not push deliberate falsehoods. Second, deviation of opinion between the shows is allowed. For example, invasion of Ukraine is covered by Tucker Carlson very differently than it is by Sean Hannity and others. However, robust debate that used to make Fox so engaging is no longer there.
Gone are the genuine, intelligent, good-natured liberals who were sincere in their beliefs, and even made a persuasive argument or two. Today’s liberal pundits are all talking tape recorders spewing Democrat talking points they receive from their party overlords. They are not honest commentators – they are Fox’s “punching bags,” just like the least articulate and principled Republican pundits serve as punching bags on the legacy media panels. Their diatribes are predictable, boring, and at many times, downright insulting to any thinking human. Fox programming is mostly rehashing the failures of Democrat party and ridiculing the demise of the liberal media outlets. If you miss a show, there is another one coming next hour that will say exactly the same thing.
For politically engaged Americans (you and I fall into that category) who enjoy spirited opinions of like-minded people, there are plenty of outlets with a commentary that suits your taste. PJ Media, American Thinker, Right Wire Report, and our own Liberty Loft, offer entertaining and thoughtful conservative perspective, while the woke favorites such as The Salon and The Huffington Post offer plenty of liberal blather, if that’s your kind of thing.
But most Americans are non-ideological. They don’t want long political rants or “conspiracy theories” from either side. The only thing they need after a hard day of work is to turn on the news for 15 minutes and see which country Putin decided to invade today.
This is where the big media companies such as CNN and Fox come in. Their purpose is mostly to provide the news – not to advance an ideology. There is nothing wrong with an expert providing context to the subject covered, or an opinion show or two late at night. But the bulk of the programming should be objective news coverage. That does not exist today, and that is a terrible disservice to Americans.
The large news networks completely abdicated their role of objective arbiters. It is not that liberals and conservatives retreated into “their own bubbles,” as ever “introspective” Stelter lamented. It is that the media made it impossible to live “outside” the bubble. The only way to escape “the bubble” is to turn the media off – and thankfully, many Americans are doing just that.
The people who still follow the media are living in two different realities. The outlet you are watching is likely “blacking out” any reportage (like this, this, and this) that doesn’t fit its political agenda. Because people watching different news outlets see different set of facts, it is harder for them to understand each other than two groups of people speaking different languages.
Despite what Brian Stelter thinks, “political bubbles” are not a danger to Democracy. While we have functioning free press, and while people have access to different opinions, wherever they may get them, Democracy is not in trouble. However, political strife the media creates is a danger to our own personal wellbeing. Lifelong friendships are ruined over politics. Family dinners and social gatherings, instead of being happy occasions, became a stressful, and often dreaded, ordeal. Meanwhile, the big news networks are advancing an ideology and making profit of our personal misery.
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