This is one of the best articles and most honest assessments of the cultish and divisive behavior being hustled by cable news propaganda and political parties I've ever seen.
You're either all-in on one side or the other, with absolutely no unbiased objectivity, or you're labeled a "bothsider." I'd rather weigh the merits of each issue and person independently than blindly and mindlessly follow a "side." On some topics, I lean towards a liberal or conservative solution and on others, I come up with novel ideas or a mix of both. But always of a mindset that the fix work towards the greatest good for the most people. At least I'm not an insecure bobblehead looking for validation and acceptance from an angry hoard.
You're either all-in on one side or the other, with absolutely no unbiased objectivity, or you're labeled a "bothsider." I'd rather weigh the merits of each issue and person independently than blindly and mindlessly follow a "side." On some topics, I lean towards a liberal or conservative solution and on others, I come up with novel ideas or a mix of both. But always of a mindset that the fix work towards the greatest good for the most people. At least I'm not an insecure bobblehead looking for validation and acceptance from an angry hoard.
Every day when I wake up, I turn on cable TV news to see what I missed while I was sleeping. I stopped expecting anything that even vaguely resembles an honest, down-the-middle newscast a long time ago. Biased journalism is not exactly something new. But what I’m getting now on a seemingly endless loop is something new, I think — or, at least, something different.
What I’m witnessing now, each morning, is America’s divisive culture war playing out on television. So even before breakfast, we’re being fed a steady diet of information that divides us, that tries to convince us that “the other side” is not simply wrong but is on a mission to destroy America. What a lovely way to start the day, right?
On Fox, we get the same culture war stories every day — stories about the mess on our southern border, about mask mandates, about parents upset with what their kids are being taught in public schools. They’re all legitimate stories, but it’s as if nothing else is going on in the world.
On CNN, they’re still obsessed with Donald Trump. Tune in any morning — or for that matter, almost any time during the day or night — and you’ll get a lot about Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, which CNN anchors routinely call an “insurrection.”
On Fox, mask mandates are bad, a threat to personal freedoms. On CNN, mask mandates are good, they save lives. On Fox, you get the impression that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a disaster. On CNN, he’s a national treasure. On Fox, you’ll see dramatic, newsworthy video of massive caravans moving north from Central America to the United States. This is not a story in which CNN is especially interested. No one tunes into Fox News to hear what a great job President Biden is doing, and no one tunes in to CNN to hear what a lousy job he’s doing — or that Donald Trump wasn’t responsible for the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The fact is that cable news — because the line between news and opinion is blurry, at best — has become one of the most divisive institutions in all of America.
A recent poll conducted by the University of Virginia’s (nonpartisan) Center for Politics found that roughly 52 percent of Americans who voted for Trump either “somewhat agree” or “strongly agree” that it’s time to divide America into two separate countries, with either red states or blue states seceding from the union.
Fewer Democrats who voted for Joe Biden agree, but still a large number — 42 percent — want the same thing: the breakup of the United States of America along ideological lines. It would be unfair to lay all the blame on cable news for what we’ve become: the Divided States of America. But it would be unrealistic to believe that cable news bears no responsibility for the deep divisions in our country.
Cable news didn’t create those divisions, but cable news’s relentless repetition of the same hot-button culture war issues has made the divisions worse. And the more cable news panders to its audience, the more the “news” people throw red meat to their viewers, the more they rile them up and entice them to come back for more — the more divided we become.
The culture war that tears the two sides apart may not be good for America, but it’s good for the cable news business. There’s lots of money, after all, in turning Americans against each other.
On the front lines of America’s culture wars: Cable news
Cable TV news, with its blurred line between news and opinion, has become one of America’s most divisive institutions.
thehill.com