The Myth of the Mainstream Media

          I am old enough to remember when the term “mainstream media” actually had semantic value. When I was growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, we had four TV stations (ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS) and three national news magazines (Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report). Then we had the Tulsa World and the Tulsa Tribune. And that was about it unless you took the Wall Street Journal. If these news sources tilted to the left (and, to be fair, all but the Wall Street Journal did tilt to the left), one could probably make the argument that something like a “liberal media” was influencing the way that people saw the world.
          But that world is gone forever. By the early 1990—when Internet was still mainly computer geeks talking about Star Trek and trading dirty pictures—talk radio and cable news (both of which tilted, or more, to the right) already had as many viewers/listeners as the so-called major news sources. Even during the First Gulf War it was difficult to speak of any kind of monolithic “mainstream media.” Such a media existed back then, of course, but other news sources were plentiful and easy to find. But look at what has happened since then:

          Saying the news is controlled by a “liberal elite” in 2012 makes as much sense as saying that the world economy is controlled by a cabal of Jewish bankers.  The three formerly major networks account for a vanishingly small percentage of the news that people actually watch. The right-leaning Fox has twice as many viewers as CNN and MSNBC combined, and more people listen to Rush Limbaugh every day than watch any major news network at all. And in 2011, for the first time in history, more people got their news from the Internet than from printed news papers.
          What this produces is what journalists often call the “echo chamber effect.”  Americans now have access to so many TV channels, web pages, blogs, radio programs, and books publishers that we don’t have to spend any time at all listening to (or reading) opinions other than our own. When we all watched the same three news shows (well, four if you count The McNeill-Lehrer News Hour, but, really, who ever watched that), we all had different opinions, but we participated in more or less the same reality. That is no longer the case. Somebody who listens to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck every day and watches nothing but Fox News does not participate in the same reality as someone who does nothing all day but read The Huffington Post and live-stream clips from The Daily Show.
          And the picture is becoming even more complicated with the rise of social media. Many people today (and I admit I am one) get most of their news from things that their friends link to on Facebook and Twitter. This has the potential to amplify the echo chamber, as most people have a self-selected group of friends who think the same way that they do. Regrettably, it is now possible to spend all of your waking hours reading about current events without ever being exposed to any views that you do not already hold. We need look no farther than this to understand the deep divisions that now paralyze our nation.
          Despite all of this, however, candidates still parade around the country inveighing against “the liberal elite” and “the mainstream media.” This is just a confirmation bias looking for a place to be confirmed. One will always be able to find thousands of examples of “liberal agendas” in the media. And conservative agendas, and moderate agendas, and, for that matter, Zoroastrian Elvis Fan agendas. But these examples do not go together to form a media conspiracy. Sure the New York Times still tilts a bit to the left. But who reads it? Rush Limbaugh has the highest radio program in the country, Fox News has the highest ratings on cable, and Mark Levin’s most recent book debuted at #1.What's a guy gotta do to be "mainstream" in this joint anyway? 

Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Florida

“If Trayvon was packing something heavier than skittles this world might be shorter one idiot rather  than shorter a young man with promise.”
 —Recent Facebook post discussing the murder of Trayvon Martin 

               For Thomas Hobbes, civil society was pretty much a no-brainer. However bad it might get (and Hobbes lived through some pretty bad times), it was better than the alternative, which was a worldwide and eternal version of The Hunger Games called "the state of nature." In this state, the only law that applies is brute force. Whoever can take stuff gets to keep it until someone else takes it. In the state of nature, Hobbes famously opined, the life of man (and woman) is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”         

          Fast forward from the English Revolution to February 2012, when Trayvon Martin, a young African-American man, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain with a long history of harassing people on the street. He (Zimmerman) was told by police operators not to pursue Martin, yet he did so anyway, leading to a confrontation during which Martin lost his life. Three weeks later, Zimmerman remains free, even though he admits to killing an unarmed seventeen-year-old boy, because, police say, they cannot dispute his narrative of self-defense.

          I will admit that my outrage at this event is coming late in the game. When I first heard of the incident, I was deeply saddened to hear of a young life cut short by a senseless, tragic act of violence. But I knew (or at least I thought I knew) that the man who did this would be punished. Just a few days ago, my wife and I were discussing the killing and I told her that we live in a civilized society governed by the rule of law, not in a failed state where people with guns can do whatever they want. Of course Zimmerman would be arrested and tried, I said. We haven’t gone so far down the path of gun-worship that we would stand by and allow a child to be gunned down in his own neighborhood without any consequences.

          Except that, apparently, we have. At least in Florida, and other states with “Stand-Your-Ground” legislation that makes it very difficult to prosecute anybody who claims to have been afraid. Up until now, the police have not even tried.

          Not getting arrested because of a “Stand-Your-Ground” law is a very different thing than claiming self-defense at a trial. Self-protection is a perfectly legitimate defense, and it can even be applied to mistaken situations in which somebody incorrectly believes that he or she is in danger. But it has always been an affirmative defense--one that comes with a burden of proof on the part of the one claiming it. What the Florida law appears to do (at least as it is being interpreted by the police in this case) is shift the burden of proof to the prosecution. If someone claims self-defense, then the state has to prove that the person was not acting out of a fear for his or her life. Such a shift is inconsistent with the rules of both law and logic, as it requires a dead person to prove a negative. 

         As the left becomes angrier and angrier about this miscarriage of justice, the right has become quieter and quieter, which actually surprises me quite a bit. This would be a perfect opportunity for Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin to demonstrate their commitment to law and order. This would also be a fine time for the NRA to focus on the responsibility of gun ownership—to hammer home the notion that the right to bear arms conveys responsibilities that, if ignored, have consequences. I can’t even see a down side to conservatives getting behind this issue and going on record opposing the  murder of unarmed boys.

          Though I have seen very few official statements from conservatives about the Trayvon Martin incident, I have run into a distressingly large number of informal comments on blogs and social networking sites like the one that I opened with. This incident proves (say the comments) that more people should have guns. If only Trayvon had been armed, he would have been able to stand up for himself. If only all decent, law-abiding citizens carried their own weapons, then things like this wouldn’t happen.

          This reasoning leads us directly back to the Hobbesian state of nature. If everybody has to walk around carrying their own weapon, and shooting before being shot, then there is no point in having a government, for we do not live under the rule of law. If Florida cannot find a way to at least bring Mr. Zimmerman to trial (where he would be free to offer his self-defense justification to the jury) then they do not deserve to be a state, having failed in the most fundamental responsibility of the social contract.


PS.

I have signed very few petitions in my life, but I signed this one. If you agree with anything I have said in this post, please sign it too:

http://signon.org/sign/attorney-general-holder-1.fb1?source=s.fb&r_by=3410758