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:
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?
