And a story about the Broadway play Good Night, and Good Luck was airing. The show stars George Clooney, and is about Edward R. Murrow and his fight against McCarthyism. During the segment on 60 Minutes, Clooney is recorded telling the cast, "When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate has to succeed.”
The Broadway show is based on a movie of the same name which was released in 2005. It is a very timely look at the current situation in our country. Like McCarthy, Trump and his cronies are using fear and intimidation to try to force the entire country to kowtow to their ideals. And like McCarthy, it is all based on a foundation of lies which is being swallowed whole by a large portion of the lesser educated and gullible members of our population.
Thomas Carlyle described in 1841 the power of the press as “the fourth estate.” He further stated, “There were three estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact.” Carlyle elaborated, “Printing, which comes necessarily out of writing, I say often, is equivalent to democracy: invent writing, democracy is inevitable.”
The faith in the press as the guardian of truth, the watchdog of power, the foundation of democracy—in brief, the fourth estate—lies at the heart of the liberal imagination of the west. It is the principle enshrined in the First Amendment, nestled in between freedom of religion and the freedom of assembly. “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” This foundational statement paid homage to the same dream. “Where the press is free and every man able to read,” Thomas Jefferson explained, “all is safe.”
Walter Cronkite put it this way: “A democracy ceases to be a democracy if its citizens do not participate in its governance. To participate intelligently, they must know what their government has done, is doing and plans to do in their name… This is the meaning of freedom of press. It is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.”
Hence why the Trump White House is so adamant about controlling the press; why they are eliminating access for legitimate news outfits and replacing them with extreme right-wing bloggers. It appears as though our citizenry is more eager to remain well informed about Kim Kardashian or Sean Diddy Combs than the latest conditions in Ukraine or the intricacies of our health care system. Oscar Wilde wrote—years ago to be sure, but his words still resonate—that “the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
Add in the fact that a large percentage of the US population seems to be devotees of a certain cable news network named after a small to medium sized omnivorous animal, and are more likely to hold mistaken beliefs about, well, you name it - global warming, health care, Iraq, than those who don’t watch cable news at all.
Which leaves us where we are today. We can only hope that enough will see the truth for what it is before it is too late.
In the infamous words of Edward R. Murrow, “Good Night, and Good Luck.”
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Geopolitical information
Your comment pretty well sums up the impression I got as a 11-year-old in 1981, when my parents spent a sabbatical year in northern Indiana (virtually on the border to Michigan). Coming from a country living under a decades long military dictatorship, I was still accustomed that at least ⅓ of each and every news broadcast was dedicated to world-wide international news. With no more than ½ of each news broadcast dedicated to national news. And the rest of the time was dedicated to the local news. Apart from the single local AM radio station many of us would also tune in to various short wave stations like Deutsche Welle, BBC or Voice of America. (Who still remembers those radio stations?)
So you can imagine my surprise when in Indiana the local TV stations dedicated more than ⅔ of the locally produced news-cast to local news with the rest going to regional news and a few national headlines. While the network syndicated news-cast was more than ⅔ national (USA) news, with the wast majority of international news coming from Canada. Any other international news only made it, if it either was a direct attack on the property of the USA or if it had a direct impact on the interests of the USA.
At that time, the alma matter college of my mother in the neighboring town was running a student exchange program with China. On one occasion a group of local students had invited one of the Chinese exchange students to a local restaurant. And during the meal they were trying to learn a few phrases of greeting in Chinese. When all of a sudden somebody at the next table asked rather loudly: “Why can't everybody speak English like civilized people?”
As somebody who grew up in a community with at least six or seven distinct ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups, those experiences really downgraded my regard for the general USA population. This was not helped when most of my [new] class-mates in 5th grade public school could not find South America, much less Paraguay, on the world globe. Even most adults would say: “Paraguay? Oh yeah, I have heard about Uruguay.”
In contrast, here in Germany the vast majority of people can correctly place Paraguay with South America. Though they may have some difficulty with the exact geographic placement.
On the other hand, you have also identified a global trend and danger, inherent in the digitalization of almost all media. An ever higher percentage of the population is relying more and more on social media shares and likes, as well as social influencer, for the news they consume. And over time the social media algorithms (I refuse to call them “artificial intelligence”) present an ever narrower spectrum of news clips and stories in their recommendations, based on your past consumption. That trend is also observable here in Germany, and is in good part responsible for the resurgence of far right political parties.
Based on your description of the area……
Which is sometimes jokingly known as Michiana due to it being right along the Michigan/Indiana state line, I am very familiar with the area. I spent a good deal of time in that area not too long ago setting up an operation for a major third party logistics company which I was working for at the time. As for your mother’s alma mater, would that in fact be Notre Dame University? The hotel which was my “home away from home” for many months was located just a short distance from the university, which made dinners interesting; as I graduated from the University of Southern California - one of the oldest continuous sports rivalries in this country is between those two schools.
As I had a habit of wearing USC logo’d polo shirts at that time, I received more than a few rude comments from the people in the area when they noticed. Outside of a few more metropolitan spots, that area tends to be pretty agricultural with a smattering of industry (a large percentage of the recreational vehicles manufactured in this country are actually made in that area), and the population reflects that fact.
As for news broadcasts, television news in this country has always been broken up into two separate broadcasts - a local news broadcast and a network news broadcast, with one usually following the other. The local affiliate’s news broadcast is just that - local and regional news, sports, and weather. While the network news broadcast is national or international news. I have never noticed a prejudice in international news towards what is happening in Canada, and as I live just a few hours from the Canadian border and several of the largest cities in Canada, what happens there does in fact have more impact on the people where I live rather than say, those in Florida. However, I see no overabundance of news regarding Canada.
Unfortunately, what passes for “news” in this country has become fairly slanted depending on which network you watch. Fox News is and has continued to slide ever further to the right. As a “news junky”, I tend to spend a good deal of time reading the news, watching multiple news broadcasts from various networks, and even listening to news while driving; including the BBC, and even Al Jazeera, as well as multiple US news outlets. The only way to really form an educated opinion is to educate yourself, and that requires looking at more than just one slanted viewpoint on the world.
To your point, those who gather their news primarily online tend to only look at a very narrow view of the world. A view that becomes ever more focused as the algorithms do what they were designed for and tailor one’s viewing into those areas which seem to interest them more. That is why Trump supporters don’t believe that people voted against him - because their narrow online viewpoint restricts them to seeing only what he and his cronies are spewing. If you only associate with people who believe as you do, you start to believe that everyone believes as you do. Anyone who disagrees then suffers from green monkey syndrome.
If you paint one monkey green and toss him back in with the rest of the monkeys, they will tear him apart because he is different.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
There is a name for that
It's called 'False Consensus Bias', and ia an echo-chamber effect. I see it in various ways, especially with regard to bigotry. There are areas of London, for example, predominantly white, where racism is a given. When someone from that area chats with a white person from elsewhere, their assumption of shared racism is jaw dropping. You don't need to ask me how I know that.
Another example is a UK forum I will deliberately spell Mom's Net, to confuse the searchers. It had a 'feminism' board, which had to be split because it ended up consisting of absolutely nothing but transphobia. There are regular comments on there about "51% of the electorate", based on the assumption/claim that all women agree with their hatred.
There are also threads demanding proof that they are right wing, because they are all really socialists, apparently. One of their main figureheads gives WP hand signs in her videos, associates openly with actual literal Nazis, platforming them at her 'gigs', and even had a band of them stand giving straight=arm salutes while her followers took selfies with them. She has speakers who quote Mein Kampf, and on that thread there was one poster who started to explain that Hitler was a nice man, a socialist and supporter of trade unions, etc. We are talking LITERAL Nazis.
Finally, in the case of MN, there ere very regular threads where poster after poster describes how they have lost/been shunned by friends, family, children, for being transphobic. They still claim they speak for all women, and that any woman who disagrees with them is either being threatened by the Evil Trans World Conspiracy (funded by Jewish billionaires) or is secretly trans.
They also really hate intersex people.
They also claim that defeats in court are really victories. Classically, they celebrated a 'win' where the 'winner' then started fubdraising to appeal the 'winning' verdict.
That's exactly the way the Trumpanzee world works, as Dallas says. Perfectly summed up a recent 'town hall' with a Rethuglican senator, who was booed and jeered, and told to look at the facts.
"What about MY facts?" he demanded.
Isn’t amazing……..
How someone can be so obvious as to ask, “What about my facts?”
Facts are facts - truth is truth. Truth is not variable, nor are facts variable. There is no such thing as my facts and your facts.
Trump and his cronies have spent the past decade trying to re-write history and change facts.
Welcome to 1984 George Orwell. Joseph Goebbels would be proud.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
If it was only Trump.... :-(
If it was only Trump.... :-(
There are plenty of others