Centerfield

Ending the Split-Scream

Another great article from John Avlon -- this time focusing on the polarizing nature of the political media. Check it out.

Ending the Split-Scream
By John P. Avlon
New York Sun January 11, 2005

Even in an era when most pundits sound like paid political operatives shilling
for one of the two parties, it was still somehow surprising to find that
Armstrong Williams was paid nearly a quarter of a million taxpayer dollars by
the Bush administration to promote its No Child Left Behind legislation in his
column, radio, and television show.

At the same time, on the opposite side of the aisle, CBS News released its
internal audit on the falsified Bush-bashing National Guard memo it paraded
during the closing months of the campaign, finding that "myopic zeal" had led
its producers to ignore journalistic standards of objectivity, giving the Kerry
team a heads-up about the breaking "story" before it was properly verified and
released to the public.

Both these incidents are symptoms of a larger problem: the attempted hijacking
of the news industry by partisan political interests. This corruption has helped
to artificially polarize the nation, and hurt the credibility of all news
organizations. We are in the process of devolving back to 19th-century standards
of journalism, where newspapers acted as wholly owned subsidiaries of political
parties. It's time to end the "split-scream" mentality that pits predictable and
equally intolerant voices from the left and right against each other and
pretends that all the heat generated amounts to light as well.

Which is why the concurrent decision by CNN to cancel its long-running
screamfest "Crossfire" offers an opportunity to reassess the road we're on. As
the comic nemesis of "Crossfire," Jon Stewart, pointed out, the show was "named
after what innocent bystanders get caught in during gang violence," and in a
sense that describes the state of our nation's political debate as well. A
tribal mentality has infused our politics, where Democrats and Republicans
function as Crips and Bloods, firing off personal attacks and ratcheting up the
political body count in the belief that you're either with us or against us.
Extremism is rewarded and ideological conformity is mistaken for personal
courage. This ignores the fact that at the end of the day, we are all on the
same team as Americans. In the crossfire between special interests, the national
interest is the first casualty.

We are in the middle of a real war with an enemy who sees the world through the
jihadist lens of "us against them." We don't have the luxury of subdividing
ourselves at this time. And yet, with all the hyped-up left-right, black-white,
blue and red state divides we are obsessed with exacerbating our fairly modest
differences.

Nowhere is this worse than in Washington, which is the only town in America
where your political registration is the most important thing about you. If
you're wondering why Congress is so poisonously polarized, walk into any
representative's office: If they are Republican, they will likely have Fox News
on in the background and a copy of the Washington Times on the coffee table; if
they are a Democrat, their news choice is likely to be CNN and the Washington
Post. It's no surprise that they interpret the same events in fundamentally
different ways. The fish is rotting from the head down.

Ironically, the proliferation of information in the age of cable news and the
Internet has instead led to a self-segregation on the part of viewers, who want
to impose the order of news sources that affirm their own biases. A Pew Research
Center poll from June of 2004 showed that Fox News ranks as the most trusted
news source among Republicans, but among the least for Democrats. Because
politics tends to follow the laws of physics, the proliferation of conservative
talk radio has inspired an equal and opposite reaction with the attempted launch
of liberal radio network Air America. Rush Limbaugh has provoked a left-wing
response from a Jerry Springer radio show beginning national syndication next
month. As the dialogue gets more partisan and more polarized, the moderate
majority of Americans withdraw in discouragement and disgust.

The time-honored idea that trusted figures like Edward R. Murrow could serve as
honest brokers amid partisan warfare logically suffers when journalists
enthusiastically become part of the spin cycle. The cost of this is evidenced in
the dramatically declining credibility of all print, cable and broadcast news.
No one knows where to go for the unbiased truth. Even C-Span, which offers
unedited coverage of public events without commentary, has experienced a decline
in believability, suggesting that in this hyper partisan environment people are
reluctant to trust what they see with their own eyes.

So what is a practical solution for ending this split-scream epidemic? First,
the broad popularity of figures like John McCain suggest the thirst for people
who are willing to criticize wrong-doing across party lines. It is only common
sense that a Democratic criminal is no better or worse than a Republican
criminal, but in this polarized time it is difficult to find people who are
willing to break ranks with the party line. Second, it is up to executives and
producers to recognize that there is a backlash brewing against the steady diet
of partisan talking points we are fed daily. As the new chief executive officer
of CNN, Jonathan Klein, said in a statement explaining the cancellation of
"Crossfire," "I doubt that when the President sits down with his advisers they
scream at him to bring him up to date on all of the issues...I don't know why we
don't treat the audience with the same respect."

There is an untapped market for a real alternative to the split-scream
phenomena, a desire for compelling figures who can punch both left and right as
equal opportunity offenders - keeping a sense of humor while respecting the
audience's intelligence.

Integrity has real appeal. Even Armstrong Williams understood this: In an
televised interview with Tina Brown on CNBC this past October he said, "One of
the things that I struggle with when I go on television like, let's say, a
'Crossfire,' [or] Wolf Blitzer, I'm expected to take a certain side. I'm
expected to defend the president. Now there are some areas I don't want to
defend the president in because I don't necessarily believe that, but you're put
in that position. And I think sometimes you're in a predicament that the public
is not really getting what you think is their best interests served, so I think
sometimes we get caught up in these labels and these stereotypes...we do the
public a disservice...It's something that we really should think about." Even as
a sad coda from a conflicted man, it is still good advice.

After all the damaging disclosures of the past week, away from the din of an
election year, news organizations have an opportunity to confront this
underlying problem directly. Cooling the split-scream spin cycle would not only
improve the battered reputation of the press, but also help heal the
increasingly bitter political divisions in our nation.