We Have Different Version Of "Variety"

From Ms. Palin on her upcoming media tour for her "book" via Sullivan:
"An interview with Oprah Winfrey is already scheduled, and I’m also hoping to have the opportunity to talk with Bill O’Reilly, Barbara Walters, Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Miller, Tammy Bruce, and others, including local Alaska personalities Bob & Mark and Eddie Burke. (Variety is the spice of life!)," - Sarah Palin.

TW: That quote frames nicely the parallel universe in which about 20-25% of our country inhabits. That list is "variety"- two celebrity interviewers, 31 flavors of right wing propagandists, and zero folks who would actually ask a journalistically challenging question. The echo chambers live on.

The Media Conundrum

TW: Not sure what the answer is. The free market has figured out folk like to bounce around inside their own echo chambers (see the cable ratings which are dominated by the most biased cable "news" shows). Public funding or at least civic-minded philanthropists may be the last hope.

From Tom Barnett:
"...no one seems to be going into journalism anymore (especially the horrific TV version) with any pretense of being anything other than biased infotainer. It's getting really sad.
I mean, I still find newspapers pretty good, and certain mags are solid, but TV is more of a vast wasteland than it's ever been, with Jon Stewart preening as our "most trusted TV newsman," according to polls. Yuck, say I. Parody as a full-time news screen is just plain unhealthy, because it's still being fed to you in a highly packaged, biased manner. You simply don't develop your own screens or analytical capacity. I'm certain it also reduces your sense of humor for similar reasons, increasing only your cynicism.

Fox, in my opinion, not only ruined a lot of conservative thinking, it ruined CNN through and through--including my beloved Headline News (which is now MTV-like in spending most of its time providing everything but its primary product). Try listening to any of these channels without looking at the screen and you'll simply be amazed at the low-bit rate transfer--as in, there's almost no useful information and just a lot of speculation over the most minute tactical details. My favorites are the experts tapped to comment as news breaks. Seriously, just close your eyes when you listen to them and 99% of what they say is pure drivel--the equivalent of junk food...

What's weird is that TV sports coverage in America arguably outperforms the news coverage by a ways, as does weather. There the bit rate flow is amazing. I watched the SNF tape of the Packers and Bears five times last week and Collinsworth was great. Just tons of useful backstory, quick descriptions and analysis, and wonderful displays of stats. Watch games from the 1960s and the difference is vast. But watch news from back then and you realize how bad it has become: people talk very fast today and say about 1/10th as much that's actually useful.
http://thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2009/10/why_im_coming_close_to_not_wat.html

The ESPN Center Effect On Politics

TW: I think Drum and Post are on to something. Cable news and the web have created a vicious feedback circle by which "craziness", "wackiness", exaggerated conflict and outright extremism are perpetuated. As I have mentioned before the one thing that keeps me anchored is reading about history where it is apparent that folks 30, 50, 100 years ago were also narrow-minded, selfish, ignorant and generally poorly governed (and poorly governable) as well.

I have made serious effort to avoid jumping too frequently onto the umbrage and snark train on this blog. It is a challenging and certainly not uniformly successful effort.

One key point remains though. I reject equivalency arguments. Too many folks see a jackass like Rep. Grayson of Florida make an over the top accusation about the Republicans and health care and then tune out and decide both sides are whacked and irresponsible. There are degrees to everything and substantive arguments behind all of the issues. Burning through the drivel is the individual citizen's responsibility.

From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
"Do baseball players make a greater number of spectacular plays than they did 30 years ago? Of course not. It just seems like it because ESPN packages them all up for us every evening on SportsCenter. These days, we get to see every spectacular play, not just the ones in the games we happen to watch.

David Post calls this the ESPN Effect and wonders if it applies to politics:
'All I hear from my left-leaning friends these days is how crazy people on the right are becoming, and all all I hear from my right-leaning friends is how crazy people on the left are becoming, and everyone, on both sides, seems very eager to provide evidence of the utter lunacy of those on the other side. “Look how crazy they’re becoming over there, on the other side!” is becoming something of a dominant trope, on left and right...

My very, very strong suspicion is that there has never been a time when there weren’t truly crazy people on all sides of the political spectrum doing their truly crazy things. Maybe 1% or so, or even 0.1% — which is a very large number, when you’re talking about a population of, say, 100 million. They didn’t get through the filters much in the Old Days, but they do now. All this talk about how extreme “the debate” is becoming — how, exactly, does anyone get a bead on what “the debate” really is? In reality?'

Is he right? Are Fox News and Twitter and the blogosphere and talk radio the collective SportsCenter of politics? Or are people really crazier than they used to be?

Or is it even worse than that? SportsCenter mostly just records what happens. (It might also play an active role in producing more spectacular plays because players are eager to make the night's highlight reel, but that's a small effect.) But in politics it's worse. Not only might people act crazier in order to get on the news, but seeing all those crazy people might drive the rest of us crazier too. So maybe at first this was just the ESPN Effect, but over time it became a vicious circle and now there really are more crazy people around. I sure feel crazier these days. How about you?"
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/09/how-crazy-are-we

Cowering In Our Echo Chambers

click on images to enlarge from Pew Research

TW: We frequently post on the echo chamber impact of Americans increasingly ignoring media other than that which validates their own biases and ideologies. The above validate our hypothesis. Americans appear to be migrating increasingly towards the more ideologically biased networks whilst assuming in general is increasingly biased. A vicious and somewhat self-fulfilling circle.

The middle ground becomes increasingly barren even though almost all claim to yearn for the middle ground. But when folks are actually resting atop their own islands surrounded by moats of disbelief and mistrust the middle ground becomes an increasingly unattainable chimera.

http://people-press.org/report/543/

Nate Silver And Fox Friends: Oil And Water

TW: You know we like Mr. Silver, the progressive yet accurate polling geek who managed to get 49 of the states right last November. He appeared on Fox and Friends last week with predictable results.

The thing is though, while what Nate said is correct, by saying it he likely ensures he will never appear again on that show perhaps any Fox show. He is not playing the game. A more cynical and popular pundit would have merely released an inane post on his blog advertising his appearance. By speaking the truth he will likely be shut out thereby sealing shut the echo chamber known as Fox a little more tightly.

From Nate Silver:
"This past Friday, I woke up at the crack of dawn to do an interview for Fox and Friends...it was one of the more aggravating experiences that I've had in my brief "career" in politics. The host misread his teleprompter (that's the generous interpretation), introducing me as someone who had correctly predicted "29 out of 50" states last November, and then recited a series of pre-spun questions, seeming flummoxed afterward that I hadn't agreed verbatim with his talking points and complaining aloud that the very smart conservative who was supposed to have been on the panel with me (a last-minute cancellation) hadn't been there (to "balance" me, I suppose).

Then as I was leaving the studio past a huge trailer serving Johnsonville Brats, they launched into a segment about Britney Spears and Alzhemier's. There was just no pretense of trying to do anything even vaguely resembling the news. I'm not reflexively anti-FOX; in fact, I'd had a couple of good experiences last year on Shepherd Smith and on their business channel. But as for their morning program: Wow. I've never met people more terrified of what might happen if they actually tried to engage in a rational discussion."

Echo Chamber Censorship

TW: This news story is a couple of weeks old but the point remains. We have made these points frequently, we all to a certain extent are bouncing around our own echo chambers to the point significant news events can pass almost unnoticed within a particular chamber. Part of the reason the echo chambers become so distant is the political implication of nearly any news.

Successes be they economic, military or even fighting terrorists help the incumbent and vice versa. It is no wonder adherents of either side can become increasingly stratified to the point where compromise becomes nearly impossible.

That said it is the obligation of all to burn through the partisan noise. Merely assuming both sides are equivalently biased, ignorant or ill-informed is laziness and leads to the most ignorant, biased and poorly informed gaining disproportionate political power.

From Economist:
"OFTEN when news breaks, I look around a few blogs I know well to take the temperature of how it's playing. The National Review has long been my temperature gauge for mainstream conservativism—it's about as orthodox as Republican outlets get. The writers at the Corner blog seem to get up early: there are already 16 posts up today. As of this typing (10:02 am), there is a post laughing at the Obama administration's efforts to "ban" the phrase "war on terrorism" (of course nothing is being banned: the administration has just decided, sensibly, to stop using the phrase.)...

Curiously unmentioned on the blog is that the CIA has killed the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. The actual war on terrorism (if you must) is, apparently, of no interest to modern conservatives. Playing lame word-games to show that the administration is not serious about terror is more important than noting, in any form whatsoever, the killing of the man believed to be behind Benazir Bhutto's assassination and countless terror attacks. It's the biggest one-man death since Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed. And at National Review, crickets, tumbleweed and, for Pete's sake, two posts already today on Trotsky.

Maybe that is indicative. During the struggle against communism, William F. Buckley's magazine cared deeply about the outcome. It was a necessary publication in a scary world...

Update: The story was posted to the Corner, without comment, at 11:11, the 24th post of the day.

Update II: One commenter says that killing one leader of the bad guys is not significant. This is partly true, partly not. New leaders step forth, but they are inexperienced, and less trusted by the rank-and-file. Anyway, the point here is about American partisanship. How significant did the Corner find Zarqawi's death? 45 posts that day. Admittedly, Zarqawi was far more famous than Mehsud. 45 times as famous or important? Was Zarqawi killed 45 times deader?
That said, I've looked around more blogs and found far less commentary than I'd have expected. The Daily Kos homepage also features nothing about this killing. (At least they're consistent; they pooh-poohed the killing of Zarqawi. For what it's worth, The Economist thought that deserved a cover, though it happened on a Thursday, the day we go to press.) So let me update my rant: Americans are so uninterested in foreign policy that the left cannot shunt healthcare aside for one moment to talk about this, and the right only cares if it's good for Republicans. Sigh."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/08/nothing_to_say_and_so_many_wor.cfm

Now This Is Some Fair And Balanced Journalism

TW: One can always count on Fox for balanced and deeply insightful analysis. Or actually just some bouncing around within their own little echo chamber.

The Dangers Of Living In an Echo Chamber: Red State As an Alternative State

TW: As Mark Sanford's political career blew up today I would point you to the following as an exhibit of blind obedience to ideological politicians whilst slamming around within your own echo chamber. Below was from Erick Erickson at the Red State blog, a place where that 20% or so of the electorate hangs out to be fed unadulterated Fox-like, right-wing propaganda.

At a minimum Dems know winkies are a powerful challenge for male politicians we are a bit more cynical on this front.

UPDATE: Mr. Erickson wrote a follow-up here...net net being a governor, Sanford probably did not have access to a proper bible study group to make him see the error of his sinning...give me a fugging break.

From Red State blog:
"The Lessons of Mark Sanford’s Hike
Posted by Erick Erickson
Tuesday, June 23rd at 10:23AM EDT 80 Comments

First, we need to be clear on the facts — not the media speculation:

Sanford did tell his staff and family where he was going.

Because he was traveling without a security detail, it was in his best interests that no one knew he was gone.

His political enemies — Republicans at that — ginned up the media story.

When confronted by a pestering media, things went downhill.

Again though, at all times there was no doubt that Sanford’s staff and family knew where he was.

Now, here is all you need to know about this whole entire story — the reaction from the erstwhile Republicans angry at Sanford for not being a fiscal squish and from the media all go back to their core belief that without Sanford manning the barricades of government at all times, the government will collapse and people will starve, die, and forget how to read and write.

That’s it.

But that did not happen. Life in South Carolina went on. The world did not end. Government did not go off the rails. That the media and politicians would react as they did says more about their world view than anything else.

It is refreshing that Mark Sanford is secure enough in himself and the people of South Carolina that he does not view himself as an indispensable man."

The Echo Chamber Rattles On

(click on image to enlarge)

TW: Here is a screen grab from earlier today on Fox Nation. Fox Nation is an on-line site created ostensibly to compete with "lefty" equivalents. But Fox Nation is so biased that it is almost satire for righty media. Today's headlines could be shortened to:

"Obama does not like the US, Obama still might be Muslim who likes Iran more than Israel, Sotomayor is a Latina power gal, and yippee lets talk about 2012 Republican POTUS nominees"

Down in the "culture" section they were still talking about Joe the Plumber and lamenting a judge who decreed no reading the bible in kindergarten.

I actually hit the site a few times a week. If Fox Nation were my primary news source I would be quite depressed and very concerned about the future as well. Again I respect Fox's need to generate profits, but one should be if not wary at least well-aware of such blatant bias.

Daily Kos is very biased in favor of progressive causes but Kos is not meant to be mainstream media.

Echo Chambers (cont.)

TW: I have written on the echo chambers in which we all reside to some degree or other (see the topic list to the right). This piece from Time provides further details as to how the echo chamber effect is fed. This stuff is not new per se but the degree to which new media provides a more efficient platform by which the echo chambers can resonate is making the effect that much more profound. I found his points about Politico particularly apt. Politico throws chum in the water for both progressives and conservatives, not in an effort to be balanced per se, but in an effort to drive traffic.

Notice Politico rarely provides analytical pieces in the same story reviewing both sides of an issue but rather they will post a story serving up red meat for one side, then another separate story likely on a different topic with some red meat for the other side. This is increasingly the direction the news weeklies are headed as well, hence the proliferation of columnists with overt bias.

From Time:
"Mark Salter, the longtime aide to John McCain, has an essay of sorts about how the media increasingly acts like a bunch sweat-stained wretches clutching dollar bills at the edge of a dusty barn cock fight ring. (My image.) Here are Salter's words:

'Winning the hour assumes there is news made in this town every hour. There isn't. Most days, nothing that informs, enlightens or should be of serious interest to anyone occurs here. But if you inject the mundane with a little performance enhancing conflict you excite the competitive instincts of other reporters, and the curiosity of politicians and their staffs. You manufacture
“buzz,” which might be the purpose of many political journalists. . . .The entire political class, which has grown to include the press, the Hollywood, the music industry and God knows who else, thrives on confrontation,the more vitriolic the better. '

Salter is essentially correct. The best evidence for his thesis is the evolution that cable news underwent in the last decade--FOX in the early 2000s and MSNBC in the last two years. The second best is everything about how political news is done differently on the Internet. At play here is the fact that all media outlets are increasingly niche media outlets. As the general audience fractures, publishers have to work harder to attract and retain audiences of their own, and they do that by actively building and reinforcing affinity groups, collections of people who are personally invested in, and united by, some perspective or another. Politico, the ostensible subject of Salter's piece, often serves as a sort of outrage/intrigue wholesaler for multiple affinity groups, crafting catered stories for the Huffpost/MSNBC crowds and the Drudge/Fox crowds, each as spear-pointed as possible. TIME.com (not to mention Swampland), like lots of other outlets, does this as well, but generally not with the political vigor of Politico. Professional political consultants and communications directors also play this game, feeding the beast(s) as often as possible. (Newsflash: Karl Rove calls Joe Biden "a liar.")
How is it done? The most basic device for creating affinity groups is unchanged throughout world history. Define an "us" and a "them," pit the two sides against each other, and tell both that the buzzer has sounded, blood has been spilt, and the end is nigh."
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/05/04/the-tone-in-washington-news-niches-and-cock-fight-coverage/

Bouncing Around Our Echo Chambers

TW: MSM's revenue models are shattered, blogs and cable outlets with overt bias are the future. This evolution will facilitate the normal human tendency to self-select into groups with similar biases thereby reinforcing the original biases. Self-selection bias is pervasive and a sublte polluter of one's perception of the world on many levels.

Re-connecting with high school associates in Facebook has focused me on the reality the folks with whom I associated with in high school were more diverse than the folks with whom we hang out with today. Today we are cocooned amidst those with similar educational and demographic backgrounds, back then one interfaced with the not entirely diverse but broader group of folks from a surrounding geography (I went to public school, private schools might have been a different story).

As technology permits us to customize our intake of media it will unfortunately permit us to insert our personal biases into the nature of that media. I know I fight the tendency to focus too much on progressive sites. I force myself to crack open National Review, Red State, Drudge and even Fox on occasion to try to keep things somewhat balanced, but it is not easy.

From Nick Kristoff at NYT:
"...When we go online, each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper. We select the kind of news and opinions that we care most about.

Nicholas Negroponte of M.I.T. has called this emerging news product The Daily Me. And if that’s the trend, God save us from ourselves.

That’s because there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.

One classic study sent mailings to Republicans and Democrats, offering them various kinds of political research, ostensibly from a neutral source. Both groups were most eager to receive intelligent arguments that strongly corroborated their pre-existing views.

There was also modest interest in receiving manifestly silly arguments for the other party’s views (we feel good when we can caricature the other guys as dunces). But there was little interest in encountering solid arguments that might undermine one’s own position.

...The effect of The Daily Me would be to insulate us further in our own hermetically sealed political chambers. One of last year’s more fascinating books was Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart.” He argues that Americans increasingly are segregating themselves into communities, clubs and churches where they are surrounded by people who think the way they do.

Almost half of Americans now live in counties that vote in landslides either for Democrats or for Republicans, he said. In the 1960s and 1970s, in similarly competitive national elections, only about one-third lived in landslide counties.

...One 12-nation study found Americans the least likely to discuss politics with people of different views, and this was particularly true of the well educated. High school dropouts had the most diverse group of discussion-mates, while college graduates managed to shelter themselves from uncomfortable perspectives.

The result is polarization and intolerance. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor now working for President Obama, has conducted research showing that when liberals or conservatives discuss issues such as affirmative action or climate change with like-minded people, their views quickly become more homogeneous and more extreme than before the discussion.

...The decline of traditional news media will accelerate the rise of The Daily Me, and we’ll be irritated less by what we read and find our wisdom confirmed more often. The danger is that this self-selected “news” acts as a narcotic, lulling us into a self-confident stupor through which we will perceive in blacks and whites a world that typically unfolds in grays.

...So perhaps the only way forward is for each of us to struggle on our own to work out intellectually with sparring partners whose views we deplore. Think of it as a daily mental workout analogous to a trip to the gym; if you don’t work up a sweat, it doesn’t count."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/opinion/19kristof.html?scp=1&sq=nicholas%20kristof%20daily%20me&st=cse

An Alternative Universe- The National Review

TW: Perhaps this column from the National Review is meant with pure sarcasm, but somehow I think not. Despite the election of Barack Obama being greeted with worldwide acclaim and his entry into actual office regarded as one of the very few potential hopes to lift our nation (and perhaps the world) out of a extremely serious funk (and oh by the way first person of color etc.), this columist makes the case for Sarah Palin as Time's person of the year. The columnist even fantasizes about what a straight up Palin v. Obama election would have been like. To me it just shows once again the alternate universe into which many on the right have let themselves descend.

From Lopez at National Review:
"I suspect that when Time magazine chooses their Person of the Year for 2008, there will be little internal debate. They’ve probably long picked The One — Barack Obama. After all, more than half the country went and elected him the next president of the United States [TW ummm not a trivial fact heh?]...

But Time...shouldn’t ignore the people who were energized by the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to his ticket...Here at National Review’s post-election cruise, a group gathered for a weeklong post-mortem on the high seas has Palin on the brain. Palin’s not on ship, but neither her absence nor the McCain loss has dampened enthusiasm for her here...

Some will to this day compare her to Ronald Reagan. Why is this? It’s about her simple and clear patriotism, and, frankly, her forthright belief system compared to a now president-elect who was comfortable being friends with a domestic terrorist....

Palin offered something different. For some it was an anti-Washington feel. Many consider her a refreshing citizen-politician in the old mold, one that Thomas Jefferson would be proud to meet. Does that make her just like Obama? I do wonder what the campaign would have been like had they both been at the helm: He wouldn’t have had a monopoly on change, and she would have had her own staff and freedom to follow her instincts, and perhaps better advice than she was given as she ran for vice president. We’ll never know what could have been in a straight-on Obama vs. Palin contest ...Time would make a mistake if it ignored the Palin phenom this year just because the ticket didn’t win in the end"
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTNkNmFjNWFiZDNhZDQxNmM1MWQ3OWU3ZGM1YTg2YmQ=