By Michael Abraham
Opinion has evolved significantly over recent years with the rise of social media and its affinity for proliferating thoughts and creating information silos. In the past, opinion was metaphorically compared to armpits (or another, unflattering body part of the same letter): “everyone has them but they think each other’s stink.” Nowadays, with everyone’s opinions exposed and out in the open, it seems a weaker comparison. If opinions were like armpits in 2020, we would have all suffocated by now. Today, opinions are more like eyes: they get worse over time if left unchecked.
The accessibility and reach of online forums such as Twitter have given rise to fact distortion and the idea of fake news. However, it has also become an invaluable tool for reporters breaking news and following live events. Which raises the question, how is it affecting the news media and way news gets reported?
Few have been in a better position to observe the state of the news media than veteran journalist and news anchor Bret Baier. Baier, who has been a fixture of “Fox News” for over two decades, says that America’s bipartisan system of government has always yielded a broad split of opinion down party lines. Still, the polarization of opinion in America began widening when Donald Trump became president and employed Twitter as his all-in-one virtual middle finger and/or pat on the back. A symptom of this reality, explains Baier, is a change in viewer demands. “Well, I think, you know, some parts of the population go into silos,” he explains. “And they go to hear and see what they want to hear and see.”
To make matters worse, the accessibility of information has made a sizable portion of news consumers lazy, shirking their duty to stay broadly informed and challenge beliefs. The role of devil’s advocate needs an advocate! It’s a sentiment echoed by journalists of all political backgrounds and affiliations. “What you see on Twitter is not always a reality,” stresses Baier. Katy Tur, an experienced journalist in her own right and host of “MSNBC Live”, goes even further, suggesting that, if Twitter were an accurate snapshot of reality, Bernie Sanders would be winning the Democratic presidential nomination by a landslide.
With the explosion of opinion in the media, network news operations have shifted increasingly from hard news programming to news commentary. Commentary doesn’t have to be a bad thing. When coming from an informed and appropriately self-critical voice, it’s an effective tool for contextualizing and analyzing objective news. This issue is that the line between commentary and news has gotten greyer in the eyes of viewers and opinion-peddlers themselves. “I think other networks may have gone over their skis a little bit in doing more opinion, even though they say it’s news,” says Baier. “I mean, CNN has a program that they call news. They say Don Lemon is a newsman. So I don’t know if you watch that show. It sounds like opinion to me.”
Shots fired! On the other hand, ask Baier’s CNN competition and “The Situation Room” would probably echo a similar sentiment about Fox’s own Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. This isn’t to pick on any network in particular. Both consumers and reporters need to recalibrate their objectivity.
Baier, who’s been a journalist since he interned in high school roughly 30 years ago, says opinion and news have always coexisted mostly symbiotically. Before network news, newspapers always had news and opinions pages. The problem is that, more recently, the opinion page is being written with overly emotional ink, which bleeds through, saturating the remaining pages with those opinions and ultimately distorting the news. Trump’s war on the media has only made matters worse. “[Trump] engenders a lot of emotion. Some people in our business who had been non-emotional, impartial arbiters of news got emotional,” Baier says. “And they invested in the emotion of this president and countering this president… and it comes off on the screen.” Analysis is less trustworthy through emotional filters which makes constructive debate, a staple of good political commentary, hard to come by.
The audience, therefore, is much less exposed to reasonable and well articulated challenges of their ideas. Other viewpoints are scoffed at back-and-forth which leaves each side further entrenched in views sometimes ranging from slightly distorted to delusional. Why were people so shocked when Donald Trump was elected president? Why were some convinced he would be removed from office upon impeachment? More recently, bringing back Tur’s mention of Bernie Sanders, why are the Bernie Bros so taken aback by his sudden cooling in the polls? Facts can be ignored if inconvenient and scary realities are diminished when Tucker Carlson or Don Lemon – take your pick – tells you what to think before bed.
Baier, who stresses the distinction between his show and those of his Fox network peers, faces this problem firsthand. Many news consumers completely dismiss him simply because of the network he reports under. “A portion of the population paints with a broad brush, and is not going to give me a shot because I’m on ‘Fox News Channel’,” he says, despite the fact that, “according to Pew Research, [his show] had the most ideologically diverse hour on cable news.” Reporters and consumers alike can take a page from Baier’s book by at least trying to consider opposing perspectives respectfully.
Luckily, there is perhaps some recency bias at play here. As polarized as the national climate currently is, it may not be unprecedented territory. Having written books on various presidents – all across the political ideological spectrum, I should add – Baier is a student of history. He suggests “we’ve gone through very dangerous times in our country,” citing the Vietnam War and counterculture movement, for example.
Hopefully, given time, the news media and citizens of this country will realize we’re on the same team again and productive disagreement can flourish. Hopefully, given time, facts will be facts again.
It’s okay to agree to disagree but it’s both ignorant and arrogant – and if you claim to be a journalist, unethical – to dismiss outright.