What do we really know about the media and politics? How Rachel Maddow, Donald Trump and the mainstream have changed since she started talking about her show “Politics of political orthodoxy”
But I wanted to talk to Maddow about how American politics and the media have changed since she started her show. We discuss the legacies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cycle of economic crises we appear to keep having, Maddow’s relationships with Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson, where the current G.O.P.’s anti-democracy efforts really started, how Obama’s presidency changed politics, how Maddow finds and chooses her stories, the statehouse Republicans who tilled the soil for Trump’s big lie and more.
Young pulls together a lot of research on psychology, history and media to explain why we find funny what we do. The need for closure is large. If you have a high need for clear-cut moral rules, then satire, which asks us to skewer our own beliefs, is going to make you pretty anxious. If it makes you feel safer, that’s pretty bad.
As it turns out, political messages play on some similar psychological needs. One that tells you who are “bad” and, even better, how to punish them satisfies the same need as good old-fashioned outrage. Donald Trump and his audience co- wrote one of the most enduring outrage political messages of 21st-century politics: to lock her up.
Liberals may be drawn to ironic humor because of their dislike of the status quo. But outrage plays better to the political psychology of conservatives. It gets harder to sell liberalism due to outrage becoming more viable in the media. “All of our political, cultural and economic messages risk being filtered through an identity-driven ecosystem that proportionally rewards not just conservatism and Republicanism,” Young told me, “but also conservative populism on the far right.”
Conservative audiences complain that they are vilified in popular culture. Conservative media is doing well. Ben and Joe Rogan are the most popular radio show hosts in the country. There is no liberal counterpart to either. Fox News lost some of its big names when Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly left in 2017. MSNBC is looking for its footing after Rachel Maddow left on most weeknights and CNN is shifting into centrism but Fox is beating them both in ratings.
Our shared reality is rendered in a way that is not always right. The information landscape is polluted by some of the most popular media and political figures. Many companies make a lot from their propaganda because it is dishonest and attacks the press.
Joe Biden: “This is the path to chaos in America,” he told the nation at the cnn.com/2022/11/11
President Joe Biden, just days before the crucial midterm elections, stood before the country on Wednesday from Washington’s Union Station and delivered a dire warning.
“As I stand here today, there are many candidates running for office who don’t intend to accept the results of their election, even if they are re-elected,” Biden said. “This is the path to chaos in America. It is something no one has done before. It isn’t legal. And it’s un-American.”
The line in the speech was aired on cable news but ignored by the more-watched broadcast networks. It does not include any political spin. It is a horrible fact.
A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/media/republican-mistrust-reliable-sources/index.html
The Truth About The Right-Wing Media Landscape and the Tucker Carlson’s “Turbulent” Reaction to the Mannequin’s Anger
Only 41% of Republicans have confidence that US elections reflect the will of the people, a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and published Wednesday found. A staggering 66% of Republicans continue to say that they do not believe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 elections.
It’s impossible to understand why so many Americans no longer trust US elections without understanding the information universe in which they reside. Bad-faith television hosts, radio personalities, podcasters, and websites that now unquestionably dominate the right-wing media landscape have poisoned the information well with lies and conspiracy theories about the elections process.
Tucker Carlson is an example. The right-wing talk show host gave his large audience permission to question the results of the election but also encouraged them to do so. “In a functioning democracy, you’re not simply allowed to raise questions about elections, you’re encouraged to,” Carlson ranted as the on-screen banner alerted viewers to the fact that he was reacting “to the mannequin’s angry speech.”
Carlson’s rhetoric is easy to dismiss as fringe. To say that he is a radical cable news talker who does not reflect the larger right-wing media universe in which Republicans largely — often exclusively — get their news.
It’s understandable that some people don’t pay attention to it. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that so many Americans — neighbors, friends, family members — are being radicalized by extreme voices who are wrestling for control of the Republican Party.
It would be foolish to ignore the forces allowing a cancer to grow in our society. The toxicity that defines the right-wing media universe leaves readers and viewers without a complete picture of what is happening.
Mr. Licht said he used the analogy to make clear that a less-partisan CNN did not mean it was any less committed to truth. He said that this was to assure people that we wouldn’t let up on being truth tellers. “The change is we will not do Trump 24/7 or let him dictate our agenda.”
What Do We Expect to Learn about Media Trust? MSNBC Managing Editor Rashida Jones Reflects on the Frustrated State of the Media
You work for a news organization, and alongside the best journalists in the world, so you feel good about your job. Your job has meaning. Your jobs have an impact. You are part of something bigger, of something with tremendous meaning. Nothing has changed about that. And you have in me as a leader, who has done a lot of your jobs, someone who has your back every step of the way. My loyalty to this organization and to journalism is more important than it is to our parent company.
Gallup and the Knight Foundation released a report on how Americans view the press on Wednesday, and the results weren’t good.
Perhaps more startling: the report found that 72% of Americans believe national newsrooms are capable of serving the public, but that they do not believe they’re well intentioned. National newsrooms care about the best interests of their audience, according to only 23% of them.
Americans are having more trouble deciding what to believe. More information has made it hard to sort good information from bad.
This isn’t surprising though it is alarming. The media landscape has fractured and it’s not uncommon to now see the same story presented in entirely different ways to different audiences.
The study that was done on Wednesday underscored this. “Media trust continues to vary along predictable lines. Democrats are more trusting of news organizations than Republicans. Among Republicans, trust in news continues to decline,” Gallup and the Knight Foundation said.
It is not clear how a news organization can solve this. MSNBC boss Rashida Jones offered her perspective on trust in media Wednesday at a New York event where she championed delivering the truth to audiences as the best path forward.
“Rather than looking at a political culture or a political perspective, what we focus on is the truth,” Jones said, outlining her editorial philosophy. Is the way we are hitting the angles representative of truth, democracy and the rights of humans across the board? We can get stuck into both sides for a short period of time.
Jones is correct. The truth is not pretty. The truth can offend. The truth will cause a lot of offense to members of one party more than the other. One party in a media environment that is void of journalism promotes lies at a higher rate than the other.
The court filing offered the most vivid picture to date of the chaos that transpired behind the scenes at Fox News after Trump lost the election and viewers rebelled against the channel for accurately calling the contest in Biden’s favor.
According to the court filing, Carlson claimed that Sidney Powell, a lawyer for the Trump campaign, was lying and that he caught her doing it. Sidney is a complete nut, according to Ingraham. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.
Fox News executives worried about losing its audience to Newsmax after the election due to its focus on denialism, as shown in the legal filing.
“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” the network said.
After the election, a furious Trump attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax. And, in the days and weeks after the presidential contest had been called, they did just that. Fox News shed a chunk of its audience while Newsmax gained significant viewership.
Carlson told Hannity to get her fired in a text message. “Seriously … what the f**k? It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company.”
A person with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN that he didn’t know that a group of top hosts were attempting to get her fired.
In another case, when host Neil Cavuto cut away from a White House press briefing where election misinformation was being promoted, senior Fox News leadership were told such a move presented a “brand threat.”
Scott sent messages to Murdoch and he outlined a plan to win back viewers. Scott said the right-wing talk channel would “highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.” Murdoch said that the brand needed to be rebuilt without any mistakes.
The court filing also revealed that Fox News executives had criticized some of the network’s top talent behind the scenes. The network president stated that the North Koreans did a more nuanced show than Lou Dobbs did. Jerry Andrews, the executive producer of “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” referred to host Jeanine Pirro as “nuts.”
Donald Trump tried to call in to Fox News, but they wouldn’t put him on the air after his supporters attacked the US Capitol, according to documents filed in a defamation case.
The House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack did not know that Trump called, according to a source familiar with the panel’s work.
The panel sought to piece together a near minute-by-minute account of Trump’s movements, actions and phone calls on that day. His newly revealed call to Fox News shows some of the gaps in the record that still exist, due to roadblocks the committee faced.
The afternoon of January 6th, after the Capitol came under attack, President Trump called in to Lou Dobbs’ show in the hopes of getting his show on the air.
Fox executives did not approve of the decision, the filing continued. Why? I don’t think it’s due to a lack of newsworthiness. January 6 was an important event by any measure. The key figure that day were President Trump and the sitting President.
The show on Fox Business where Dobbs promoted lies about the 2020 election was canceled a few weeks after the January 6 insurrection.
The messages showed that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham mocked lies being pushed by the Trump camp that the election had been rigged.
And Fox is responsible for taking those calls. In the time before Donald Trump, I spent my share of moments in Fox green rooms and pitching stories to Fox producers. I knew they were more interested in stories about, say, religious liberty than most mainstream media outlets were. I knew they loved human-interest stories about virtuous veterans and cops. Sometimes this was good — we need more coverage of religion in America, for example — but over time Fox morphed into something well beyond a news network.