Study links U.S. polarization to TV news deregulation | Hacker News Reader

Study links U.S. polarization to TV news deregulation

news.wsu.edu

74 pointshliyan36 comments

Let's say that political polarization is in fact increasing since 1996. But there's this little thing called the Internet that went mainstream that year -- and had a far bigger impact on yet another cable TV station (that was not even available in major markets in 1996).

Also I can think of plenty of other causes that are equally or more plausible than the ones cited by the authors:

* MSNBC launched in 1996.

* 1996 presidential election, hotly contested because Democrats wanted to take back the House from the GOP (did not succeed) and Second Amendment advocates were alarmed because of 1993 and 1995 anti-gun legislation. There was the 1996 FBI white house files controversy, Clinton signing the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, etc.

* Drudge Report launched in 1996 (followed by Lewinsky scandal in 1998).

Though I think greater access to alternative media via the Internet, no matter what your political persuasion, is the most likely cause of greater polarization. You no longer had only ABC|NBC|CBS and your local newspaper and radio station. Republicans now had Drudge, Democrats had MSNBC.com, socialists had wsws.org, libertarians had Cato.org or Reason.com, etc.

Is US politics particularly polarised now, though? More polarised than 1968? More polarised than 1852? More polarised than 1983, when Reagan was President and all the left could talk about was how much they hated Reagan? (Not old enough to remember it, just going off the music and film from the period.)

It is more polarized than 1983, which I am old enough to remember. E.g. Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the House through the end of 1986, was willing to work with Reagan.

I came of political age in the '70s, watched Watergate unfold, can still remember where I was when we learned Nixon resigned; the Left's hatred of him was implacable, I've read that was true since around 1948-50. But things weren't quite so bad after he left the scene. We loathed Slick Willie with a passion (now, not so much...), but we could at times work with him.

The 2000 election, though, that really polarized things, protesting the legitimacy of an election at the highest levels is utterly dangerous (one of the greatest things about our sorts of systems is solving the succession problem, one set of people running the nation replacing another), and Obama hasn't helped.

You’re conflating two things: the polarization within the Congress and outside it.

Before, when people didn’t have access the way they do now, the small connected elite of politicians and other decisionmakers were able to coerce and smooth out issues for their constituency. Now, for better or worse, the people’s views are being enforced more directly.

I'm using the Congress and Presidential elections because they show to some degree the revealed preferences of the people, I don't trust polls very much, especially as polling organizations are finding it harder and harder to get responses and as people continue switching to cell phones.

As for "access", one counter WRT to this study's claimed time frame is the end of the "Fairness Doctrine", which severely stifled radio and TV political discussion from not all that long after its promulgation in 1949 until its end in 1987 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine). Conservative talk radio, Rush Limbaugh being the best known example, became a major thing immediately afterwards. That channel, outside the control of the "small connected elite" became a driver of politics well before 1996.

Speaker Tip O'Neill shut down the government 7 times under President Reagan and 5 under President Carter. Thinking that Speaker O'Neill was willing to work with President Reagan about budget matters isn't historically accurate. It was his way or the highway, and the news did not demonize him for it.

All I can say is that I watched both in real time and stand by my opinions of just how severe these various periods were. Note, for example, O'Neil allowing the passage of Reagan's tax rate cuts. Sure, he was about as utterly vicious a class warrior as we've ever seen on the modern political stage (e.g. https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/336185/good-ol-t...), but he could have totally shut down Reagan's agenda if he was willing to pay the political cost, the House leadership has near absolute control over the agenda, which wasn't true for the Senate in modern times until Harry Reid.

Although you do have a point about how the MSM treats budget conflicts for a Democratic vs. a Republican Congress. One complicating factor is that the Republicans did not control both houses during the period 1955-1993.

If you look at Speaker O'Neil's history, the Democrats did not control both houses during some of those shutdowns. He did shutdown big parts of Reagan's agenda in the first years of Reagan's presidency.

The difference today is other people have audiences. So, instead of becoming the bastions of accuracy and fact checking, the NY Times, ABC, NBC, etc. have continued to be pundits. Washington hasn't changed one bit since the 1800 election, its the fourth estate that tries to influence instead of inform.

and Second Amendment advocates were alarmed because of 1993 and 1995 anti-gun legislation.

To my memory, 1993-4 were the critical Clinton years for gun control polarization. It started with the BATFE's "ricebowl" Waco raid, the Ruby Ridge trials during 1993 brought that Republican era atrocity into sharp light, the 1993 Brady Bill passed at the end of the year, followed of course by the 1994 ban on new "assault weapons". Clinton himself credited gun control for the historic loss of the Congress in 1994, and many noted the first re-election defeat of a Speaker of the House since 1862 (when the nation was much, much more polarized, in the middle of a Civil War that killed over 600K).

I don't remember being hardly so concerned in 1996, can't even remember any Federal legislation gaining traction in 1995, although we were very determined to keep the Congress in Republican hands.

I'd probably attribute it more to the rise of cable TV, period. My family still didn't have cable in 1988. They got it sometime after that when I was no longer in the house.

I would also say that the 2000 gerrymandering was the worst ever due to the fact that cheap compute power allowed the politicians to carve up the electorate very precisely. Safe and majority districts skyrocketed--which shifted the electoral fights to primaries--which moved the politicians further toward the edges.

Computerized gerrymandering is very likely a culprit here. As far as I know it started in earnest after the 1980 "Burton-mander" of California, which alerted everyone to its potential.

Akin to the U.K. rotten and borough problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs

It's an interesting theory, but one of the confounding variables may be the emergence of the internet as a dominant news medium during the same period. The ability to choose your online sources of political information (e.g., Drudge Report vs. Huffington Post, etc.) would presumably trigger the same mechanism of action for polarization.

It's also important to note that, even if it's true that deregulation originally contributed to polarization, that's not necessarily a strong argument for re-regulating these industries. Access to specialized content is an inevitable, technologically driven market trend, because people prefer experiences that are tailored to their tastes.

In a sense, the polarization we see may have been lurking within us all along, masked by the limited choices available for expressing political or cultural preferences when choosing which media content to intellectually consume. Once we are able to act on those preferences, the previously subtle differences become self reinforcing.

Nate Silver has made similar observations about the previous two elections. Essentially, that you can choose which news that you want to see, and it may not be the reflective aggregate of reality.

Although, I don't think he's ever tied this behavior to a particular event. It is interesting to think that news polarization has evolved over time, and hasn't always necessarily been the way that it is now.

Without restricting speech too much or engaging in substantial censorship perhaps it would be a good thing to start discussing what exactly differentiates news from entertainment and start saying who can call what what. Many countries do similar things with foods, in terms of defining exactly what, say, cheese is and must contain. Perhaps labelling laws for entertainment might be helpful in preventing people from consuming too much entertainment disguised as what most people would consider to be news. Of course, you can imagine how difficult it will be to implement but just because something is hard doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it.

That sounds extremely counterproductive. At the point where you are letting the government mandate warning labels on political advocacy, you are by definition delegating authority for the absolute prohibition of that same speech, subject only to an exception when government-approved content requirements are complied with.

Think about this as an algorithm: Try to imagine all of the security flaws that are jumping out at you. What if an actor trying to subvert the system chose to require content warnings that were significantly longer than the ensuing speech? What if the warnings mandated displaying horrific images or ear piercing noises? There are virtually infinite ways to abuse this authority and convert it into a veritable license to ban opposition speech.

Allowing the government to ban certain speech right now is terrifying enough, but it's at least limited by fairly objective and reassuring judicial safeguards. What kinds of standards could possibly be durable enough to codify regarding which kinds of political speech can be required to bear which labels? What about what kinds of content the labels can be required to include? The permutations are endless; there's simply no practical way to prevent leaky abstraction. The system will eventually fail.

When that's just normal hardware, it's a pain in the ass to fix. But when the substrate upon which you're operating is modern civilization, you probably won't even get the chance — your first mistake will be humanity's last.

well, I am not saying that warning labels of that sort should be placed on speech. What I mean is that it is extremely difficult to know the biases. What I am attempting to articulate, perhaps not that well, is that a media outlet claiming to be 'fair and balanced' should have to articulate what that means and how it effects their reporting and how they frame their stories. News should mean just that, presenting advocacy as neutral information reporting is also counter-productive for the viewer.

Perhaps I should say this: I don't mean content should be restricted or censored in any way. My point is that in order to call one's entertainment 'news' one should probably show that one is independent of what is being reported. In today's media climate that is rarely if ever the case. No one says Kraft can't sell velveeta, one just says that Kraft has to call it 'processed cheese food product' and not just cheese. 'Mayonnaise' must contain eggs... etc. This isn't about preventing people from selling things, this is about not misleading consumers in a free market about what they're buying and consuming.

Re: Your non-compliance with federal idea labeling standards during your recent attempt to engage in hatefully misleading speech or non-speech conduct and/or omissions

U.S. Department of Belief Management Federal Bureau of Satirical Objectivity

948 Pennsylvania Ave, N.S. Washington, D.C. 205353 November 19, 2035

To: The Individu(als) (K)n(o)wn As "justinjlynn" and His Compatriots on the News Hacker Worldwide Internet-Web-Sub-Forums

Under the authority of Acting Military President Trump's Imperial Battlefield Edict 17-A, dated January 32, 2037, Subdivision 7: Unconventional formatting in civil, substantive discussions, and pursuant to Title 27, United States Code (U.S.C.) Section 2488 of the Electronic Communications Objectivity Act, as amended September 28, 2015, you are hereby directed to provide to the Federal Bureau Federal Bureau of Satirical Objectivity the (FBFBSO) the subscriber's name, address, length of service, and electronic communications transactional records, to include existing transactional/activity logs and all electronic mail (e-mail) header information (not to include message content and/or subject fields), for the below-listed class of address holders:

All individuals who were exposed to so-called "news" communications that depicted Donald John Trump as an entertainer and/or politician, rather than as a Nobel-prize winning trichologist.

While fulfilling your obligations under this letter, do not disable, suspend, lock, cancel or interrupt service to the above described subscriber(s) accounts. A service interruption or degradation may alert the subscribers that investigative action is being taken. If you are not able to fulfill your obligations under this letter without alerting the subscriber/account user, contact the FBFBSO prior to proceeding.

In accordance with Title 56 U.S.C. Section 9847(p), I certify that the information sought is relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against deceptive presentations of implied objectivity and/or newsiness, and that such investigation of U.S. Americans is not conducted solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

In accordance with Title 19 U.S.C. Section 23, Fourth Column, Fifth Pajamagram 29-A, Amended Sub-Meta-Heading, I certify that the fairness, objectivity, and wholesomeness of the American public sphere would be, to a moderate possibility of truthiness, distorted and defiled if this post were to be downvoted, particularly on the hyper-technical and humorless meta-not-getting (or maybe just meta-getting-way-the-hello-too-much) ground that H.N. posts aren't supposed to ask for votes, which FBFBSO is not doing, judge.

In accordance with 198 U.S.C. 4984, you have a right to challenge this letter if compliance would be unreasonable, oppressive, barbaric, or otherwise unlawful and the right to challenge the non-downvoting requirements set forth above.

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Due to paradoxical security considerations, you should neither discuss nor disclose the existence of this letter to any person at any time for any reason, unless absolutely necessary to reverse causality to original position.

Your greatest discretion in this matter is greatly appreciated. And expected.

Sincerely,

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> Due to paradoxical security considerations, you should neither discuss nor disclose the existence of this letter to any person at any time for any reason, unless absolutely necessary to reverse causality to original position.

posted in a public forum. lol.

> what exactly differentiates news from entertainment

It's probably worth pointing out that many channels already label their shows that people think of as "news" as part of their entertainment offerings. Last time I checked (several years ago), the only show that Fox (FNC) called "news" was the brief 30min (or was it 60min?) segment in a terrible mid-morning (~10:30AM) time slot.

While most of the cable "news" channels are similar (to varying degrees), this distinction was a core element of how Fox would push their propaganda memes ("taking points").

The "real news" show in the morning would make a vague report that technically stated some of the facts of the story, but generally left it vague. This was done so the afternoon pundits could make wild claims (the propaganda) that blatantly misrepresents the story, by drawing self-serving inferences from the earlier story. This was disguised by claiming "Sources say ...", conveniently leaving out that the same people often were those "sources". The evening entertainment-show-with-a-news-like-name now had multiple "sources" to draw from, continuing the reinforcement.

The only source I can find to up this claim is http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/28/1103852/-Breaking-M... - and it talks not about the time slot but the classification of the company.

I dislike fox news more than the next guy, but you talk about sources without providing any, that's not cool.

The big reason for polarization is a voting system that directly causes it. Single winner elections, where the candidate with the plurality of votes wins, will automatically cause polarization (see "Duverger's Law"). All the more so as candidates and their campaigns get more scientific about how to win. Because smart candidates will try to avoid having their vote split, plurality elections have two sweet spots, "middle right" and "middle left." Anywhere else is generally a no-man's land.

Some things about TV and deregulation might contribute to it, but there are enough channels and enough other options for consuming news that I am not convinced that is a big part of the problem.

I have my own theory over the root of polarization in US politics:

Newt Gingrich & the "Contact with America"

Gingrich & GOP party thinkers (not the politicians themselves) were tired of losing the congress for so many years (and it was a very long period) and made a "war plan" to take it.

This consisted of rallying the troops, and being ruthless with anyone who strayed. Up to that point, Dem & GOP were actually civil to one another. Gingrich made it known that his side of the aisle was not to talk to - I mean that literally - was not to talk to Dems or socialize, bargain, anything at all. The party would deal with that. No personal relationships would be tolerated.

"You just don't get it". Remember that phrase? That was Gingrich's way of saying, "you believe what we say, or you aren't one of us". He made it clear there was no free-thinking, no wiggle room. This wasn't about good governance. This was about rallying the troops to win the Congress and White House.

This was, IMHO, the start of the no negotiating, complete polarization period. This was taught not just to the GOP politicians, but to the party followers. There would be no more compromise; this was a war, with only one winner.

This simply deteriorated into what we have today. The media did nothing other than pick up the blood scent and run with it; they never drove any of it, and none of it came from personal thoughts of the average American.

Internet news has always been unregulated. So people who mostly use online news are even more polarized? My far right wing coworker only reads Drudge Report and Real Clear Politics, and honestly the awful shit they cherrypick would make me hate the Dems too.

Exactly, and with the amount of niche corners you can find an echo chamber that fits you perfectly.

I've never known Real Clear Politics to be particularly partisan.

edit: why do some have that impression?

I think there is also a political dynamic in the US, where the inconsistencies in moderate politics have to be resolved one way or another, and people resolve them by choosing extreme views.

By inconsistencies, I mean that anyone who is moderately left-wing with regard to Israel, will be called a crazy anti-semite (as Rand Paul is) unless they are to the far left on domestic politics. Similarly anyone who is on the moderate right on domestic politics is expected to be far right with regard to Israel and the Middle East.

Anyone with moderate, consistent views would be called anti-Semitic by the right, and racist by the left.

> The telecommunications act sought to open markets to competition, but the result was consolidation.

Is it generally so that deregulation causes consolidation? And is this the opposite of what lawmakers were trying to achieve?

I would wager the trend is based on capital to enter market. If i want to start a restaurant or convenience store, i need real estate. Infrastructure businesses (cell, tv, internet, electricity, etc) require considerably more capital to enter or sustain.

In many cases, we see this manifested in local monopolies for services like internet. In the case of television, deregulation has allowed big players to more easily buy up smaller shops, given the sheer cost of operation.

I can't seem to access the full text. How did they control for the coincident rise in popularity of the web?

Something else that happened in 1996 is the internet was just getting started. With that came the dethroning of traditional information sources who then moved more towards sensationalism rather than news to keep viewers interested and advertising dollars flowing in.

"Study links TV news regulation to uniformity of political views, tovarich"

"There is no isvestia (news) in Pravda, and no pravda (truth) in Isvestia."

(And what does it say that I can correctly spell those two Russian words? (Well, it says I'm a child of the Cold War.))

Seriously, between the set of regulations this paper is discussing, the "Fairness Doctrine" I've discussed elsewhere, the near uniformity of the big newspapers (aside from editorial page of The Wall Street Journal), and the same for the big national magazines (aside from US News and World Report and Reader's Digest), it's perhaps a surprise we didn't turn into a one party state.

In other words, it's all Drudge and Fox's fault.

This "study" is utter nonsense.

Can you elaborate on why you feel its conclusion is necessarily bogus?

The study suggests that deregulation added more divisive programming. It then claims this ideologically pointed reporting is partially to blame for political polarization.

If that is the case, the internet would only exacerbate the problem. So it sounds like you're spot on.

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