The Media Trust Crisis

I love how item 2:

2. How trust in media can be regained

presents a chart labeled:

Percentage of Americans who trust traditional media

that has a Y-Axis from 45% to 60% rather than 0% to 100% in order to magnify their claims.

I'm not saying there is no media trust issue in America, but using clearly biased charting techniques taken right out of the book "How to Lie with Statistics" (by Darrel Huff) is not the way to instill trust.

The thing that would improve my own personal trust in media is if there were fewer total garbage articles floating around in aggregate.

Lets do some compare and contrast from the US Section of my current Google News:

Good:

* Biden is boosting food benefits even more for the most vulnerable Americans. (Newsworthy governmental action)

* Tom Brokaw retiring from NBC News after 55 years with the network (About newsworthy people)

* Pennsylvania moves smokers to top of coronavirus vaccine list (Worthwhile state level event coverage)

Bad:

* New Instagram and Snapchat filters give Bernie Sanders meme new life (memes are rarely, if ever, newsworthy)

* Seth Meyers blasts Ted Cruz for his Pittsburgh comments on late-night show (People who talk about people are not actually newsworthy most of the time, especially not late night hosts)

* Joe Biden Removing Trump's 'Diet coke Button' from the Oval Office Prompts Wave of Jokes (Without clicking, I assume the article is 90% quotes from twitter, also the actual topic is really not newsworthy)

I guess the real answer is buy a subscription to a news org that you know actually writes primarily the good stuff, but aggregators are just so convenient, and people (myself included) are so damn cheap.

I don't believe journalists when they act like they are surprised by this. I'm not American, but American world affairs spill over onto everyone else, and it's hard to not become caught up in them.

We live in a world where America is divided in half along the cleft of a false dichotomy. The media has fed this for decades, both because of a feedback loop predicated on getting eyeballs in exchange for outrage, but also because it has been pushed in this direction by those who own it, who use their media apparatus as a political mouthpiece to advance their own goals.

This has finally reached the breaking point anyone could have predicted years ago (and many did). America is in two halves, each of which hates the other, each of which believes the other is responsible for its problems. This false dichotomy serves to divide the working class, who cannot see just how common their cause is with those on the other side of the political aisle because of their blinding bias.

It's easy to see how this benefits the powerful and hurts everyone else. What's harder to see is how it actually serves to promote a bipolar sort of false stability, where public opinion is constrained between two artificial extremes, leaving other non-partisan options out.

The Right is constrained by having made "socialism" into such a demon that they are unable to organize and act on their own behalf to get the kinds of social programs and assistance that they need. Meanwhile, an opiate crisis and the death of American manufacturing, combined with the pandemic, have made these kinds of programs critical to any kind of reasonable recovery. They've been backed into an ideological corner where they have no reasonable path forward, and are casting about for anyone who will be their leader and show them the path forward. Somehow, all they get for their troubles are false demagogues like Trump who promise them progress and deliver nothing, or mealy-mouthed toadies like much of the GOP establishment who only care about big business and will never do anything for the working class.

This is combined with a culture war that has demonized White Americans as all being evil, racist, colonizing slaveowning Nazis. This applies even if they're from the North, even if their grandparents fought in WWII, even if they've grown up in diverse cities and don't consider themselves racist. They've been told that it doesn't matter what they think, that they're the privileged beneficiaries of structural systemic racism that cannot be described to them succinctly, and that they need to be punished for the sins of their fathers. This punishment takes the form of discrimination, it takes the form of having their cultural values deconstructed and destroyed in front of them, and it takes the form of attacking and probably eventually rescinding the personal rights and freedoms their ancestors fought to win for everyone.

The media has been pushing this narrative with increasing intensity. It's subtle, and if you're on the other side, you probably don't see it - like so many things we agree with, it just fades into the background of platitudes and pleasantries.

If you're on the Right, your view on the last year is that your side is not allowed to have protests, but your opponents are; it should be no surprise when this culminates in anger and complete distrust. Protest on the Right has been branded "insurrection terrorism" when what appears to have been significantly more violent protest on the Left for an entire summer straight is branded as "mostly peaceful". You can disagree with this assessment, but this is the sentiment felt by tens of millions of people who are ostensibly on the Right, and dismissing it means not engaging and not finding any path forward.

These people are not represented. Trump did not represent them. Their current leadership does not either; and as their lot in life continues to get worse, their anger will become more palpable. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost just this week as Keystone XL was cancelled; say what you will about the oil industry, the Left has just fucked the working class in those states, and they have nothing to say about it beyond weak, hollow promises of green jobs. There's no retraining program, there's no stimulus package to help them through. People will be cast into poverty for this. Children will grow up to become criminals for this. The worst thing is, there's a tendency on the Left to believe that this sort of thing is 'just desserts', since these problems also plague plenty of marginalized people of colour; perhaps it feels good to watch one's opponents be dragged down as well, like the proverbial crab in the bucket.

> The bottom line: CEOs have long put themselves forward as the people able to upgrade America's physical infrastructure. Now it's time for them to use the trust they've built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure.

Nobody on the American Right is going to listen to media company CEOs, at this point. There is no trust built up; far from it. They have burnt any good will they ever had. The change has to start with ending the demonization, marginalization, and downright oppression of these people, their culture, and their way of life.

If the media wants to get people back, they need to offer a real olive branch. There needs to be a path to redemption, and not in the form of "re-education" that seeks to bend these people and complete their cultural destruction.

I think the best approach would be to look into the kinds of reconciliation efforts that progressives have formed in order to work on restoring native, black, and other minority communities with dignity, and start applying those same principles to white communities as well.