Now, we can pick our own narratives and find a "news" source that backs us up all the way. This is the result of news being commodified like most everything else. The miracle of the profit motive may not be the best idea for news outlets. Supply and demand when the truth is in short supply and demand is for soothing / enraging lies is a bad recipe all around. Give the customer what they want for fun and profit! We can gloss over everything over with cool sounding slogans- "fair and balanced," "where news comes first," "standing up for what's right," "all the news that's fit to print," and so on and on and on. Now add to that "news" consolidation. Fewer and fewer people control what is deemed newsworthy. Six companies control 90% of the media. The days of hundreds of independent news papers all across the country are long gone. We are left with an illusion of choice. A popular game media outlets like to play is "both sides."
Not every issue has two sides. There are no two sides to Trump's attempted auto-coup. The January 6th Commission is slowly teasing out what happened. Yes, it was a big deal. Until 2020-1 we have enjoyed peaceful transfers of power from one president to the next. The incoming president would shake the hand of the outgoing president and start to govern. Usually the person leaving would avoid criticizing the new president, content to write a book and do a few speaking gigs here and there. But not sore loser, Donnie! He clings to the false notion the election was stolen! 60 losses in courts all across the country say otherwise. Enough duty-bound people held the line to save our democracy this time but to fend off the next extra-legal attack, there has to be accountability and justice. This is no time for a game of both sides. With climate change, the stakes are even higher.
The world accepts as scientifically verified fact we humans cause climate change. So why so much denial here in the USA? It is in part because of our media's "Both Sides" game. They find an outlier and then act as if that's somehow half the scientific community and there's no consensus when indeed there is. It is obviously a problem that's not going away. We are slowly starting to catch on and change our habits and behaviors. Electric cars are putting their older gas powered forerunners out of the market. Within a decade, you might be hard pressed to even find a new gas or diesel powered vehicle. Green technology is all the rage, even fake greenwashing is growing from companies watching their profit margins. The outlier is not the only way to play the both sides game. There are the never ending culture wars. This provides an out for losing the science game. So what are some solutions?
We should bring back the fairness doctrine. We should also do more to create independent news papers (paper or online) to create a future of new ideas and more debate. But most importantly, we need to be skeptical of the first thing we read or listen to. Are they playing the both sides game? Is it more like multiple sides of a complicated issue that cannot fit neatly into a three or four minute news segment? Ask yourself who are we NOT hearing from here? Life is seldom black and white. It's the same thing with events big and small that shape our world.
No 2 sides to climate change...
No 2 sides to wealth inequality...
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