I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the divide separating red states and blue states will solidify rather than become more fluid, despite calls for unity from both sides of the aisle. My pessimism has less to do with the hostility between Democrats and Republicans than it does with the current state of the news media. Just 20 years ago, the vast majority of Americans got their information primarily from three major news networks and, as such, lay participants in political debates could at the very least agree upon the premises of the arguments surrounding domestic and foreign policy.
As our range of accessible information has exponentially increased in recent years, however, we have proven more likely to pick news sources that reinforce, rather than challenge, our political ideologies. Nearly four-fifths of Fox News viewers lean conservative, for example, and one would be similarly hard-pressed to find an avid reader of slate.com or the New York Times who is not liberally minded. And just like a conservative can't be expected to trust a word that comes out of Michael Moore, I doubt many liberals believe a word written by Ann Coulter.
This mistrust of news from the "other side" is something that, sadly, is actively cultivated, especially on the right. One of the most significant and impressive accomplishments of the conservative media has been to convince much of the U.S. of a "liberal conspiracy" that renders anything that violates the Republican mantra somewhere between overly biased and downright wrong. Bill O'Reilly, for example, insists that his program exists within the "no-spin zone," an alternate universe in which the validity of a claim is easily discernable by the degree to which it aligns with O'Reilly's own hyper-conservative viewpoint.
What makes the talk of the "liberal conspiracy" increasingly ridiculous is that, as networks have come to see news as a business and not as a responsibility, the news media has shifted considerably to the Right. Having returned to America after six months in England, where the BBC?though state run?actually delivers hard news that sometimes questions those in power, it was almost surreal to watch even the once "liberal" CNN roll over and eat up every bone thrown by the administration (the Jessica Lynch hoax particularly comes to mind).
The shift rightward and the corresponding fear of challenging either the administration or "traditional" moral values is disturbing not only because it encourages the opacity of government and hinders any attempt to arrive at "real" news, but also because it encourages a lack of intellectual curiosity. Viewers are encouraged not to think for themselves (Rush Limbaugh is famous for telling his listeners that they needn't read the news because he'll "tell you all you need to know") and not to question authority but rather to smile and nod as talking heads on Fox News expound upon the hatred liberals have for American values even their parent network airs programs about wife swapping.
Of course, the right wing media can't really be blamed for encouraging ignorance-after all, in many ways it's good business. If Limbaugh were to talk about his chronic drug problem, or the fact that he's currently attempting to deny his wife a single penny in his third divorce, I wonder how many people who listed "moral values" as the most important issue of the election would still listen to Limbaugh parade himself as "the stalwart of integrity and honesty." And if O'Reilly's bizarre sexual practices were to be mentioned within the "no-spin zone," I have a feeling his condemnation of the movie Kinsey as a "celebration of homosexuality and every other type of sexual perversity" would not carry nearly as much weight.
So what's to be done? The solution certainly doesn't lie in praising the hyperbolic stunts of liberals like Michael Moore, which merely reinforce the rampant stereotype of "those crazy liberals." It also doesn't lie in moving still further to the right, as a number of frantic Democrats have suggested. The answer is rather to get ordinary Americans to believe real news again, to educate them about the classist nature of Bush economic policies and the potential catastrophic consequences of the quaintly termed "Clear-Skies initiative."
One can only hope that public support for the administrations policies will collapse when it's lifted from the secrecy and ignorance in which they have been enshrouded by the conservative media. At the same time, if Americans continue to believe that Fox News is "fair and balanced," and that Limbaugh is "the only source of truth," I have no idea how or when this will happen.