Media helps fuel the political fire

One thing I’ve seen before the campaigns, during the campaigns and after the campaigns is that the media will speculate whether dirty politics has reached a new low and if there will ever be bipartisanship in Washington.

Yes, in recent years it’s gotten increasingly partisan, but what they don’t seem to remember is that the vitriol of politics has always been nasty and dirty. During the 1800s, politicians used to describe their opponents in a number of ways such as blind and toothless, to suggesting that they were hermaphrodites.

There are some crazy things said in campaigns of recent years, but nothing to that caliber. What’s happened is that the noise has just been amplified to a much higher level and is constantly replayed in the all-day-every-day news cycle. In an industry strapped with the paradigm of attempted objectivity and a thirst for high ratings, sensationalism seems to be becoming the norm.

Michael Moore will say President Obama may get a 2012 challenge from the left—which he knows in all reality isn’t going to happen—and it’s played up as the next big threat in 2012. Conservative icon Rush Limbaugh has said in multiple interviews that he knows how to yank the media’s chain. And he does it very well too. Rush can say something controversial and the media will undoubtedly run with it for the next 36 hours. Many people didn’t know about the Wyden-Bennett health care bill until it was one of the factors that cost Bob Bennett his seat. Why? Because there wasn’t enough conflict or controversy in it for the media to talk about until Bennett became in danger of losing his seat. But they knew about “death panels” though.

Media can’t complain about petty partisanship and outlandish politics being a huge problem and then turn a blind eye acting as if they don’t help nurture that environment. Politicians themselves are ultimately responsible, but some in the media are not only instigators but enablers of the same thing they complain about.

Posted by Ian Bridgeforth on Dec 2 2010. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.