The only news that sells IS partisan trash. We can all call out the "other side" for their trash politics, that's very easy [0]. At the same time, there is no reason to believe that a "both sides" debate is going to be fruitful.
CNN is "team sports" politics. They want people to root for their own team and they want to cover politics like teams scoring points.
I think it's very easy to say that American Politics are very broken, and seem to only become more so. Saying outrageous things is a winning strategy right now. I see two counters to this:
1. Deep Conversations. Sound bytes and social media memes can be very motivating, but cannot help people understand real human experience. Only deep conversations in small groups can really do that. Some long form media can also do this. Unfortunately deep conversations don't sell well and they don't scale well.
2. Acknowledging the real human experiences that inform people's outlook. Every controversy has preset entrenched talking points. I'm not going to bring up an example here, because then the replies would only be about the example. But you can imagine any of the identity politics lightning rods, and you can think of the main talking points. The surface level of these arguments is so well worn and smoothed over that it's hard to remember that people have real experiences related to their point of view, and it's very easy to vilify people who don't agree. Again, it takes real effort to understand where someone else comes from and to disagree with them without invalidating their experiences and feelings. This doesn't sell, and this doesn't scale. No political party rewards this kind of work.
But yes, Fuck the Communist News Network. That's an easy meme to spread.
The only news that sells IS partisan trash. We can all call out the "other side" for their trash politics, that's very easy [0]. At the same time, there is no reason to believe that a "both sides" debate is going to be fruitful.
CNN is "team sports" politics. They want people to root for their own team and they want to cover politics like teams scoring points.
I think it's very easy to say that American Politics are very broken, and seem to only become more so. Saying outrageous things is a winning strategy right now. I see two counters to this:
1. Deep Conversations. Sound bytes and social media memes can be very motivating, but cannot help people understand real human experience. Only deep conversations in small groups can really do that. Some long form media can also do this. Unfortunately deep conversations don't sell well and they don't scale well.
2. Acknowledging the real human experiences that inform people's outlook. Every controversy has preset entrenched talking points. I'm not going to bring up an example here, because then the replies would only be about the example. But you can imagine any of the identity politics lightning rods, and you can think of the main talking points. The surface level of these arguments is so well worn and smoothed over that it's hard to remember that people have real experiences related to their point of view, and it's very easy to vilify people who don't agree. Again, it takes real effort to understand where someone else comes from and to disagree with them without invalidating their experiences and feelings. This doesn't sell, and this doesn't scale. No political party rewards this kind of work.
But yes, Fuck the Communist News Network. That's an easy meme to spread.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error