The anniversary of the January 6 riot found me at a talk radio station owned by one of my clients. I had heard President Biden’s speech on an NPR station on the way up, but the station I was visiting did not carry it, but had a local program on. In the afternoon, they carried Grace Curley and Howie Carr, who were disparaging the President and mocking his message.
It was then that I realized that few, if any, minds are going to be changed; each side’s partisans have their own media outlets and both sides are essentially preaching to the choir. There is no opportunity, whether for compromise or a “road to Damascus” conversion, because the Democratic message is not reaching the ears it needs to reach. Nor can it, because the media outlets that have those ears tell them only what they want to hear, fearing to lose audience share if they tell them anything else.
Fifty years ago, we all got our news from the same places. There were ABC, NBC, and CBS, all of whom upheld the same high standards of journalism. There were local newspapers, most of whom did the same. So did radio stations, the thoughts of whose owners were always on possible challenges to the renewal of their licenses, which were never more than three years away. There weren’t very many stations compared to today, and the number one station in town typically had 30, 40, even 50% of the audience. There was no cable news. There was no Internet. It was the era of mass media.
Today there are no more mass media; broadcasters have become narrowcasters, each focusing on its own little slice of the demographic pie. Newspapers are disappearing; broad, general-interest magazines have given way to specialty magazines. The top radio station in town usually has less then 10% of the radio audience. And TV now includes Youtube, Netflix, and Disney Plus. You can’t reach a mass audience any more, not even if you’re President of the United States.
Too much of this country can no longer agree on basic values like democracy and tolerance of differences. The thought of my tax dollars going to help people who hate me and the values I uphold is troubling. I would not lift a finger to keep these people and the lands they occupy from leaving my country, if they are minded to do so.
How many other Americans, I wonder, feel as I do?