The metaphors of war are all around us in politics, but we have yet to apply the revolutionary concept of decisive warfare, introduced by the ancient Greeks, to the frustrating struggle between the Reality-Based Community (RBC) and the commerical Main Stream Media (MSM). This diary examines the issue of why decisive discourse is largely absent from the commercial MSM, and how the RBC can counter and eventually remedy this deviation from the proper role of responsible media.
Why political discourse should be decisive
Although there are some genuinely intractable issues, the proper goal of politics is the formation of constructive policies leading to effective governance. Policy formation requires decisions. In a democracy, sound policy decisions require an informed electorate and effective public discourse. The information media should play a crucial role in the conduct of this discourse, but for a variety of reasons, the role of the MSM has become distorted and dysfunctional.
When the MSM is driven by commercial considerations and political intimidation, as has been the case in recent years, discourse veers away from sound, decisive principles, and becomes acrimonious and indecisive polemic, perpetuated to attract a public confused and amused by equivocation, disinformation, and sophistry. If confusing and bamboozling the public is good business, and the MSM view themselves as simple profit machines, then decisive discourse will be avoided as "bad business."
The mismatched game paradigm
Cosider commercial media sports coverage of a badly mismatched football game or boxing bout. Because the media organization's primary motivation is to attract the attention of viewers to the contest, the commentators will make every effort to minimize the extent of the mismatch and emphasize the chances of the underdog.
There is abundant evidence that MSM organizations have deliberately avoided decisive engagement of public policy issues in favor of extended "debate" that obscures rather than clarifies, prolonging unresolved problems and frequently aggravating them through indecisive neglect. This milking of "controversy" has become a business model for optimizing the revenue of commercial media organizations.
Gaming the game
It is not easy to talk up a mismatched game or keep up viewer interest in a "controversy" begging for decisive termination, but there are a number of tricks that work for the MSM:
- Discourse interruptus. Because commercial "news" programming is chopped up into five minute segments between commercials, any dialogue that is headed for an inconveninet decisive outcome can be halted by the referee at a convenient commercial break. This gives the media managers an easy opportunity to stop a fight that is heading for a knockout.
- Stacking the panels. If a public debate is trending toward a "premature" decision, MSM discussion can be tilted in favor of the losing faction by simply including more members of the losing side in group discussions of the issue.
- Slanting the questions. The authority figures of the MSM, the Russerts, Gregorys, and Blitzers, can modulate the intensity of their criticisms of either side of a controversy by altering the quality and focus of the questions they pose to participants in the discourse. The apposite sports metaphor is the difference between softball and hardball. It is easy for the MSM to change the pitching to prop up the losing side.
- Burying and promoting stories. Some news events are so big that they cannot be suppressed, but the MSM have a wide range of discretion in how much prominence they give to any news development. This discretion can be used to "balance" coverage to delay decisive conclusions about a controversial issue.
- Playing with figures. Most people know how statistics can be manipulated in ways to favor any argument. MSM producers know how to conjure up polls and statistics that can keep alive even the most discredited theories.
Fighting back: how to restore decisive discourse to the MSM
The first principle of restoring sound, decisive discourse to MSM coverage of political issues is to break the format conventions enforced by MSM organizations.
- Participants in MSM "debates" should not accept time limits on their speech that unreasonably truncate their arguments. They should say "You are cutting me off and preventing me from completing my argument." - or - "This format is not conducive to a productive dialog."
- MSM organizations should be pressed to adopt discussion formats arranged by the participants, and not the "news" producers. The political parties and non-profit groups would have considerable leverage over the MSM if they made common cause.
- Factual misstatements prominently aired by MSM outlets should be prominently retracted. No more quiet apologies for loud-mouthed errors.
- RBC bloggers and activists should regularly and widely publicize the issue of commercial distortion of political dialog and synthetic "controversies" perpetuated by MSM organizations.
The second principle of fighting for decision in the MSM is to craft fighting memes that directly address the sophistry of MSM practices.
- The Inattention Span meme. The limitation of discussion to five-minute pellets of information (or disinformation) is dumbing down the public by conditioning MSM viewers and readers to refuse extended engagement with an issue. The MSM is training people to be politically inattentive.
- The Phony Contest meme. MSM authority figures should be bluntly accused of running Phony Contests when they set up absurd discussions of "controversies" (e.g., Are we winning in Iraq? or Are Creationists Correct? or Is Fluoridation Bad for Our Teeth?)
- The Business of Badness meme. RBC activists should publicly connect the dots between short-term revenue maximization of the MSM and the perpetuation of phony controversies and unproductive discourse. The public must understand that the connection between media profits and bad policics is a public danger.
It will take many years to reform the MSM, but the sooner we direct our energies efficiently at the root causes of MSM dysfunction, the shorter the road to reform will be. We must act to make political discourse in the MSM more decisive and constructive. Structural change of MSM programming is the key goal, and powerful memes of reform are vital tools.