Behavioral studies over many decades have demonstrated that students and employees live up to and surpass expectations when teachers and bosses create environments with high expectations, the right tools and training, and display sincere confidence in the ability of students and employees to succeed.
On the other hand, it takes only squelching confidence in the ability of subordinates to succeed for morale and performance to plummet. A child who constantly hears that they are stupid or useless will likely live into that image. Adults raised on stories of their sickly childhood are likewise influenced to live accordingly. There are exceptions, but people tend to live up to or down to the expectations others impose on them.
The same principles apply in news reporting and public opinion polling. Major media tells the public over and over again that they are not feeling good about the state of the economy or the track the nation is on. Listening to the media’s bombardment of bad news, a person whose own financial condition is OK or possibly improving, can be induced to doubt themselves and become certain life is much worse for others.. Having been fed by major media’s insistence upon a bad economy, the public will give pollsters answers they’ve been programmed to give. It’s a feedback loop that becomes convincing even to the exclusion of hard data showing otherwise.
Propaganda master Joseph Goebbels used the dynamic of telling “Big Lies” constantly and convincingly enough to effect an entire nation to accept Fascist dictatorship and condemnation of Jews. With less proficiency but equal intent, today’s MAGA movement is now trying to do the same thing in our country. Major news media feeds into Goebbels’ propaganda method by constantly telling the public how bad they feel about the way things are, then soliciting polls to confirm their reporting. Why? “Ain’t it awful” news sells. I wonder if the media recognizes they’ve been instrumental in creating a gloomy outlook in the face of reality checks showing more hopeful trends and policy successes benefitting average Americans?
To be sure, there are people and places not doing well. They are neither forgotten nor ignored. Those who are working to create greater opportunities for them to enjoy a better life tend to want to do things for them, not with them. It takes on the character of force feeding something that’s ‘good for them. It stokes resentment against elites no matter how well intended. MAGA leaders and others who want to use disadvantaged citizens for selfish gain try hard to show they are working with average people, but by no means are they working for them. They work on them to strengthen a sense of discontent and alienation creating a cadre of angry people easily sold on the truth of big lies. It doesn’t work on everyone but it works on enough to turn a nation toward dictatorship.
Which brings me back to my point, that major news media are complicit with the MAGA movement even as they defend their role as unbiased reporters. The current practice of mixing journalism with editorializing complicates the matter further.
©Steven E Woolley
The distinction between “reporting news” and “advocating a position” has more or less collapsed on the front page of the New York Times as indicated, for example, by statistical studies that show the overwhelming number of “pro-Palestinian” versus “pro-Israeli” articles published.
But then such studies presume that it’s more or less obvious what “pro-Palestinian” versus “pro-Israeli” means in contrast to, say, “pro-peace” versus “pro-prolonging the conflict.” For these categories do not “line up” in any simple way, and that itself is an indictment of the craving for simplifying the complexities of “Israel/Palestine” for the sake of affirming this or that preferred narrative.
What drives mass media today is not just the domination of this or that preferred narrative but the use of reactive emotions to generate “clicks” to reinforce it.
Selection-algorithms relentlessly reinforce self-righteous outrage since that drives “more clicks” and “more clicks” means more money.
Here Trump understands all too well that his election will directly translate into “more clicks” for the New York Times front page, and the New York Times understands that as well since it saw its online profits skyrocket with each new “outrage” of his first presidency.
So the real “complicity” here is rather more deeply cynical on all sides, and is ultimately about the unholy alliance between self-righteous outrage and money.
Which, then, is a more disgusting configuration of that unholy alliance, the sheer obviousness of MAGA’s money machine, or the “ask no questions” duplicity that hides the New York Time’s one?
You have nailed it, Steven! Thanks for expressing it so well!
Sarah
Glad to see you address this issue directly. I listen to the am radio almost every time i get into the car. This weekend I heard a piece on losing democracy which surprised me. Usually it is Hannity, Levin, Preger etc. only.