Learning to Trust Again

In the New Republic, Lee Drutman explored the partisan media trend, where it came from, and what the future may look like. 

The nonpartisan news consensus began to unravel in the 1980s. Cable television imposed a new kind of pressure on the broadcast networks, forcing them to forgo the serious, fact-based news that was the staple of objective, nonpartisan professional journalism in favor of eye-grabbing sensationalism. In 1969, 58 percent of network news stories had “civic affairs” content; by 1997, that number had fallen to just 36 percent. In 1987, Reagan revoked the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to provide balanced news coverage, and conservative talk radio exploded: Between 1990 and 2009, the number of news or talk radio stations increased more than sixfold, reaching 53 million listeners per week. In 1996, Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News, which became the first partisan national television news network, forever altering the norms and underlying values of the profession. The internet did the rest.

The current wave of media consolidation has not resulted in more objectivity, as anyone who has ventured online for a read knows. Opinion-oriented blogs and full-fledged opinion web sites have supplanted many of the outlets of traditional media in influence, resulting in a sprawling range of partisan content. Professional norms have adapted to the dynamics of the new reality, self-optimizing for the powerful emotions of anger, threat, and outrage. This is great for political engagement—see Fox News—but bad for objectivity.

Is there a way to reverse the trend? Probably not. U.S. politics is now organized largely around national issues, which makes pragmatic compromise harder: People are less likely to give ground on these broad, symbolic issues, which tend to take on an all-or-nothing quality in the service of zero-sum partisan warfare. More important, Republican ideology has evolved from a vague antipathy to academics and intellectuals into an all-out hostility to almost all forms of science and expertise. Note that in the Knight Foundation report, it is Republicans who overwhelmingly—67 percent—claim to see a “great deal” of media bias, while only 26 percent of Democrats do. For people consuming rightward media, truth is not the stuff of fact checks and scientific method. It has an almost religious quality and is a matter of faith and feeling.