Two Universes of Facts
In 1968 there were three television networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC. The vast majority of Americans got their up-to-date facts on the evening news from one of these three. While I was raised in an NBC household listening to the Huntley/Brinkley report (Dad worked at an NBC affiliated TV station), the number one newscast in America was the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Cronkite inherited the CBS mantel from Edward R Murrow, the legendary reporter/anchorman who broadcast as the bombs fell in London during World War II, and took on Joe McCarthy.
On February 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite made a three minute commentary at the end of the nightly news, saying that the he didn’t believe that the US could win the Vietnam War, that it would at best end in a stalemate, and that we needed to negotiate with the Vietnamese communist. Historians may argue whether this altered US opinion on the war or merely reflected the change, but what it did do was make opposition to the war acceptable to the mainstream of America.
During this time, Daniel Ellsberg leaked a classified Pentagon study of the war, called the “Pentagon Papers”. The New York Times and the Washington Post wanted to publish these documents, which showed the war in an unflattering light for the US government. The Government went to court to stop them. The US Supreme Court ruled that the papers could be published.
Why dredge up all of this old Vietnam history (with CSNY in the background)?
This was an America divided by the war, yet able to agree on a reasonably common set of facts about what was going on there. While citizens had widely different opinions about the war, they could argue from a single foundation of knowledge.
In 1996 Fox News was founded by Roger Ailes, a highly successful Republican media consultant, and Rupert Murdock, an Austrailian media mogul who owned newspapers and broadcast outlets throughout the world. Fox News claimed that other media outlet (notably NBC, CBS, ABC and others) were biased, and that they were “fair and balanced”. This began a campaign of “differing” interpretations of news (MSNBC was founded in 1996 as well) that led many Americans to “shop” for the news that fit their own ideas.
Enter the internet, and news shopping became an art form.
Today you can choose your “facts” completely based on your political bias. Here are some examples:
Trump News
Here’s a chart of the biases of various media sources:
So what’s the problem?
You can’t have “civil discourse” if you can’t find common ground on what “the facts” are. You can’t begin to bring the country together, or even have a reasonable discussion, if one side or the other simply thinks that the arguments are “lies”. And you can’t begin to understand what other people think, if you don’t understand what they are being told.
By the way, looking at my past blogs, quoting MSNBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times; firmly establishes where my foundation of facts begin!!!!
So – to begin to persuade, you need to be have at least a passing understanding of “their facts”. If finding common ground is the beginning, then we must find some ground to share.
And — who is the Walter Cronkite of our era, whose word will allow more Americans into the discussion?
