Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an adult and therefore not always a colleague, said: and sweden. That night, Holley appeared on Fox Her News and received Tucker’s Carlson’s blessing.
This recurring episode of Senators using the Senate as a stepping stone to their cable TV dressing room shows Chris Stirewalt lamenting in his new book, Broken News. He was washed off Fox News by a tsunami of viewer anger on Election Night 2020 when he rightly said Donald Trump lost Arizona. He says there is a supply side problem in today’s journalism.
“What did Trump say? What did Nancy Pelosi say about what Trump said? What did Kevin McCarthy say about what Pelosi said about what Trump said? What did McCarthy say about what Rachel Maddow said about what Pelosi said about what Trump said?”
But journalism also has a demand-side problem. At the time, journalists assumed that news consumers demanded “more information, faster, better.” Instantaneous communication via passive media (video and TV) is now providing what lazy consumers want.
More than half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read at the 6th grade level or below. However, with video you only need to look at the screen. But such passive media cannot convey a civilization defined by ideas. Our creed nations “need written words and a common culture to understand them,” says Stirewalt.
In the 1830s, new printing methods greatly reduced the cost of creating a culture of literate news readers. By the 1930s, however, radio was more transformative than television, which had paved the way for it, becoming a passively absorbed alternative to the comparative difficulty of literacy, says Stillewoldt. say.
Technology — radio, television, the Internet — has transformed journalism from reporting what happened to reporting what is happening, and now passive news consumers have the power to dictate their political beliefs. “By 1983,” Stirewalt reports: 1 person It goes beyond the use of all newspapers by offering a “passive, more emotional product”: … internalizes ideas. ”
Between 2004 and 2020, a quarter of US newspapers disappeared. Nowadays it is much easier to get national news than local news. This fosters the belief that national governments are all-important. According to Stirewalt, domestic journalists accept a moral obligation to “go to war” with the president.
The moment was ripe for Twitter. Stirewalt describes it as “not only depleting the value of journalism by dribbling the report in a constant grunt, but also by creating a large echo chamber in which affirmations of self-esteem can be yelled at by the reporter’s self.” We call it a platform that heightens our sense of importance.
Technology has created a fusion of journalism and politics, degrading both. This shows the seamlessness of Holley’s grandstand on the Senate floor and his cable self-praise of his news. No wonder, says Stirewalt, “the news industry treats politics like a sport.”
Consumers of emotionally influencing journalism, fans metaphorically wear red shirts against the blue shirts that are the colors of the team. This journalism always pays attention to politics instead of government, to gaining power rather than to the movement, so that the players on the field should say, “I’m in the stands, not trying to win the game.” It makes me want to show off to my fans,” he says Stirewalt.
Holly is thus a prime example of the politics that new journalism encourages. Hence his silly vote for NATO expansion — clenching a spoon with a toddler’s fist, slamming a tray in a highchair and saying, “Watch out for me!” Holly, aka Splinter (enjoy the video of him walking through the Capitol and escaping his Jan. 6 mob he recommended) is a symptomatic senator.
