Why does it seem that more and more mainstream media time is being taken up by the most radical and insane talk? It’s because the “journalists” who are supposed to act as the gatekeepers regulating the flow of such insanity are just merely reproducing the information that is being fed to them, rather than criticizing it or putting it under scrutiny.
Paul Rosenberg at Salon explains:
In their 2012 book, “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” THomas Mann and Norm Ornstein argued that America’s political dysfunction had two causes: First, the mismatch between our consitutional system, requiring compromise, and our increasignly polarized, parliamentary-style politics. Second, the fact that polarization has been asymmetric, turning the GOP into an insurrectionary anti-government party, even when in power. They wrote:
The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regiem; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventinal understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
Increasingly, this means that Republican politicians hold positions that are completely detached from reality or facts. It is the work of journalists to confront those politicians with facts and it’s something they are failing to do. Instead enjoying the increased rating that come with putting talking heads like Donald Trump on constant display during Prime Time.
For more on this, read the article from Salon titled: “Let’s call them all lunatics: Fearful ‘balanced’ ‘journalists’ let wingnuts run wild.“
