“[Something] [something] THE MEDIA” is one of the most tiresome arguments in politics — whether it’s the Left complaining about Fox News, Murdoch and the tabloids; or the Right complaining about liberal woke BBC.
At root, it's a model of politics I call the "bad information hypothesis": the idea that people have the wrong political views because they've got bad information.
There's a sort of sense to this idea. After all, with questions of science, the more correct information and evidence there is, we expect a convergence towards a single truthful answer. Why not with politics?
What’s going wrong – according to this model – is that tabloid/BBC propaganda, lack of education/ brainwashing liberal universities, are getting in the way of the right information, and thus leading people astray.
The truth though, is that political views go deep and different information — media, education, propaganda etc — has a limited effect. Tabloid views drive tabloid propaganda as much as the other way around.
Now of course information and media does make some difference. Giving opponents your arguments and evidence can have an effect and I’m not saying we should give up on trying to persuade others.
But the constant noise about THE MEDIA isn’t about persuading opponents, it’s about dismissing them. And that helps no one.
Thank you to @Samfr excellent piece for getting me thinking about this
https://samf.substack.com/p/its-not-a-dead-cat
Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 12, 2023.