But don't skip the article because of the irritating headline. Shafer and Doherty crunch some data. They conclude:
In a sense, the media bubble reflects an established truth about America: The places with money get served better than the places without. People in big media cities aren’t just more liberal, they’re also richer: Half of all newspaper and internet publishing employees work in counties where the median household income is greater than $61,000—$7,000 more than the national median. Commercial media tend to cluster where most of the GDP is created, and that’s the coasts. Perhaps this is what Bannon is hollering about when he denounces the “corporatist, global media,” as he did in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference. If current trends continue—and it’s safe to predict they will—national media will continue to expand and concentrate on the coasts, while local and regional media contract.
पोस्ट्स
७९ टिप्पण्या:
...and just how do they square that conclusion with the nose-diving revenue and subscribers that the big newspapers and even ESPN are seeing?
Seems like wishful thinking to me.
No, it's not worse than WE think. We've thought the media to be a left wing bias factory for decades.
Thank God for talk radio, cable news, and the Internet.
“It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no fucking idea what’s going on.”
More defining deviancy down.
FLASH. NEW DISCOVERY: Politics is regional among the 7 distinct Geograpic Regions we United into America.
Excitement comes in border towns, and when The All America Division recruits its soldiers from across all the regions and makes us great again. Remember, like that Orange Haired Clown did to Clinton's Queendom while Robby Mook kept appealing to each urban ethnic group, except those Deplorable White Men whose votes only DaTrump bothered asking for.
Alternative media is where the future is at. Althouse blog is better than the NYT.
It's great that they're finally admitting that this is actually a problem. But are they too far up their own butts to actually do anything about it? My guess is they'll just whinge about it for a bit, then continue being demeaning and disdainful of all those rubes and simpletons who live outside MSM bubbleworld.
The coasts are the Colonies of The New America.
I am Laslo.
...and everybody feasted on the damaging John Podesta email cache that WikiLeaks served up buffet-style
CNN must have been fasting.
Nonapod said...
It's great that they're finally admitting that this is actually a problem. But are they too far up their own butts to actually do anything about it? My guess is they'll just whinge about it for a bit, then continue being demeaning and disdainful of all those rubes and simpletons who live outside MSM bubbleworld. "
For about 5 minutes the day after the election, the talking heads were inviting those odd Trump voters from flyover country to come on their shows and explain why they had voted the way they did. A few of the talking heads said "Gee, we really need to try to understand these people."
Then they moved from shock to anger and then it was "the Russians did it! they fooled all the dumb hicks!" 24/7.
Self-examination is painful. Listening to other viewpoints means you might hear something you don't like. Let's blame Putin and the rubes instead.
So, this is about money and income redistribution? People who gravitate to the more money producing areas (the coasts, well-educated places like Madison and Ann Arbor in the Midwest) do better financially than those who stay put in towns and rural areas that have lost their economic power due to globalism. Trump says that he can reverse this by negotiating better trade deals than what the Bushes done. Do you believe that?
Trump is now going to redistribute even more of the wealth upward with massive tax cuts to the wealthy.
Those who were disappointed are going to feel even more burned when Trump is done with them.
As I recall the Cable TV re-distributed Media outside of Manhattan for 20 years. Terrible Ted made his fortune on it in Atlanta. But the NYC boys slickered him into merging all he had into in a deal where he lost control. CNN was downhill from that point on, as were the Braves that Turner had once paid for stars to compete, once upon a time in the ATL.
" Journalists respond to their failings best when their vanity is punctured with proof that they blew a story that was right in front of them."
So that's the message of hope. Or not, given the boundless obsession of the MSM with the fact-free narrative of Trump's collusion with the Russians to steal the election.
A cloistered perspective informed by their peculiarly packed clusters.
Excellent piece with some real facts and data. Whoever it was that recommended that the departments in Washington be spread around the country - as foolish as it sounds - was really on to something. Put the DOJ in Texas, Education in SC, Energy in ND, Agriculture in WI and you would get a different view of life and force the MSM to get out in the country to cover them.
David Begley: "Alternative media is where the future is at. Althouse blog is better than the NYT." Preach it, brother!
I heard an interesting piece on NPR the other day, about how Facebook was tuning what its users get to see. And trying to read them, so as to improve the tuning. This produces the ultimate narrowcasting, with each user receiving content optimally aligned with their observed and stated preferences and prejudices. I guess Facebook should then be re-branded as Solipsists, Inc.
This filtering problem is profound. We all do it. I used to enjoy the NYT and other "mass media" because they challenged my worldview, they brought (somewhat trusted) news about all kinds of stuff. Now? I am much less confident. I have to build my own matrix (ahem) of data feeds and opinionation.
Because we tend to favor stuff that confirms our biases rather than challenges them, the entropy here is a real problem
That said, I do think Begley is correct, Althouse is a rare site with lots of (civilized) diversity of views.
Wait. "Diversity." I said that? Hard to believe.
Skimmed the article - they offer no explanation of how living in a "bubble" makes people dishonest.
"Commercial media tend to cluster where most of the GDP is created, and that’s the coasts."
Sentences like this frustrate me. I don't have a problem so much with stating that the coasts are wealthy. But that's a measure of where the money ends up. It's not a measure of where the activity is that creates GDP.
The Genetics of the American Nations
What cracked me up about the article was this line:
"No news organization ignored the Clinton emails story...."
Actually, most mainstream media organizations worked very hard to ignore or downplay the "Clinton emails story", frequently casting it in terms of right-wing/Fox News fantasy and/or simple poor judgment on Clinton's part. I started tracking this story as soon as it broke in March 2015 because (a) I'm an IT geek, (b) I've held a security clearance before myself, and (c) I have close friends and family members who have held top-secret "and above" security clearances (all of whom were furious and appalled at how this was handled; the unanimous refrain was "I'd be in prison if I had done this").
In my observation, most media coverage was remarkably uninformed and seemed largely to reflect talking points coming out of the Clinton camp. It really wasn't until James Comey made his famous public statement of what Clinton & those around her had done that I saw any recognition on the part of most of the media about how blatantly Clinton had lied.
Those who were disappointed are going to feel even more burned when Trump is done with them.
Says the Hillary voter. Pretty amusing.
The Oakland flash mob shows what life on the blue coast will be like. Ever see "A Clockwork Orange ?"
It's coming to a Democrat city near you.
The MSM is soap opera, and makes money on soap opera.
The analysis is soap opera.
There is a bubble of course, but its not in "the media".
The propaganda line, the selection of coverage and emphasis, is centrally directed, it does not emerge organically from the people working in the media. The coordination and uniformity are obvious.
The sum of the material generated by the media is not simply the result of thousands of independent personal judgements channeled by groupthink.
People who write articles like this are being disingenuous. It is just a slightly more sophisticated set of lies.
Be careful Ann. Don't bite the hand that fed you and will keep on feeding you in retirement.
"The media bubble is worse than you think." "Why do they think they know what I think?" Not you, but you. If you know what I mean. The target-audience you. Not you.
Because to you and me and most commentators here the bubble couldn't be any "worse" than we think it is.
The media keeps droning on and on about how they now get it, and they've want to lay it out for us. That is, those of us who already have gotten it for so long that we actually said, 'fuck it. I'm voting for Trump.' The media is huddled on the coasts and making boatloads of money? Shocking news. What next, prices in Brooklyn going up because you know, just everybody wants to live there?
They've reminded me of these fellows for years: Monty Python.
Only in this era, the Conservative with the foam coming out of his mouth would be an 'expert' from the media, academia, or perhaps just someone blathering on about the climate.
The article's focus on geography as an explanation for media groupthink is not especially new and not particularly persuasive. To achieve the level of journalistic groupthink and confirmation bias that is on daily exhibition requires that those writing such stuff must be carefully taught. Of course, the major universities in America are located (mostly) in the same blue counties as are the journalists discussed in the article, and even more to the point, the professoriate comes from those institutions and is close to a monoculture. That shared perspective on what's important (race, gender, class) and what's not (everything else), what views are acceptable and what ones are unspeakable, may characterize the blue counties in which these folks live, but none of that was generated by contiguity.
In all events, geography for internet purposes isn't a matter of longitude and latitude. As it happens, the internet is even more efficient than physical clustering in giving rise to groupthink. Have you noticed how many millennials never put the phone down, and prefer to text rather than talk to each other? Twitter storms, demands for ideological purity enforced by banishment of dissenters and journolist-like coordination are the natural result. And while being physically clustered may add to the effect, the main driver is the assortative mating (for many purposes besides dating and marriage) according to outlook and perspective that the internet makes so easy.
Here's looking at you, Daily Kos (and all the rest of them, of whatever flavor).
OT. None of the liberal media is writing about all the brilliant stuff Obama said yesterday?
"No news organization ignored the Clinton emails story...." = "Republicans Pounce..."
...so, yeah, the writer isn't totally lying.
"I heard an interesting piece on NPR the other day, about how Facebook was tuning what its users get to see"
The censorship of FB, Twitter and YouTube is worrying me more these days than the old media is. Few Americans care about what Tom Friedman is carrying on about on the op ed page of the NY Times. What they see - or are allowed to see - on their FB feed is something else.
Zuckerberg is a totalitarian in a gray T-shirt.
" Journalists respond to their failings best when their vanity is punctured with proof that they blew a story that was right in front of them."
Dan "Abilene Kinko" Rather's vanity wasn't so much "punctured" and "blown out of the sky like a wayward Korean airliner" and he still stands by the TXANG story.
and everybody feasted on the damaging John Podesta email cache that WikiLeaks served up buffet-style
Really? Maybe conservative media feasted on it. The MSM? When mentioned at all it was all about how the leaks were meant to hurt Hillary. It was an attempt to circle the wagons. They completely ignored the contents of the emails.
The small port city of of New York was over shadowed by the port of Boston. But after the Republic fought a war for independence so it could ignore the British Decrees to stay east of the Appalachians, the Middle west opened to settlement and started grow harvests of corn, wheat and timber that had to be boated down to New Orleans or if shipped by mule teams on mud roads run over the Appalachians to reached large ports on the Atlantic such as Baltimore, and Philadelphia, or small ports such as NYC or Boston from whence it could go on to London and Europe.
That was the source of coastal wealth after the Furs were gone. Trade with London and Europe of the things the middle west could produce.
And then some genius dug an east-west ditch between Lake Erie at the Buffalo River that was water shipping to the middle west settlements that cheaply tied them into Albany, New York's special Hudson Valley river that runs south to the Atlantic Ocean at that small port called New York.
Good bye Boston. A suddenly an Empire State had been born, and that Empire's of wealth accumulation was in New York City.
So all East Coast Bubble Dwellers tip your hats to the workers on Locks of Lockport, New York who worked two years to build 5 locks raising the Canal 60 feet to finally get The Erie Canal up and over the Niagra escarpment in 1825.
"People in big media cities aren’t just more liberal, they’re also richer: Half of all newspaper and internet publishing employees work in counties where the median household income is greater than $61,000—$7,000 more than the national median."
Confusing gross revenue with purchasing power and quality of life. There is a reason people leave these cities and go elsewhere in their forties or later years. A million bucks will get you a not so special apartment in Manhattan but it will get you a rather grand home in most of the heartland.
Don't just complain about big media, but ask who sucked the air and money out of small town newspapers and radio programs that gave focus and voice to the local community. Yes Follow the money and lack of it and ask yourself why so many music stations are now programed by somebody in Chicago or why progressive shows can't get air time even when widely successful like the Devils Advocates were in Madison.
>>What cracked me up about the article was this line:
"No news organization ignored the Clinton emails story...."
Actually, most mainstream media organizations worked very hard to ignore or downplay the "Clinton emails story", frequently casting it in terms of right-wing/Fox News fantasy and/or simple poor judgment on Clinton's part<<
Yes, this is true, and the piece amusingly claims in several places that it's just nutso to claim reporters are biased. All you have to do to refute that--other than reading what these clowns print every day--is to review the shoe-polishing revealed by the Wikileaks emailed, and further reflect that reporters were not punished and in some cases promoted or hired away after those revelations.
Then eventually the writer says well you can't help but be influenced by the people around you. Well yeah that's the point Sherlock.
Nevertheless, credit where due, there are some fine observations in there and, to me, the original point that the way the internet has played out in online publishing has thickened the bubble during the massacre of local journalism positions.
Richard Dolan: "... main driver is the assortative mating (for many purposes besides dating and marriage) according to outlook and perspective that the internet makes so easy." Yes. Charles Murray ("Coming Apart") has some good thoughts on the assortative mating (it may be his coinage). As for the effect of the Net: also yes. Lonely folks meeting up on Cupid.com or whatever.
Wikileaks was served in courses, like one of those celebrity chef tastings. Course after course.
I'm sure the MSM will turn this thing around if they can just keep doubling, tripling and quadrupling down on the stupidity and derangement they've displayed since the election.
tim in Vermont: "Wikileaks was served in courses..." Yes. Drip drip drip. See also James O'Keefe and Project Veritas. You don't open the show with your biggest act.
It's BS right from the get-go:
But the knowing-bias charge never added up: No news organization ignored the Clinton emails story, and everybody feasted on the damaging John Podesta email cache that WikiLeaks served up buffet-style. Practically speaking, you’re not pushing Clinton to victory if you’re pantsing her and her party to voters almost daily.
No, they didn't ignore it, they just did their utmost to utterly minimize it.
I remember CNN covering it, and telling us it was illegal for normal humans to dare read it.
"See also James O'Keefe and Project Veritas. You don't open the show with your biggest act."
-- O'Keefe never really delivered that promised knock out blow though.
...progressive shows can't get air time even when widely successful like the Devils Advocates were in Madison.
Maybe it's because their content sucks. "Air America" couldn't draw listeners on Bay Area stations when AA's backers bought radio stations for that purpose.
"Be careful Ann. Don't bite the hand that fed you and will keep on feeding you in retirement."
I locked in. They can't hurt me now.
Facebook, Twitter, and the like should be regulated as the monopolies that they are, to assure viewpoint diversity and fairness. Because they have shown inherent bias to viewpoint diversity. And because breaking them up into smaller entities would be difficult and it wouldn't result in viewpoint diversity and fairness.
When Greta left Fox News, and again when Megyn left, I thought "If Fox were smart, they would start a new prime time audience show based from flyover country".
That would recognize their base and hopefully make some middle American issues visible.
Unfortunately, I doubt any of their "up and comers" would want to be separated from their coastal stomping grounds.
roesch/Voltaire: Don't just complain about big media, but ask who sucked the air and money out of small town newspapers and radio programs that gave focus and voice to the local community. Yes Follow the money and lack of it and ask yourself why so many music stations are now programed by somebody in Chicago or why progressive shows can't get air time even when widely successful like the Devils Advocates were in Madison.
Oh yeah, because "big media" and "follow the money" have absolutely nothing to do with each other! And all the money trails lead to "conservatives"! Oh, if only there were progressive money-bags around to counter the strangle-hold right-wing money-bags have on our society and choice in news sources!
Good grief.
Excellent piece with some real facts and data. Whoever it was that recommended that the departments in Washington be spread around the country - as foolish as it sounds - was really on to something. Put the DOJ in Texas, Education in SC, Energy in ND, Agriculture in WI and you would get a different view of life and force the MSM to get out in the country to cover them.
Put the Supreme Court in Alaska and Congress in Hawaii.
Speaking of media malpractice, here's an interesting article about how the Carl Vinson story got pumped up beyond all reality. I knew it was BS because there is a carrier battle group in Yokosuka Japan that would be joining the Vinson if things were about to hit the fan. https://www.navytimes.com/articles/carried-away-the-inside-story-of-how-the-carl-vinsons-canceled-port-visit-sparked-a-global-crisis
The leftist intifada is beginning as a leftist crowd occupies the Heritage Foundation office in DC.
The protesters occupied the building for approximately 10-15 minutes, until security was finally able to contain the situation and escort the protesters out of the building. There must have been well over a hundred or so in the lobby area, if not more. It was jam-packed.
The 60s were a lawless time with assassinations and terrorists running wild.
I think it may be coming back only organized by whoever is funding these anarchists. I can't figure out why Soros would do this but I hope Republicans are prepared. They usually aren't.
"A suddenly an Empire State had been born, and that Empire's of wealth accumulation was in New York City."
By 1820 NYC was already three times the size of Boston, and the financial capital of the US. By 1880 it was still only a bit more than three times the size of Boston.
Of course the bubble is also protective cover--the MSM knew Hill was awful but shielded her in every way. Shattered shatters the bubble.
What O'Keefe released would have been a knock out blow in any era prior to the current one.
Matthew Sablan: "...O'Keefe never really delivered that promised knock out blow though." I think you're right, and I kinda forget how it all played out. My recollection is, PP found a way to depict his coverage as way criminal or otherwise very expensive to continue. He always played it close to the line, or over, so maybe that ending was inevitable.
Too bad, though: some of his footage was quite piercing: PP folks bragging about how much good stuff they could deliver. Ugh.
@Michael K, As much as I hate when things devolve into chaos, part of me hopes the Left continues to behave like savages, driving middle America farther and farther away from them. If Soros is funding this sort of thing, he's an even bigger moron than I thought.
Owen: I think you're mixing up the Planned Parenthood videos with the voter stuff that O'Keefe had put out (the stuff about bird dogging, etc.)
Video of the Heritage invasion.
Do they have jobs ? This will approach riot proportions when the Trump budget gets passed. I just hope the GOP is prepared.
Michael K said...
The leftist intifada is beginning as a leftist crowd occupies the Heritage Foundation office in DC. "
One of the idiots was screaming something about not having clean running water for 3 years. Where does she live - Flint? Or in a cardboard box? And of course, the Heritage Foundation is the place you go to scream about your water issues.
Leftists are no longer content to shut down conservative speakers on college campuses. They now want to invade conservative organizations and shut them down.
This will not end well. And I don't think it will end the way the leftists think it will end. Of course, then ARM will show up to bemoan the poor "protesters" being shot by brutal Trumpists.
The rioters actually called the cops to arrest the guy who was taking the video. I have no idea what they thought he was doing that was illegal;.
Apparently, he was also under cover to get those videos.
How are left-leaning groups so easily infiltrated routinely? Hell, O'Keefe himself infiltrated several. His face SHOULD BE KNOWN TO THEM.
"How are left-leaning groups so easily infiltrated routinely?"
Because they're not that bright?
Typical lefty group: overweight, unattractive, needy and mostly unemployable. Looking at them. it is kinda easy to understand why they are so angry...because God gave them all the short straws in life.
They're in a bubble. (And it's worse than they think.)
Woman who took a half-year to figure out Trump was serious points finger at other bubble-dwellers.
Watching the media interpret the election is like watching chimps learning to use tools.
The problem with "regional news" is that they're all owned by the big national press syndicates headquartered in deep deep Yankeeland.
"....People who gravitate to the more money producing areas (the coasts, well-educated places like Madison and Ann Arbor in the Midwest.....? This like all Liberal statements is an article of faith bereft of any true facts. You need to keep up with the economy not the political narratives.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-13/shale-not-stock-fuels-the-wealthiest-u-s-county
If the big newspapers could do one thing they should "tag" every story [like Althouse does-only she uses a topic as a tag] with the zip code of the area on which the story is focused. They'd soon find out they ignore many many zip codes even in the big metro areas. And that is one of the many reasons they are losing readers.
I mean how many times must a newspaper run a story where they are interviewing the head of a NGO like the Center City District or The Committee of 70 [voters group] and still be interesting to the general public.
I recognize the matter of infiltration to them being not that smart, everything aligning with the reality the education system is in collapse—the fact that severe dumbing down is occurring on college campuses. A personal story: I was sharing lunch with family and friends when I was involved in an exchange including two current college students; two young females who absolutely consider themselves intellectually superior, always celebrating their academic achievements. I brought Bulgarian feta cheese which received high accolades. I stated I learned of the cheese from a Lebanese woman I was intimately involved with, expressing the fact it along with Labneh had become personal favorites. One of the college students chimed in that she loved Lebanese sour cream. I said well actually they consider it yogurt. Putting aside the difference between sour cream and yogurt, I was stunned when tears came to the girls eyes and she stammered ‘No, no, its sour cream…’ Not meaning to be confrontational in the least regard, only stirring conversation, I was bewildered by the girl’s emotional reaction. It was so strange and left a definite impression. Young people on college campuses are being malformed. It is sad to experience minds that are so weak, delusional and emotionally crippled.
The problem is that the MSM are mostly natives of the Northeast or Ivy Leaguers with an occasional grad from Carleton, Williams or the like. Liberal through and through.
Leftists are easy to infiltrate because they're so predictable, and everyone knows the narrative. Leftist mobies are extremely easy to spot because they always emulate the narrative's caricature of a conservative. They have no understanding of conservative principles.
This is why I don't really think Chuck is a leftist moby. He gets the principles right too often to be a lefty. He's just a complete ass most of the time.
It is nice that Politico is admitting they have a problem. It is less impressive because:
1. Anyone who cared to pay attention noticed that this was part of the problem going back two decades. The New York Times noticed for goodness sake. They didn't care, mind you, but at least they noticed. I guess it is nice to confirm that the bias has gotten worse, but it was already terrible already.
2. I sense that is some confusion with causation here. It may be a vicious cycle. News company hires primarily lefties, the hires all live in the same neighborhoods where they are exposed only to other lefties, the group think is further cemented. When the next round of hiring comes about, why would they ever hire anyone unlike themselves? And guess where the new hires go live and what parties they attend.
3. Related, I suspect there are lots of conservatives, libertarians, and independents that would love to be in journalism (or Hollywood) but they simply will not get hired. There may be some passive effect going on here, but there is very much an active effect as well. This is outright bias. Yes, there is a bubble. However, you are also terrible people by your own standards. You are using the bubble to excuse your worst actions.
4. Regardless if this is just a bubble thing or an active discrimination or some combination of both, there is a must more fundamental problem here. Journalists are supposed to cover the news so we know what is going on in the world. If you are incapable of doing that fairly for whatever reason, you are failures and no one should pay you the least bit of attention. I have stopped paying attention. If I want someone to lie to me or opine ignorantly I can go to the local bar. It is much more entertaining.
A D.C. I thought the meme was that all the wealth was produced by the workers and the upper echelon just raked in the millions.
"Those who were disappointed are going to feel even more burned when Trump is done with them."
Here's what people like you refuse to understand:
No matter what Trump does or does not do, he's still infinitely better than that drunken bitch you voted for.
The NY Times commenters think that the entire country is supported by blue states and blue cities.
They have no idea of means and medians. San Francisco has some billionaires and the rest are mostly poor and illegal.
Silicon Valley engineers may have high salaries but quality of life is not good.
Many are being replaced by H1B visa holders who work cheap and are indentured.
There is already a flood of talent to Austin Texas, most of whom have leftist politics but they have little or no self awareness.
The cities will turn into hellholes before they realize what is happening.
The article pointed out how many jobs have been lost in newspapers especially since 2008 and how this created a bubble and then the article pointed out that the media part of the internet lives the same bubble as the other media. But all the same Trump won. He had national impact in a huge country with millions of voters although deprived of bubble facilitation. Somehow there was organized communication going on outside the communication bubble. How could that be?
During the election I thought the information war was the blogs vs. mainslime but that the blogs might be too young to prevail. But they did. It maybe that bubble people are wired into 24-7 news. Others listen once or twice a day; others reach conclusions and then stop reading stories with the same facts and conclusions. So then, perhaps a high frequency of repetition is bubble-peoples' idea of significance. They are unaware of stories which they know have been heard much less frequently as being significant. Yet millions of red-state state-of-minders might read some story only once and nevertheless regard that one story as enduringly significant. Like Hillary Clinton laughing about abolishing coal miners' jobs. Hillary calling half the voters "deplorables." Hillary's security lapses - which were well-understood by millions of government workers as criminal. Or take stories about Trump. 89% of Trump's coverage is negative but people only need to hear one time: "illegal immigration is down", "1/3 of the coal miners who lost their jobs have them back," "employment is up", and then "Democrats promise to reverse everything Trump has done", "Democrats beat up opposition speakers", "Democrats fire political opponents" And then the red-state state-of-minders silently lie in wait for the next secret ballot. No arguments, nothing to pollsters. Just waiting for the prancing b-----ds, to come prancing past the ballot box.
The media have no trouble. They'll just hire themselves a better audience.
"Half of all newspaper and internet publishing employees work in counties where the median household income is greater than $61,000..."
But they aren't sharing in that wealth. Newspapers have been laying off employees for decades. The survivors are not getting fat salaries. And a lot of news space is filled with the product of freelance writers, most of whom are barely surviving.
I think that explains a lot of "down with the 1%" rhetoric in the mass media - it comes from people who are in close contact with the wealthy financial elite, while scrambling for nickels themselves.
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