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Was The Media The Culprit In The Election?

How many times did you hear it said in the last election: “The media is the culprit”? It was either the liberal media elite or the conservative pundits who were being blamed for all of the disinformation and bad feeling.

I have a different take on it. I blame a lot of it on social media and the Internet. People tend to be “friends” with those who agree with them and go to websites that support their already entrenched political views. A book by Marshall McLuhan in 1964 popularized the idea that “the medium is the message.” Maybe he saw this coming. On the other hand, he also predicted that better communications would make us all better informed and we would become more of a global village. Instead, guess what happened? We all tend to go to places we agree with, where we don’t have to exercise critical judgment, and we get our “news” there. I used to think that TV was our major problem by summarizing the news in one or two minute segments. Now, social media giants like Facebook have taken us even further down the road by actually hosting “fake news” outlets that don’t even purport to be telling the truth.

As I get older, I am becoming more convinced that modern communications has become a “dumbing down” process in America. We haven’t become more global and expansive in our thinking. We have become more parochial and tribal. This is not good.

In this past election, the big news was always “tweeted.” Tweeting, as I understand it, puts a premium on brevity and candor. It wasn’t meant or developed to be all-encompassing or expansive in what it offers. It was tailored for the “tweet,” or perhaps more accurately stated, the “bark.” It was created so that we can more effectively bark at each other rather than talk with each other. Fortunately, I decided long ago that emails were enough for me. I don’t need and don’t want to bark at someone else. I also don’t Facebook… why would I want to “unfriend” someone?

So here I sit, a relic of the past with my ancient views that the printed word in newspapers is enough for me. I like getting up every day and reading my local news in The Post-Journal. As one of my old golfing friends used to say: “Every day I get up and read the obits in The Post-Journal and, if my name isn’t there, I go to Moon Brook and play golf!” After the P-J, I read the Buffalo News — a good resource for Western New York News. Then I read the New York Times, usually online, followed by the Wall Street Journal for a good background on national and international news. Now mind you, all of these papers have their editorial and opinion pages. Yet, for getting a good unbiased sense of what is going on in the community, state or nation … their news coverage is generally comprehensive and well-balanced.

There is an “Achilles heel” in our national politics these days and at least part of it comes from social media and the Internet. It is tempting, for the sake of simplicity or ease, to go to the websites and social media connections that reinforce ones’ own political or social views. Why look for more? Why not commiserate with my own group and not be bothered by the big picture from the other side? It is easier to be in a cheering section than in a debating society.

So there it is. I may be a curmudgeon, “over-the-hill,” an iconoclastic “throw-back” to another time. But, I will stick with the printed word of newspapers and hope that, in the end, more of the real picture of what is going on gets painted. Let’s just hope that the newspapers survive.

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident.

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