THE NEW REALITY
The Wall Street Journal is running some excerpts from former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, "What Happened". Obviously, most of the national attention around is how he seems to have turned on his former boss and his administration. But here's the bit that resonated most on my end:
"The permanent campaign also ensnares the media, who become complicit enablers of its polarizing effects. They emphasize conflict, controversy and negativity, focusing not on the real-world impact of policies and their larger, underlying truths but on the horse race aspects of politics – who's winning, who's losing, and why…
The press amplifies the talking points of one or both parties in its coverage, thereby spreading distortions, half-truths, and occasionally outright lies in an effort to seize the limelight and have something or someone to pick on.
And by overemphasizing conflict and controversy and by reducing complex and important issues to convenient, black-and-white story lines and seven-second sound bites the media exacerbate the problem, thereby making it incredibly hard even for well-intentioned leaders to clarify and correct the misunderstandings and oversimplifications that dominate the political conversation.
Finally, it becomes much more difficult for the general public to decipher the more important truths amid all the conflict, controversy and negativity."
One could argue that the explosion of blogs and social networks on the Internet, have exacerbated this trend, allowing the micro-partisan issues to be amplified and distributed faster, not to mention more efficiently than ever before.
It's unclear how we put Humpty Dumpty back together again, or if it's even possible at all.
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