This week in Viewpoints, a smattering of contemporary events coverage.
Meredith Conroy at FiveThirtyEight takes up the issue of ‘Why Being ‘Anti-Media’ is Now Part of the GOP Identity.’
Declining trust in media has been a phenomenon affecting the American public for decades now. Few public institutions, save perhaps Congress, have a worse reputation with average Americans than national journalism, and that distrust has a partisan slant. The article cites a Gallup poll claiming that, in 2020, 36% of independents, 10% of Republicans, and 73% of Democrats trust mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount.”
Conroy argues that being distrustful of the media has become part and parcel of modern Republicans’ political identities:
And as [a UC Berkley] study suggests, “fake news” functions as a “shibboleth,” or a way for Trump supporters to distinguish themselves, ideologically, even from other Republicans. It is possible that “a new form of conservatism is likely brewing with media distrust being one of its biggest factors,” Hosam told me.
Why? Conroy suggests:
It’s not a coincidence that, against a backdrop of growing partisan animosity, Republicans’ distrust of the media is increasing as they grow more suspect that it leans Democratic. But it’s more than that, too. As Hosam explains, “what Trump does is connect that type of opposition to the media into a form of conservatism that just wasn’t around before.” And one byproduct of that is that media distrust is more central to conservatives’ group identity than it was before Trump. Or, as Lee put it, signaling media distrust is “much the same as wearing a red MAGA cap.”
Within the FiveThirtyEight article is one falsehood and one truth. On the one hand, it is undoubtedly true that media distrust is, as the Berkeley researchers suggest, a “shibboleth” for Trumpsters. Media distrusts signals to others, more than just the simple fact that one doesn’t agree with mass media messaging on most issues, that one is part of an exclusive club that sees the world differently.
The falsehood is one of omission. Conroy suggests that GOP voters merely perceive mass media as having a pro-Democratic slant, when in actual fact this is just an obvious perception of reality. One proof for that can be found in the Gallup poll of independents. Why do 64% of independents distrust the mass media? Well, those 64% of independents could be right-leaning or centrist voters that perceive how mass media organs don’t speak for them or to their concerns. As a matter of objective fact, most journalists are left-wing and have been for some time.
This suggests that the frame Conroy constructs for GOP voters is a correct one: they feel alienated by the national media and a parallel media ecosystem was built up to cater to their own cultural values. Where Conroy stops short is realizing that the same frame applies to Democrats and the mainstream. It isn’t fundamentally wrong or surprising that two groups with wildly divergent cultural values would also have divergent mass media ecosystems, as a matter of fact, it’s what we would expect.
To add some obligatory COVID thinkpieces to the pile, a particularly interesting article on Sweden’s COVID response is up at The New Yorker. Mallory Pickett details Sweden’s relatively light response to the pandemic in ‘Sweden’s Pandemic Experiment,’ from April 6.
Much of the controversy regards the person of Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s premier epidemiologist. In a humorous inversion of the all-important Western neologism “follow the science,” the Swedes handed Tegnell the power of life and death and he used it to do… Basically nothing.
Of all the Nordic countries, Sweden had the weakest pandemic measures. They didn’t impose any lockdowns, severely restrict gatherings, or close schools. At the end of the day, their outbreak numbers were worse per capita than in other Nordic nations, but better than the European average.
As Pickett notes:
It will not be easy to tease out the precise reasons for this outcome. In a recent piece for this magazine, Siddhartha Mukherjee noted that, while some countries were ravaged by the pandemic, others had far lower death rates than expected. The reasons for this, he noted, remain an “epidemiological mystery.” It may be, for example, that the Swedish policies appeared more different than they actually were. Small liberties were allowed—restaurants, bars, parties—which made Sweden seem wildly permissive.
It seems as if the Swedes were merely undaunted, perhaps part of that folkvett everyone’s talking about. Sweden also forms part of the strange quadropoly of pandemic responses. In some places, lockdowns were highly effective (like China), while in California they were ruinous and didn’t work at all. Island nations like New Zealand and Japan have largely been untouched simply by treating the whole world as a biohazard (rightly so) while Sweden didn’t do much worse (and certainly did better than most) without doing much of anything at all. It underscores the fact that, in actuality, we know next to nothing about COVID, even after this year.
Finally, to leave on a lighter note, here’s an older article from Quartz in 2018. Ephrat Livni shares with you ‘The secret to being witty, revealed.’
Keep those wits sharp! And as always, The Week in Viewpoints will be back next week.
