A polarized society leads to polarized journalism

I cannot recall a presidential election in which the media -- broadly defined -- have played a greater, more visible or more controversial role than they have in this campaign.

We’ve had Michael Moore’s stridently anti-Bush documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11.” We’ve had the stridently anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- first in book form, then in TV ads and, finally, in story after story in every news medium this side of tom-toms. We’ve had several other campaign-related books, and we’ve had shouting heads on cable TV and bloggers on the Internet. We’ve had Dan Rather blundering badly on a story alleging that President Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard during the war in Vietnam.

Now we have the Sinclair Broadcast Group ordering 40 of its 62 television stations to preempt regularly scheduled programming days before the election to air a “special” that will include footage from a movie attacking Sen. John F. Kerry’s opposition to the Vietnam War after he returned from combat duty there. (Originally Sinclair was going to show only that movie, on all its stations, but widespread protests forced the company to broaden the program and narrow the market.)

What does all this say about the media and about the body politic?

Most obviously, it says we’ve become an increasingly polarized society. But why? I don’t think the issues confronting us are as bitterly divisive as they were in the 1960s.

Yes, conservatives today say we had to attack Iraq to keep Saddam Hussein from blowing up the world and they say Kerry can’t be trusted to forcefully confront the threat of terrorism. Yes, liberals say the Bush administration launched the Iraq war under false pretenses and has simultaneously created more terrorists and undermined our traditional alliances and our moral standing abroad.

But both sides agree that Hussein was a monster and that, ultimately, the world will be better off with him out of power. And both sides agree that terrorists and those who harbor terrorists must be stopped, militarily if necessary.

In the 1960s, there was no such agreement on Vietnam. There were those who saw the war as crucial to the struggle against worldwide communism and regarded Ho Chi Minh as evil incarnate, and there were those who saw the war as a civil war and Ho as a nationalist hero.

Moreover, as incendiary as Vietnam was, it was only one -- by far the most important but only one -- of the many fault lines that divided America in those days. Civil rights. The sexual revolution. Campus activism. Feminism. Generational conflict and alienation. Everywhere you turned, there was a cause -- and a protest, a march, a riot.

Today, Iraq stands virtually alone as a truly divisive issue, capable of igniting loud, widespread argument, and even it hasn’t engendered the mass protests that Vietnam did. Yes, there are the traditional left/right splits now over the economy, civil liberties, healthcare, Social Security and other issues. And abortion remains a genuine emotional trigger for many -- a carry-over from the culture wars of the ‘60s. But even abortion is a battle fought mostly at the margins now. Most Americans generally favor a woman’s right to choose; the real arguments come on such issues as the ban on partial-birth abortion, a technique that comes into play in only a tiny fraction of all abortions. Polls don’t show abortion as a do-or-die issue for many voters in this election.

So if the divisive issues are fewer and, ultimately, less divisive, why are we so polarized?

The personal approach

One reason is that as journalism has become more political, it has also become more personal -- more personalized. In an era when personalities -- celebrities -- dominate the news, it’s not surprising that the personalities rather than the policies of our politicians dominate the political news. This has given rise to the politics of hate.

My liberal friends thought there was a virulence to the conservative attacks on President Clinton that were completely disproportionate to his political programs. Clinton was, after all, more a moderate centrist than a flaming lefty.

My conservative friends feel the same way about the venomous attacks on President Bush. Whatever his perceived shortcomings, they say, he hasn’t corrupted the American political system as Richard Nixon, the liberals’ previous bete noire, so infamously did.

But another, more important reason for our polarization is the structural and regulatory change that has taken place in the media. In the 1960s, there was no cable TV, no 24/7 news cycle and no Internet. Television’s talking heads were talking, not screaming, and no one was blogging. And there was an FCC “fairness doctrine” in place.

When one spoke of the media 40 years ago -- or even 25 years ago -- one essentially meant the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, CBS, ABC and NBC. They were gatekeepers. And they didn’t feel compelled to follow one another’s stories. Indeed, they often practiced what was then known as the “NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome.” They would deliberately ignore one another’s stories, worried that they wouldn’t get credit for breaking the original story.

In today’s media echo chamber, NIH is no longer operative. Nor is the fairness doctrine. The players don’t have -- or think they don’t have -- the luxury of ignoring one another’s stories, and some broadcast news organizations don’t feel bound by the dictates of fairness or equal time. Today’s media players -- many, many more players -- are not governed by commonly shared standards.

Matt Drudge hears a rumor, posts it, and it shows up in chat rooms and blogs faster than you can say “intern.” Next thing you know it’s on the cable news networks around the clock, and then all the so-called responsible mainstream media are regurgitating it simply because it’s “out there.”

‘Para-media’ to the fore

As traditional political parties have become weaker and more circumspect, some bloggers, talk radio, Fox News and the authors of some political books have become “para-media ... auxiliaries to the political parties, taking on the dirty work, the sensational work that political parties and 19th century partisan newspapers used to do,” says Todd Gitlin, author of the books “Media Unlimited” and “The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.”

When mainstream media pick up what these “para-media” say, all the media wind up in the middle of an increasingly polarized political struggle.

In fact, “Many political people on both sides believe, or profess to believe, that a lot of what goes under the banner of journalism today is in fact political propaganda,” says Nicholas Lemann, dean of the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University.

“I’ve been working on a book set in 1875, when journalism was a part of politics, and there was no bright line between them, and newspapers were openly partisan,” Lemann says. “It feels like we’re going back toward that, with politics invading journalism more and more. Or maybe journalism is getting more political.

“The idea of journalism as a separate space from politics is getting eroded, and there’s a real challenge going on to the legitimacy of journalism as an honest broker, an impartial provider of information.”

In that sense, the media may be the ultimate loser in this election.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read his previous “Media Matters” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-media.