
Study links U.S. polarization to TV news deregulation - hliyan
https://news.wsu.edu/2015/09/24/study-links-u-s-polarization-to-tv-news-deregulation
======
declan
Let's say that political polarization is in fact increasing since 1996. But
there's this little thing called the Internet that went mainstream that year
-- and had a far bigger impact on yet another cable TV station (that was not
even available in major markets in 1996).

Also I can think of plenty of other causes that are equally or more plausible
than the ones cited by the authors:

* MSNBC launched in 1996.

* 1996 presidential election, hotly contested because Democrats wanted to take back the House from the GOP (did not succeed) and Second Amendment advocates were alarmed because of 1993 and 1995 anti-gun legislation. There was the 1996 FBI white house files controversy, Clinton signing the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, etc.

* Drudge Report launched in 1996 (followed by Lewinsky scandal in 1998).

Though I think greater access to alternative media via the Internet, no matter
what your political persuasion, is the most likely cause of greater
polarization. You no longer had only ABC|NBC|CBS and your local newspaper and
radio station. Republicans now had Drudge, Democrats had MSNBC.com, socialists
had wsws.org, libertarians had Cato.org or Reason.com, etc.

~~~
hugh4
Is US politics particularly polarised now, though? More polarised than 1968?
More polarised than 1852? More polarised than 1983, when Reagan was President
and all the left could talk about was how much they hated Reagan? (Not old
enough to remember it, just going off the music and film from the period.)

~~~
hga
It is more polarized than 1983, which I am old enough to remember. E.g. Tip
O'Neill, Speaker of the House through the end of 1986, was willing to work
with Reagan.

I came of political age in the '70s, watched Watergate unfold, can still
remember where I was when we learned Nixon resigned; the Left's hatred of him
was implacable, I've read that was true since around 1948-50. But things
weren't quite so bad after he left the scene. We loathed Slick Willie with a
passion (now, not so much...), but we could at times work with him.

The 2000 election, though, that really polarized things, protesting the
legitimacy of an election _at the highest levels_ is utterly dangerous (one of
the greatest things about our sorts of systems is solving the succession
problem, one set of people running the nation replacing another), and Obama
hasn't helped.

~~~
protomyth
Speaker Tip O'Neill shut down the government 7 times under President Reagan
and 5 under President Carter. Thinking that Speaker O'Neill was willing to
work with President Reagan about budget matters isn't historically accurate.
It was his way or the highway, and the news did not demonize him for it.

~~~
hga
All I can say is that I watched both in real time and stand by my opinions of
just how severe these various periods were. Note, for example, O'Neil
_allowing_ the passage of Reagan's tax rate cuts. Sure, he was about as
utterly vicious a class warrior as we've ever seen on the modern political
stage (e.g. [https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/336185/good-
ol-t...](https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/336185/good-ol-tip)), but
he could have totally shut down Reagan's agenda if he was willing to pay the
political cost, the House leadership has near absolute control over the
agenda, which wasn't true for the Senate in modern times until Harry Reid.

Although you do have a point about how the MSM treats budget conflicts for a
Democratic vs. a Republican Congress. One complicating factor is that the
Republicans did not control both houses during the period 1955-1993.

~~~
protomyth
If you look at Speaker O'Neil's history, the Democrats did not control both
houses during some of those shutdowns. He did shutdown big parts of Reagan's
agenda in the first years of Reagan's presidency.

The difference today is other people have audiences. So, instead of becoming
the bastions of accuracy and fact checking, the NY Times, ABC, NBC, etc. have
continued to be pundits. Washington hasn't changed one bit since the 1800
election, its the fourth estate that tries to influence instead of inform.

------
bsder
I'd probably attribute it more to the rise of cable TV, period. My family
still didn't have cable in 1988. They got it sometime after that when I was no
longer in the house.

I would also say that the 2000 gerrymandering was the worst ever due to the
fact that cheap compute power allowed the politicians to carve up the
electorate _very_ precisely. Safe and majority districts skyrocketed--which
shifted the electoral fights to primaries--which moved the politicians further
toward the edges.

~~~
hga
Computerized gerrymandering is very likely a culprit here. As far as I know it
started in earnest after the 1980 "Burton-mander" of California, which alerted
everyone to its potential.

Akin to the U.K. rotten and borough problem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs)

------
ClintEhrlich
It's an interesting theory, but one of the confounding variables may be the
emergence of the internet as a dominant news medium during the same period.
The ability to choose your online sources of political information (e.g.,
Drudge Report vs. Huffington Post, etc.) would presumably trigger the same
mechanism of action for polarization.

It's also important to note that, even if it's true that deregulation
originally contributed to polarization, that's not necessarily a strong
argument for re-regulating these industries. Access to specialized content is
an inevitable, technologically driven market trend, because people prefer
experiences that are tailored to their tastes.

In a sense, the polarization we see may have been lurking within us all along,
masked by the limited choices available for expressing political or cultural
preferences when choosing which media content to intellectually consume. Once
we are able to act on those preferences, the previously subtle differences
become self reinforcing.

------
mrdrozdov
Nate Silver has made similar observations about the previous two elections.
Essentially, that you can choose which news that you want to see, and it may
not be the reflective aggregate of reality.

Although, I don't think he's ever tied this behavior to a particular event. It
is interesting to think that news polarization has evolved over time, and
hasn't always necessarily been the way that it is now.

------
justinjlynn
Without restricting speech too much or engaging in substantial censorship
perhaps it would be a good thing to start discussing what exactly
differentiates news from entertainment and start saying who can call what
what. Many countries do similar things with foods, in terms of defining
exactly what, say, cheese is and must contain. Perhaps labelling laws for
entertainment might be helpful in preventing people from consuming too much
entertainment disguised as what most people would consider to be news. Of
course, you can imagine how difficult it will be to implement but just because
something is hard doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it.

~~~
pdkl95
> what exactly differentiates news from entertainment

It's probably worth pointing out that many channels _already_ label their
shows that people think of as "news" as part of their entertainment offerings.
Last time I checked (several years ago), the only show that Fox (FNC) called
"news" was the brief 30min (or was it 60min?) segment in a terrible mid-
morning (~10:30AM) time slot.

While most of the cable "news" channels are similar (to varying degrees), this
distinction was a core element of how Fox would push their propaganda memes
("taking points").

The "real news" show in the morning would make a vague report that technically
stated some of the facts of the story, but generally left it vague. This was
done so the afternoon pundits could make wild claims (the propaganda) that
blatantly misrepresents the story, by drawing self-serving inferences from the
earlier story. This was disguised by claiming "Sources say ...", conveniently
leaving out that _the same people_ often were those "sources". The evening
entertainment-show-with-a-news-like-name now had multiple "sources" to draw
from, continuing the reinforcement.

~~~
scrollaway
The only source I can find to up this claim is
[http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/28/1103852/-Breaking-M...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/28/1103852/-Breaking-
Murdoch-splits-empire-places-Fox-News-in-Entertainment-Division) \- and it
talks not about the time slot but the classification of the company.

I dislike fox news more than the next guy, but you talk about sources without
providing any, that's not cool.

------
robbrown451
The big reason for polarization is a voting system that directly causes it.
Single winner elections, where the candidate with the plurality of votes wins,
will automatically cause polarization (see "Duverger's Law"). All the more so
as candidates and their campaigns get more scientific about how to win.
Because smart candidates will try to avoid having their vote split, plurality
elections have two sweet spots, "middle right" and "middle left." Anywhere
else is generally a no-man's land.

Some things about TV and deregulation might contribute to it, but there are
enough channels and enough other options for consuming news that I am not
convinced that is a big part of the problem.

------
jmadsen
I have my own theory over the root of polarization in US politics:

Newt Gingrich & the "Contact with America"

Gingrich & GOP party thinkers (not the politicians themselves) were tired of
losing the congress for so many years (and it was a very long period) and made
a "war plan" to take it.

This consisted of rallying the troops, and being ruthless with anyone who
strayed. Up to that point, Dem & GOP were actually civil to one another.
Gingrich made it known that his side of the aisle was not to talk to - I mean
that literally - was not to talk to Dems or socialize, bargain, anything at
all. The party would deal with that. No personal relationships would be
tolerated.

"You just don't get it". Remember that phrase? That was Gingrich's way of
saying, "you believe what we say, or you aren't one of us". He made it clear
there was no free-thinking, no wiggle room. This wasn't about good governance.
This was about rallying the troops to win the Congress and White House.

This was, IMHO, the start of the no negotiating, complete polarization period.
This was taught not just to the GOP politicians, but to the party followers.
There would be no more compromise; this was a war, with only one winner.

This simply deteriorated into what we have today. The media did nothing other
than pick up the blood scent and run with it; they never drove any of it, and
none of it came from personal thoughts of the average American.

------
nether
Internet news has always been unregulated. So people who mostly use online
news are even more polarized? My far right wing coworker only reads Drudge
Report and Real Clear Politics, and honestly the awful shit they cherrypick
would make me hate the Dems too.

~~~
comrh
Exactly, and with the amount of niche corners you can find an echo chamber
that fits you perfectly.

------
JesperRavn
I think there is also a political dynamic in the US, where the inconsistencies
in moderate politics have to be resolved one way or another, and people
resolve them by choosing extreme views.

By inconsistencies, I mean that anyone who is moderately left-wing with regard
to Israel, will be called a crazy anti-semite (as Rand Paul is) unless they
are to the _far_ left on domestic politics. Similarly anyone who is on the
moderate right on domestic politics is expected to be far right with regard to
Israel and the Middle East.

Anyone with moderate, consistent views would be called anti-Semitic by the
right, and racist by the left.

------
willvarfar
> The telecommunications act sought to open markets to competition, but the
> result was consolidation.

Is it generally so that deregulation causes consolidation? And is this the
opposite of what lawmakers were trying to achieve?

~~~
liquidise
I would wager the trend is based on capital to enter market. If i want to
start a restaurant or convenience store, i need real estate. Infrastructure
businesses (cell, tv, internet, electricity, etc) require considerably more
capital to enter or sustain.

In many cases, we see this manifested in local monopolies for services like
internet. In the case of television, deregulation has allowed big players to
more easily buy up smaller shops, given the sheer cost of operation.

------
trynumber9
I can't seem to access the full text. How did they control for the coincident
rise in popularity of the web?

------
mkhpalm
Something else that happened in 1996 is the internet was just getting started.
With that came the dethroning of traditional information sources who then
moved more towards sensationalism rather than news to keep viewers interested
and advertising dollars flowing in.

------
MaggieL
"Study links TV news regulation to uniformity of political views, tovarich" ﻿

~~~
hga
"There is no isvestia (news) in _Pravda_ , and no pravda (truth) in Isvestia."

(And what does it say that I can correctly spell those two Russian words?
(Well, it says I'm a child of the Cold War.))

Seriously, between the set of regulations this paper is discussing, the
"Fairness Doctrine" I've discussed elsewhere, the near uniformity of the big
newspapers (aside from editorial page of _The Wall Street Journal_ ), and the
same for the big national magazines (aside from _US News and World Report_ and
_Reader 's Digest_), it's perhaps a surprise we didn't turn into a one party
state.

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jwm4
In other words, it's all Drudge and Fox's fault.

This "study" is utter nonsense.

~~~
liquidise
The study suggests that deregulation added more divisive programming. It then
claims this ideologically pointed reporting is partially to blame for
political polarization.

If that is the case, the internet would only exacerbate the problem. So it
sounds like you're spot on.

