It has occurred to me, more and more over quite a few years, that the way the people get information has a great deal to do with how we perceive and react to the political world we live in.
When I was much younger, there were just a few television stations, a few more radio stations -- and everybody and the budgie read the newspaper -- usually a morning and afternoon edition. And often enough, more than one paper. Now that I'm older (alas), I've retained that habit, and though my political views are generally on what might be called the "libertarian/left" of the political spectrum, I'm not all that partisan. I've voted on the right, when I felt it was the right thing to do based on the needs of my society at the time. Or when I thought, like fish and guests, my party was due to be tossed out.
When there were so relatively few sources of news, it could spoil a journalists reputation to badly misrepresent a story, to be dishonest and discard "inconvenient" facts. Editorials could, of course, take any stand they wanted and we all respected that. So we learned to read the news as factual, and the op-ed as take-it-or-leave-it, and we were pretty much all fine with that.
Since the arrival of social media, I no longer think this is the case. There's very little actual "news" out there -- everything is present (and misrepresented) from the opinion-driven POV of whoever is presenting it.
And people choose their favourite channels, and stick with them -- so they only ever see one side of the story. How can we expect to bridge that political divide when nobody even has access to the same "facts?" (By the way, that was the subject of another thread today: the notion that to get along, those who rely on "facts" must accept and believe "alternate facts," which seems to me to be a nonsense proposition.)
Just interested in member's opinions and discussion on the topic -- I don't think it merits a heated debate.
When I was much younger, there were just a few television stations, a few more radio stations -- and everybody and the budgie read the newspaper -- usually a morning and afternoon edition. And often enough, more than one paper. Now that I'm older (alas), I've retained that habit, and though my political views are generally on what might be called the "libertarian/left" of the political spectrum, I'm not all that partisan. I've voted on the right, when I felt it was the right thing to do based on the needs of my society at the time. Or when I thought, like fish and guests, my party was due to be tossed out.
When there were so relatively few sources of news, it could spoil a journalists reputation to badly misrepresent a story, to be dishonest and discard "inconvenient" facts. Editorials could, of course, take any stand they wanted and we all respected that. So we learned to read the news as factual, and the op-ed as take-it-or-leave-it, and we were pretty much all fine with that.
Since the arrival of social media, I no longer think this is the case. There's very little actual "news" out there -- everything is present (and misrepresented) from the opinion-driven POV of whoever is presenting it.
And people choose their favourite channels, and stick with them -- so they only ever see one side of the story. How can we expect to bridge that political divide when nobody even has access to the same "facts?" (By the way, that was the subject of another thread today: the notion that to get along, those who rely on "facts" must accept and believe "alternate facts," which seems to me to be a nonsense proposition.)
Just interested in member's opinions and discussion on the topic -- I don't think it merits a heated debate.