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OPINIONS | Senator Josh Hawley In Sign Of Broken News Business

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Like a toddler who feels neglected and tries to grab attention by slamming a spoon into the tray of his highchair, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) last week was the only one to oppose Finland and Sweden joining NATO. voted for. He said adding two military-skilled Russian neighbors to NATO would somehow weaken America’s deterrence against China.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an adult and therefore not always a colleague, said: and sweden. That night, Holly appeared on Fox Her News and received Tucker’s Carlson’s blessing.

This multiple episode of Senators using the Senate as a stepping stone to their cable TV dressing room shows Chris Stirewalt lamenting in his new book, Broken News. He was washed off Fox News by a tsunami of viewer anger on Election Night 2020 when he rightly said Donald Trump lost Arizona. He says there is a supply side problem in today’s journalism.

“What did Trump say? What did Nancy Pelosi say about what Trump said? What did Kevin McCarthy say about what Pelosi said about what Trump said? What did McCarthy say about what Rachel Maddow said about what Pelosi said about what Trump said?”

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But journalism also has a demand-side problem. At the time, journalists assumed that news consumers demanded “more information, faster, better.” Instantaneous communication via passive media (video and TV) is now providing what lazy consumers want.

More than half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read at the 6th grade level or below. However, with video you only need to look at the screen. But such passive media cannot convey a civilization defined by ideas. Our creed nations “need written words and a common culture to understand them,” says Stirewalt.

In the 1830s, new printing methods greatly reduced the cost of creating a culture of literate news readers. In the 1930s, however, radio, though a bigger game changer than the television it paved the way for, became a passively absorbed alternative to the relatively difficult of literacy. , he says Stirewalt.

Technology — radio, television, the Internet — has transformed journalism from reporting what happened to reporting what is happening, and now allows passive news consumers to dictate their political I turned it into giving the emotional experience of being validated. “By 1983,” Stirewalt reports: 1 person Ahead of all newspaper use by offering a “passive, more emotionally engaging product”: … internalizing ideas. ”

David Von Drehle: When Josh Hawley thought he couldn’t slouch any further…

Between 2004 and 2020, a quarter of US newspapers disappeared. Nowadays it is much easier to get national news than local news. This fosters the belief that national governments are all-important. According to Stirewalt, domestic journalists accept a moral obligation to “go to war” with the president.

The moment was ripe for Twitter. Stirewalt describes it as “not only depleting the value of journalism by dribbling the report in a constant grunt, but also by creating a large echo chamber in which affirmations of self-esteem can be yelled at. We call it a platform that enhances the sense of sexuality.

Technology has created a fusion of journalism and politics, degrading both. This shows the seamlessness of Holley’s grandstand on the Senate floor and his cable self-praise in his news. No wonder, says Stirewalt, “the news industry treats politics like a sport.”

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Consumers of emotionally influencing journalism, fans metaphorically wear red shirts against the blue shirts that are the colors of the team. This journalism always pays attention to politics instead of government, to gaining power rather than to the movement, so that the players on the field must be “in the stands, not trying to win the game.” It makes me want to show off to my fans,” he says Stirewalt.

Holly is thus a prime example of the politics that new journalism encourages. Hence his silly vote for NATO expansion — clenching a spoon with a toddler’s fist, pounding the tray of a highchair and saying, “Watch out for me!” Holly, aka Splinter (who enjoyed a video of him walking through the Capitol and escaping his Jan. 6 mob he recommended) is a symptomatic senator.

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