“In 1960, Americans
were asked whether they would be pleased, displeased, or unmoved if their son
or daughter married a member of the other political party. Respondents reacted
with a shrug. Only 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of Democrats said
they would be upset by the cross-party union. . . . In 2010, . . . 49 percent
of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats professed concern at interparty
marriage” (75). Ezra Klein quotes a bevy of such articles, polls, and studies throughout
his book Why We’re Polarized to show that animosity has grown quite a
bit between the two parties in the last several decades.
The role of the media
Part of the answer to “Why We’re Polarized?” is the media. Political
news outlets don’t just compete with other political news outlets; they compete
with all other T.V. stations and internet websites for the consumer’s
attention. To get the attention of the consumer, the political news emphasize
stories that feel urgent and/or threatening. “For political reporting, the
principle is: ‘If it outrages, it leads’ . . . . As such, polarized media
doesn’t emphasize commonalities, it weaponizes differences; it doesn’t focus on
the best of the other side, it threatens you with the worst” (149). The people
that do follow news tend to be a partisan bunch, and this leads media to share
stories that are likely to be received by one of the partisan groups, which in
turn creates a more polarized reality.
A balanced book?
Ezra tries hard to make the book accessible to both
conservatives and liberals, which makes sense since his book is a critique of
the entire political system. For the first several chapters, Ezra is eager to
point out hypocrisy on both sides and seems to follow up an example of
ridiculous behavior from the one side with an example from the other. However,
Ezra lets his liberal colors show in chapter nine, The Difference between
Democrats and Republicans.
“Republicans are overwhelmingly dependent on white voters,”
he writes. In contrast, “Democrats are a coalition of liberal whites, African
Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. Republicans are overwhelmingly dependent on
Christians. Democrats are a coalition of liberal and nonwhite Christians, Jews,
Muslims, New Agers, atheists, Buddhists, and so on” (230). Additionally,
Democrats are more ideologically diverse than Republicans: the percentages of
Democrats who identify as moderate and conservative are higher than the
percentages of Republicans who identify as moderate and liberal. This is in
part because “the Republican Party has so repelled nonwhite voters that they
tend to be Democrats no matter their psychological makeup” (231). Therefore, it
isn’t too surprising that Democrats name a wider variety of outlets as their
main news source. For Democrats, “CNN was the top choice with 15 percent,
followed by NPR with 13 percent and The New York Times with 10 percent” (235).
In contrast, 47 percent of the more monolithic Republicans named Fox News as
their main news source.
After making this point, Ezra quotes some Harvard
researchers who say that the liberal media is more “steeped in the traditions
and practices of objective journalism” than media on the right (236). Ezra’s
line of argument is that Fox News’ consolidated power allows them to get away
with practices that most news outlets couldn’t get away with: “Democrats rely
on a diversity of information sources that discipline their flights of fancy,”
he writes (239). It was disappointing to me – especially in a book so full of
social science and data – that Ezra didn’t present any studies or data to back
up his point. His argument feels true and significant to me, probably because of
the way in which media on the right has often embraced pseudo-science to deny or
cast doubt about Global Warming. But it would be nice to have a check against
my own bias with some real study, particularly because Ezra does throw the
journalism industry under the bus in this book. He repeatedly makes the point
that journalists pander to partisans (151) – including a vulnerable moment in
which he admits he has done it himself (163) – but here Ezra says that the diversity
of the Democrats results in improved thoroughness and accuracy in their media.
It doesn’t seem entirely consistent. Is there really a connection between a diversity
of information sources and accuracy?1
I shouldn’t critique Ezra’s argument too much without mentioning
his most persuasive point that the liberal media is more concerned about
accuracy than the conservative media, which is the following story:
In 2009, Tucker Carlson mounted the
stage at the conservative conference CPAC and warned the Right that it needed a
strong journalistic culture of its own. “The New York Times is a liberal
paper, but it is also . . . a paper that actually cares about accuracy,” he
said. “Conservatives need to build institutions that mirror those institutions.”
Riding the hype from that speech, Carlson went on to found the Daily Caller,
which has fallen from its initial high ideals and today mixes conservative
paranoia with slideshows of hot women (239).
There is some lack of nuance in Ezra’s argument in this
chapter, but it’s hard to argue against him when Fox News’ own hot-shot, Tucker
Carlson, makes Ezra’s argument for him.
On the whole, Ezra does a good job of being balanced. It is
impossible to write a book such as this in a completely unbiased view. Jonathan
Haidt’s The Righteous Mind explores a similar topic as this one
(although with a completely different approach) and has a slight bent to the
right and Klein’s Why We’re Polarized has a slight bent to the left.
What to do about it?
Ezra is a political journalist, the co-founder of vox.com, but
he makes a great point in his conclusion that “cuts against [his] professional
interests”: “we give too much attention to national politics, which we can do
very little to change, and too little attention to state and local politics,
where our voices can matter much more” (265). One of the trademarks of modern systems
is that those at the top get all the attention, while the majority of those
functioning in the system are ignored. I first realized this when reading Nassim
Taleb (see here), and
later saw the idea reflected in the writing of ESPN’s soccer journalist Gab
Marcotti (here).
I’m guilty as can be in this case, both because I follow national politics with
absolutely no clue about what goes on in local politics, and because I follow soccer
games played by the titans in Europe without showing interest in local clubs or
smaller clubs. I do think Ezra is right that it takes quite a bit of intentionality
to work against this trend to follow only the most powerful player in the
system. I hope I can follow his (and Gab’s) advice.
[1] If
two conservative media outlets were suddenly birthed into existence, and each
one took 15% away of Fox News viewership, would this result in increased
accuracy among the conservative media?
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