COMM 317a: 'Perils of Moderation'

To give due credit ... I first saw this in the State Journal-Register, went looking for it on line and found it in a paper from Waltham, Mass. It's by Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts, a couple who have been covering Washington politics since the later Paleolithic age and now write an op-ed column, on the "perils of moderation" and the role (they believe) the media play in dumbing down our political debate in this country.

It's worth reading in full (especially since I'm assigning it), but here's a snippet we ought to consider:

Look at Rep. Joe Wilson, the backbencher from South Carolina who rocketed to fame by uttering two words, "you lie," during the president's healthcare address to Congress. Following his outburst, Wilson probably got more ink and airtime than all House moderates put together.

"See, this is part of what happens," [President] Obama said of the Wilson incident. "It just ... becomes a big circus instead of us focusing on health care."

This "big circus" stems partly from a positive development. Technology has broken the stranglehold over information once enjoyed by the big newspapers and networks. Far more voices, reflecting a wider range of viewpoints, now participate in the national debate. But there is also a downside to this fragmentation of the market.

Walter Cronkite, who died earlier this year, never had to shout to get attention. When he was an anchor for CBS, four out of five Americans watched one of the network news shows. They didn't have a choice; his audience was guaranteed.

Today's audience has countless options for gathering information: from Webcasts and YouTube to Facebook feeds and iPhone apps. The Glenn Becks on the right and Keith Olbermanns on the left have to scratch and claw for every ear and eyeball. The temptation to be loud and shrill - to do a Joe Wilson - is overwhelming. As the president told Bob Schieffer on CBS' "Face the Nation": "They can't get enough of conflict; it's catnip to the media right now."

We share Obama's fear that this culture of conflict leads to a "coarsening of our political dialogue." And we applaud his goal of providing a "good model" for the country and making "civility interesting." But the stakes are far higher than tone or temperament.

The polarization of politics now challenges the basic concept that independent professional journalists can produce a commonly accepted body of shared information. Not only is Walter Cronkite dead - the values and institutions he stood for are dying, and that makes the president's job far more difficult.

As Obama told the Toledo Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding."

Cokie and Steven Roberts have a point about the "coarsening of our political dialogue," and they're probably right that the media play a role in it. How does today's column in the Journal-Register - and the paper in Waltham, Mass. - fit together with Howard Kurtz' column in today's Washington Post? (See below.)