The manipulation of events by the media is, to coin a phrase, the most clear and present danger to democracy and representation today.

Any political body that seeks to take a stand against the continual and deliberate manipulation of the media ‘narrative’ will I think, be harmed beyond repair – most especially in the current climate. That body would likely suffer an immediate and vital loss of favour and support and will find itself in a position from which it can never recover.

But the signs are already there that if action is not taken now, the cost will only become more and more expensive… I also believe that this is a price worth paying…

The fallout from more than 4 years of rampant political lying (and not just in the United States of America) is becoming clearer and clearer – an impact which is made all the more stark since the end of Donald Trump’s particularly nasty and dishonest period of governance.  The political landscape is now replete with liars and charlatans, individuals who feel comfortable defending the indefensible one day, and then criticising the very same thing the next.  Ordinarily, it should be a simple exercise to present such a dichotomy to the public, to expose the moral vacuity of such vacillation…  yet we live in a world where we envelop ourselves in our own social and media bubbles; and this elective isolation is the very thing on which such self-contradictory behaviour depends.

The existence of specific and targeted media ‘channels’ is designed to cater for a variety of preferences… and this is true for all of the content, from drama, to music to …news!  But surely the nature of news (the reporting of the events of the day) should mean that it cannot reflect a bias?  It is evident from today’s society that in fact both the decisions of what to report and how such reporting is bracketed by commentary means that news can cater to people’s preferences, as much as any other form of entertainment.

Commentary alone can be enough to change the tone of an event: during the presidency of Donald Trump, there was a clear divide between news organisations; with competing narratives concerning the events of the day: Laura Ingraham (Fox News) described the border detention centres for children as being like ‘Summer Camps’ or ‘Boarding School’, whereas reports from agencies like the BBC described the scenes as being more like ‘overcrowded cells’.

It is through the description of events that an atmosphere is created and by consequence, the importance that these events ultimately may hold in the mind of the audience.  It is thus that the political landscape has been rendered increasingly more partisan over the years, and it is this very support that enables politicians to display such evident disregard for the truth or democratic process with no fear for losing their position – because they know full well that the political machine (of whatever side they are on) will roll into action and defend their remarks come what may.

Already since the inauguration of President Biden the rhetoric on Fox News has become one of President Biden “bypassing” Republicans – introducing the language of disenfranchisement, despite the fact that President Biden has followed the legal and democratic processes of the nation.  This in itself is probably standard fare, however what really made me shiver was the report from Laura Ingraham concerning “media-driven electoral fraud“.

I quite honestly urge you to watch it.  The expertise and skill with which a perfectly salient and objective point about media bias is recast as an “insidious”, deliberate plot to disenfranchise the viewers of Fox is frightening: not least of all because it is (as far as I am concerned) exactly what Fox News seeks to do with their every breath.  This ‘piece’ by Fox demonstrates clearly the point at which we now find ourselves: one where commentary has replaced news, and as a consequence, it no longer matters what a politician does or doesn’t do – all that matters is what is reported and how.

The political environment is now so firmly partisan, that moral or scientific criteria for evaluation (debate) no longer feature in any of our political argumentation. We live in a world where politicians openly and publicly state that they do not believe scientific reports FFS!

News organisations (well, Fox at any rate) are now launching an attack against the other news organisations, claiming that they have a ‘neo-socialist agenda’.  This division is building on the work that was started by Donald Trump and his ‘fake news’ agenda.  (I find it ironic that today’s ease of access to information is the very thing which makes it so hard to verify information!)

I fully anticipate that any attempt to regulate this will be treated as some form of attack on personal freedoms – just as the closure of certain people’s social media accounts have been branded as ‘censorship’ and ‘blacklisting’, however I am equally sure that the longer this goes on, the harder it will be to eventually tackle, the more ingrained will be the belief that ‘your’ news channel is wrong and that ‘my’ news channel is right.

Fox News has already started the ball rolling; they have moved seamlessly from calling the actual election fraudulent, to now calling the result biased because of the influence of a devious and malicious media.  This position will allow them to defend the election as corrupt even in the face of evidence to the contrary…  They will continue to sow doubt about anybody who is not Fox unless this allowance of bias is controlled…  (And please don’t think this is limited to Fox or to the USA…  have you ever read a British newspaper?)

Commentary must be separated from News – different presenters, different programmes, different journals.  Both must be clearly labelled for what they are, and never be presented together. And as for inviting politicians to comment… well, that is simply asking for trouble isn’t it?