uboat53 - Tumblr blog

uboat53 · 4 days ago

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I saw a take on Tumblr recently that really resonated with me and I wanted to take a bit of time and explore it. Anyone ready for a LONG RANT (TM)? (TL;DR: at the bottom)

INTRODUCTION

The alleged killing of Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione has been in the news a lot recently, I'm sure you haven't missed it, and one of the interesting things to note has been the disconnect between the universal reporting of the event in a negative light and the fact that a significant minority of the American public, over 15% in a recent poll, find it to be acceptable or are at least as concerned about Thompson's actions as they are about Mangione's alleged actions. For the record, that 15% is still less than the number of Americans who believe that they will have to resort to violence to resolve political issues, yet we haven't seen the same level of sustained, negative coverage of that issue. One might say, "oh, but we haven't seen any specific acts of political violence", but, of course, we have; two people attempted to shoot president-elect Trump during his candidacy this year, Trump himself incited a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol less than four years ago, vigilantes like George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse, and Daniel Penny have been killing "suspicious" or "unruly" people in public for years, and, of course, the recent killing of UHC CEO Brian Thompson was, itself, an act of political violence.

This brings me to the take I read recently, which made the interesting point that this particular killing and the way it has been covered brings together both left-wing and right-wing grievances. Specifically, the left-wing grievance of class conflict, that the majority of Americans have been taken advantage of by those with wealth and power while opportunities for redress have been systematically closed off, while the coverage of it has also brought up the right-wing grievance that the media does not give voice to broad swathes of the American public. You should read the post itself, it's not very long.

THE LEFT-WING

It's pretty well-known by now, so I'll detail the left-wing side of this fairly quickly. Basically it goes like this: people with wealth and power are able to influence politics in such a way that they can manipulate the law to keep themselves in power and to draw even more wealth and power from the system and keep them from others. It's not widely discussed in political debate except as an applause line to incite anger in people, but I'd say that's a fairly widely held view; the only difficulty in addressing it is that people have widely disparate opinions on how it should be addressed.

Mr. Thompson's killing is an extreme act and one that I disapprove of, but I also can't necessarily find fault in the reasoning that apparently was used as justification. Mr. Thompson's actions weren't illegal, but they also caused pain and suffering on a scale that actual criminals would struggle to match. The fact that his actions were impossible to address in any legal way does emphasize the way that the wealthy and powerful have turned the law into a tool to protect themselves and leaves only illegal acts as recourse.

THE RIGHT-WING

I've talked a lot about right-wing media and the way that conservatives/Republicans view the mainstream media in the past, but this take was particularly interesting, so I'm going to quote directly from the post I linked above because I think these are important points.

"A lot of them come down to lacking a legitimized voice. There's no John Oliver out there who will elequently express rural American frustration where the nation is willing to listen. They have to settle for clown shows like Fox News, then get mocked for watching the clown show. A lot of right-wing anger comes of being constantly told the world works one way, while their everyday experience hammers in the opposite reality. (Like hearing "No one can live on $8/hour!" while your life is shattered by the loss of an $8/hour job that moved overseas.) Everyone knows the biggest media outlets are corrupt and out of touch. But I think this is the first time most white leftists in the US have experienced that dissonance so viscerally. Every time a news anchor mentions the public outrage over insurance… then pivots smoothly back to rehashing the manhunt as if anyone still cares about police proceedural bullshit, it's like we're being slapped in the face with a $10,000 silk glove."

As the above points out, FOX News and right-wing media in general are a terrible substitute for mainstream news, but if mainstream news is reflecting 0% of your lived experience and even mocking it, a "news" source that reflects even 5% of your own perspective can seem better than nothing. For the most part, white liberals who live in the kind of reasonably well off urban/suburban areas that are shared by the majority of American journalists have been able to see a good proportion of their worldview reflected in the news. Now, on the other hand? Let's face it, most liberals like myself, even if we disagree with the killing itself and find it unacceptable, at least have sympathy for the reasoning behind it.

Guess what you won't find any real coverage of in any significant mainstream media outlet?

THE MEDIA

Here's the thing about the media, we still have this idea that it's run by journalists, but that hasn't been true in a long while. It's certainly the case that media executives used to view their news divisions as a public service (though I think we can agree that other prejudices still limited coverage of a good deal of issues), but the last several decades have seen increasing commoditization of the news media. I don't think at this point that any news provider other than non-profits like PBS, NPR, and ProPublica can genuinely be said to be covering the news with a commitment to actual information.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think many of the journalists themselves are deliberately trying to promote the greater agenda of the owners of these outlets, but it's been hard to miss these last few years how wealthy owners have intervened in coverage decisions and the workings of editorial boards. Some of these interventions are about profit and some are about ideology, but it's hard to argue that any of them contribute to better coverage of the issues of the day. Against the desires of an owner who demands a certain type of coverage or even a lack of coverage, there really isn't anything an individual journalist can do.

I've also written before how specific journalists I follow because of their insightful reporting have vanished from mainstream news sources. I've been tracking this for a while and it's definitely the case that the scope of debate and discussion in political media has shrunk, but what's interesting is how it's shrunk. Partisan issues are still widely discussed and even racial issues get some coverage, but you don't see any discussion of class issues anymore. Specifically, you don't see any discussion of wealth inequality, income inequality, or systemic issues that are affecting the ability of Americans to make a living.

And you may say "hey wait a second, I see lots of news coverage about how hard it is for Americans out there" and you'd be right, but how much of that coverage actually reports on stagnant wages? How much reporting do you see on wage theft, by far the single largest type of theft by dollar value in this country? How about wealthy people who refuse to pay on contracts and settle for pennies on the dollar? The president-elect himself is particularly famous for doing this. You'll also almost never see coverage, and certainly not sustained coverage, of market consolidation like the fact that only two companies control over 80% of the market for diapers, four companies control over 85% of the market for US beef, or how six companies control the vast majority of media outlets in the US. This type of market consolidation is referred to as an "oligopoly" and it's pretty similar in the way it destroys market economies to a monopoly.

In other words, you see a TON of coverage about how Americans are struggling, but you almost never see coverage of WHY they are struggling. Workers are struggling because there are fewer and fewer employers which are larger and larger and can dictate lower wages. Consumers are struggling because there is less and less competition in the vast majority of products they buy, allowing companies to raise prices without consequence. Small companies are struggling because larger companies are increasingly able to elbow them out of distribution channels by using their size to demand exclusivity contracts or their market share to dictate prices. Individuals are struggling because the wealthy and powerful have turned any avenue for possible redress into a long, drawn-out legal battle so that only those with the money for years of lawyer's bills have any hope of even getting to court much less having any wrongs righted.

None of this draws any significant media coverage and it's hard not to notice that drawing coverage to it would negatively impact the interests of the wealthy and powerful people who own those outlets.

THE CROSSOVER

And this brings me to the crossover between liberal complaints about corporations and the wealthy and conservative complaints about media bias. Conservative elites may complain about the supposed "liberal agenda" of the mainstream media, but if you ask the average conservative about their issues they're more likely to talk about how the media serves corporate power and buttresses a system that keeps average people down. It's an interesting complaint to liberals who may note that right-wing media is even more solicitous and supportive of the interests of the rich and powerful, but just because they haven't found a good solution doesn't mean that those on the right don't have a point.

This event in particular has highlighted how the mainstream media controls the scope of allowable debate and closes off topics related to economic and political power that are of particular interest to lower and middle class Americans across the political spectrum. The bias here, then, is not political in the sense of partisan politics, but political in that it relates to who is allowed to wield power and how. I think, because of the way the political parties have shaken out, liberals have been far more aware of this particular bias in government and conservatives have been far more aware of this bias in media.

PREDICTIONS

Look, I think if this shooting is a one-off and there are no further incidents that expose this particular fault in our political system, then this will probably die off and we'll go back to our usual political corners. That said, I don't think it will be. The fact is that the widespread economic problems are becoming harder and harder to ignore and, as they affect more and more educated people, more people who are able to trace their systemic nature are going to be radicalized. More to the point, these kinds of incidents tend to spur "copycat" attacks and it seems likely that that will be the case here as well.

If more attacks occur and if they are covered (or not covered) in the same way by the mainstream media, it will likely increase the movement of Americans, particularly younger Americans to alternative sources of news such as podcasts and social media. This movement will make it more difficult for wealthy and powerful people to control the scope of political discussion but, as we've seen, it will also hasten the epistemological crisis we have as a country.

(Normally I don't like to use jargon like "epistemology", but in this case it is simply the shortest way to describe the issue we are having where people don't agree on basic facts. When you hear "epistemological crisis", don't worry about the big words, just think about how Americans can't agree on things like violent crime rates, immigration statistics, or economic data and how this makes it impossible to agree on policies that would address issues that the data would show.)

Long-term, I think it's likely that, at some point, pressure will build to the level that requires some of these problems to be fixed. Ultimately the fixes to those problems will come from the left; the only solutions that the right has to offer at this point have been to cut regulations and lower taxes and, let's face it, if those were going to work one would think that corporations making record profits would have already done so. I'm not sure which of the left's solutions will ultimately be adopted or which of them will actually be successful, but it's fairly clear to me that at some point at least some of them will be passed into law if only to attempt to stem the increase in violence born of desperation.

TL;DR:

The killing of a health insurance CEO and the coverage of that incident have revealed an interesting crossover between liberal complaints about corporate power and conservative complaints about media bias. We've seen media coverage overwhelmingly ignore, minimize, or portray in a negative light the millions of Americans who have been less concerned about the killing of a health insurance CEO than about his actions while alive.

While murder absolutely should be covered in a negative light, the broader story of how this particular murder came about is also important and the particular issue here deserves to be covered objectively and in detail without minimizing the concerns of those on one side of the issue; coverage we are definitively not getting from the US mainstream media. Given all of that, it sure sounds like the complaints of liberal and conservative Americans (the voters, not necessarily the leadership, elected or otherwise) are just facets of the same issue. Maybe there's room for common ground after all, though I don't think American political and economic leaders will like it.

#politics #us politics #economics #ceo shooting #us media #news media #corporate power #long rant (tm)

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