Sulzberger, who in a long Columbia Journalism Review essay last month defended his paper’s commitment to what he called “independent journalism.” I am modifying a phrase used recently by New York Times publisher A.G. The hack gap is closing to the point where it seems necessary now to defend the existence of independent-opinion journalism. Yet they have also become talismans used to ward off any facts or beliefs that complicate the progressive narrative. One can now discern on the left at least the embryonic formation of a similar alt-universe, in which any inconvenient challenge is reflexively dismissed as “bothsidesing,” “concern trolling,” some form of bigotry, or any other of an ever-expanding list of buzzwords used to delineate wrong-think.Īll these buzzwords describe real evils. In 2010, libertarian writer Julian Sanchez described the sealed universe of conservative thinking as “epistemic closure” - any source that refuted conservative claims was automatically deemed untrustworthy. Where it was once rare to encounter some pseudo-fact circulating among the left, it is now routine to find people believing Michael Brown was shot with his hands up, lab-leak is a debunked conspiracy theory, or that Republicans are routinely banning instruction about racism. Along with their partisan messaging system, progressives are constructing a counterpart to the information bubble in which conservatives have long resided. After years complaining why liberals lacked their own version of Fox News, we can now see something like it, cobbled together from websites and cable-news programming.Īt the same time, the downsides of this new media world have become increasingly obvious.
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The asymmetric structure of the media 15 or 20 years ago, which shaped Republicans into a party free to violate norms while Democrats felt constrained to follow them, is giving way to a more balanced system.
Liberalism as a whole benefits from a strong critique from the left as well as the right.Īs a political matter, the conservative-messaging apparatus no longer operates without any parallel opposition. My work as a liberal writer is far more interesting today than it was when I began. The absurdity of the 1990s world in which the ideological spectrum of mainstream thought ended at the center left needed to die. There are more writers from more perspectives and bringing more expertise, and more of them are not white men. The internet has opened up far more voices on the left, in every way. On the whole, the profession has changed for the better. Breaking from the pack to question a shared belief on the left is no longer a prized trait it is now possible to build a career unswervingly affirming progressive movement stances. Progressive opinion journalism has changed even more dramatically. The mainstream media has moved distinctly to the left, and its once-universal practice of covering every factual debate merely by alternating quotes from opposing parties while treating the truth as unknowable has become rarer. Over time, these critiques have exerted a profound effect on the news media. Democrats would face swift internal criticism if they fudged the truth or violated any ethical norm, while Republicans, as long as they remained faithful to conservative doctrine, could count on the support from their chorus no matter what they did. Conservative pundits usually came out of the conservative movement, saw themselves as working toward an ideological project, and operated with the tight discipline of a movement. They were expected to advance original arguments rather than echo a common message, and the rewards of career advancement generally went to those willing to criticize Democrats and fellow progressives. Liberal pundits tended to see themselves as journalists rather than activists.
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The second was hack gap, which described the imbalance in professional ethos between left and right. One was working the refs, which was borrowed from the sports world to describe how Republicans pushed reporters and editors rightward with nonstop complaints of bias. Two phrases came into circulation that expressed this frustration. The conservative media was slavishly partisan, and the “liberal” media was filled with stories about how Al Gore was seen as a pathological liar, or John Kerry an effete flip-flopper. Even worse, the mainstream media had become highly sensitive to charges of liberal bias and habitually treated Republican-promoted narratives, however superficial or farcical, as inherently newsworthy. The Republican Party had an unapologetically partisan media apparatus - anchored by Fox News, founded in 1996 - that it used to promote its message. A couple decades ago, liberals began to see the structural asymmetry in the news media as one of the major problems in American politics.
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