FIXING CONGRESS PT. 2: Political power and the media

Welcome to this Enconversation. I’m Rachel Lewis Hilburn. 

My guest today insists that the media has more influence over what goes on in politics today than any other factor. He also says that most Americans are not media literate. And while we all think we’re maybe a little smarter than the guy across the hall, research shows that we’re not. Most of us are not very media literate. 

So today, we’re exploring what this means with Michael Johnson, co-author of Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People.  He’s also a former member of the Ford White House Staff, later serving as Press Secretary and Chief of Staff for former House Republican Leader Bob Michel. And he is a co-founder of The Congressional Institute. 

In this second installment of our conversation, we find out why Michael Johnson says one of the most important steps to media literacy is challenging your own beliefs and seeking out other points of view. And why that matters for society writ large.

Rachel LH:  You assert the media is more powerful than lobbyists, than money, than even political parties in terms of its influence on politics. That's quite an assertion. How is it more powerful than all of those things?

Michael Johnson:  Now when I talk about media, I'm talking about the media, industrial complex: social media, the traditional media, all of it, what I call infotainment…The media has so profoundly changed over the last decade or so, the dominance of the traditional, I shouldn't say traditional, I guess media, legacy media has dissipated to such a degree that social media has become the primary source of news and information and communication among the people. And social media has a totally different standard of engagement than the news media that you and I are familiar with has had. 

So the whole culture of media has changed and it has become so influential and members of Congress depend upon it so much. In all of that context, media, the whole spectrum of media has more influence over what goes on in politics than any other influence in my mind.

RLH: And some of it's trustworthy and some of it, of course, is blatant misinformation or propaganda. How can people navigate that? I mean, there are really smart people who think that they're great at figuring out what's disinformation and what isn’t. And what we know from examining some of that is that people are pretty terrible at sometimes finding those distinctions. They're not as good as they think they are. So there's obviously some missing education when it comes to figuring out the media and how and whom to trust. Is legacy media, what some people call the mainstream media, is that generally trustworthy?

MJ:  Probably not. When you say generally I don't think it is. And what is really needed is media literacy. Media literacy has been around for a long time, but people aren't media literate anymore because the media itself has been transformed and changed and is changing so rapidly, particularly with artificial intelligence, that most Americans just aren't media literate. They don't know what to believe and what not to believe. Their judgments are based so much more these days on emotion rather than common sense and an understanding of what's true and what isn't, and in fact, what truth is.  

You're right. People find it very frustrating and very difficult to know what's true and what isn’t. There are a number of ways to do that. But frankly, Rachel, I don't have the answers. I've been thinking an awful lot about that since the book came out, and it is really a complex challenge that people face, we all face.

RLH: Can you give us an example of why you don't believe what we call legacy media, mainstream media is completely trustworthy? What's an example of a story that they really all got wrong?

MJ:  RussiaGate. And that's now back on the front pages, but we use that example in the book. That was one of the most embarrassing and tragic examples of media irresponsibility that we've seen in a very, very long time. It was just simply untrue – the idea that Trump was an agent of Russia and there was a conspiracy going on between Putin and Trump – was just not true. And the origination of all of that really came from a now-totally disavowed analysis or paper that was paid for and originated out of the Hillary Clinton campaign. 

RLH: You’re talking about the Steele Dossier–

MJ: Yeah. Yes, exactly.

RLH: You said in the book, too, that Bob Woodward of Watergate fame even looked for that link. Look for evidence of the link and–

MJ: Yeah, he just couldn't find it… That's a really good example of where the decline has occurred. I think there are, if I can real quickly, there are two things that have impacted the media to make me believe it is far less trustworthy than it was. One is the advent of a whole new attitude in media that we no longer have to give equal sides to a story.

And boy, that has really cut to the core of what our news media is supposed to do for us. Give us both sides or several sides of a story and let us decide what we think is right. Now it has become more dominated by opinion and political views so that we're not getting both sides. We're not understanding. 

When I was a lobbyist, I used to sit down with a member of Congress to advocate for something we're familiar with –  Alzheimer's funding, and I would say, here's where we think we are. Here's what we believe you need to do. Here's what the opposition is going to tell you. 

And so the member of Congress, they're intelligent folks, most of 'em, they can make up their own mind, and they know that what I came into the room with was what I believed to be a factual and pragmatic look at the issue so that I kept their trust. And that's pretty much by the wayside with the legacy media now. 

RLH: Well, let me play devil's advocate with you–

MJ: Okay.

RLH: I spoke with an environmental reporter who writes for an international publication. He is also a professor of journalism at a very well-respected university. And I asked him about the both- side issue, and his answer was, when you're talking about the earth, the only place that humans have to live right now, there isn't really another side to that. And so when you hear that kind of opinion, how do you process that?

MJ: Well, he's talking about something that is basic science. And in situations like that, there may very well be, it may be absent another side of the story or anything on the other side that's worth engaging in in terms of the discourse of it, but that's not what we're talking about. 

We're talking about public policies and political engagement, where, in most cases, there are very legitimate different opinions. And that is just a product of what we were talking about earlier, the extremes on both sides dictating action and attitudes. Surely there is legitimate space in the middle of the political spectrum and in the whole concept of centrism, which I'm a big fan of, where a legitimate opinion exists, and the media in my mind has an obligation to present that different point of view so that we can make up our own minds. That's the essence of it. 

Of course, there are situations where someone presents a point of view, and the other point of view is some nutcase on the outskirts of reality. That's not necessary. 

RLH: What you're saying is when it comes to public policy, as constituents watch legislation make its way through the process that legacy media, mainstream news organizations are not robustly exploring the implications of both opinions. Is that kind of what you're saying?

MJ: Pretty much, yeah. I think I'm a little more cynical than you. I think they've explored it and they're ignoring it because of their own political proclivities and their own philosophical bent or ideological bent. 

Look, the media thrives on division these days and it thrives on defiance, and that's where the money comes from, and that's where the ratings show up… So I think it's more of a deliberate thing and more of a business model that is enhanced by people who have access to the media that have very strong political views. And you put all of that together and you got yourself a real recipe for disaster.

RLH: And I just have to say, you made the point that division, making people upset or angry probably makes more money. It certainly keeps the eyeballs on the content. That same division, keeping people upset and angry, is what helps politicians raise money and keep their seats. 

But staying with news though, are you saying that the news organizations themselves generally have a political agenda, or are you saying the individual journalists within those organizations or both? I mean, how did that creep in? We know for example, that Fox News was started as the conservative answer to what people on the right were seeing as a liberal news media. So would it be fair to say that Fox News definitely has a clear political agenda?

MJ: Sure. Now it's important to include in that discussion the fact that I don't know how much of Fox News or CNN or MSNBC is pure, total opinion, and that incitement that gives them the clicks and the eyeballs. Isolate those times on cable news shows where the news is delivered straightforwardly… 

But sure, most of the cable stuff is not news at all. It's opinion. And even – this is my show. It's not my newscast, it's my show.

RLH: And Americans don't seem to distinguish clearly between opinion, punditry, analysis, and actual straight hard news.

MJ: Yeah, because they're getting so little hard news.

RLH: Well, exactly. Which launched with the 24 Hour News monster a few decades ago.

MJ: That's a very good term. News monsters. I'll have to use that. I hope you don't mind me stealing it.

RLH: Go ahead. But I guess the idea was they had to fill all this time, so they started getting pundits on, so it became a yap- flapping fest, which is speculation. It's not news. So then part of media literacy, it sounds like, is educating the news consumer about some of those differences because they're all just mushed into one big mess on the cable channels. There's a big difference between all of those things though. So how do you educate someone? What can someone look for – what's a good guide for the difference between punditry, which maybe isn't as helpful as we thought and even isn't as accurate in terms of shifting potential outcomes and actual news? How do we know?

MJ: Well, there's a couple things. In your own behavior, applying simple common sense to what you're hearing and seeing on the tube or reading in the paper is a good place to start. If what you're hearing sounds biased and looks biased, it probably is biased. So you have to take that with a grain of salt and say, look, this is one side of a story. I'll listen to that and absorb it, but I'm not buying it. It's too early to buy yet. I need to do a lot more window shopping and find out where the other sides are. 

There are a number of organizations out there now that are trying to steer people toward objective news and give them the kind of education and literacy that they really need. And it would be helpful if a lot of those organizations were better known. And you're going to ask me to name one and I can't offhand. Well,

RLH: Well, there's All Sides, I think. 

MJ: Yeah, right. Yeah, that's another good,

RLH: Yeah. And as a matter of fact, that's a resource that you mentioned in the book Fixing Congress, and that is also a resource that I have offered to several people with whom I've had these discussions about media.

MJ: Great. Yeah,

RLH: And I get the strong sense because of later conversations with the same folks that the interest in identifying bias is more theoretical. And when it gets down to brass tacks, people aren't as interested in self-inquiry and exploring their own biases and how they might shape the content they consume. They're just not as interested. That takes work, Michael.

MJ: Yes. Well, it takes more than work. It takes a willingness to conclude that identity politics and living within a single political and ideological structure that most people are living in now – don't bother me with the facts. My mind's made up. I like what this guy says, so I'm going to follow that train of thought. We've developed that tribalism in our belief structure that is just damaging and people have to recognize that. 

I do it, my brother Gary does it, my wife, Thalia, who spent 20, 30 years in broadcast journalism does it. You have to force yourself into opinions that are contrary to what you think in order to give you that balance and make you able to engage your common sense rather than your emotion and your comfort level. Just got to get out of your comfort level in politics. It's not healthy and it's never intended to be part of it.

RLH: There have been a few researchers who've identified the dopamine hit that you get either when you condemn somebody else, condescend to somebody else. That was a point that was explored quite in depth in Love Your Enemies. And so  our brains are not only wired to condescend to other people, but they're also wired to look for evidence that we are right. 

So what you're talking about, again, theoretically makes so much sense, but what kind of incentive, like what's on the other side of that that's more than virtuous? Why does this even matter? 

Why does your average citizen really need to take this idea to heart and think about what it means to get outside of their own echo chamber and perhaps even consider for the first time that they are in an echo chamber? Why is that so important?

MJ: Well, for several reasons, but the primary one…we've gotten away from a sense of community, we've gotten away from religiosity, we've gotten away from the idea of neighborhood and friendships and engaging each other at the baseball field and all of those kinds of things. 

What has that led to? It's led to an abandonment of the virtues and the values on which this country is based, which make up the American character and are able to guide you to the right decisions. And if you can take those values: honesty, humility, so many others, and let them guide your decision making, then you've got a base from which to work…

The values and the virtues that we have so much depended upon in our past have just really been decimated. And the politicians on both sides of the aisle that have dismissed them because it isn't convenient for what they want to do or what they want to believe – just, well, I'll just ignore that one, have really encouraged that in society and what you were talking about is exactly a result of that. 

You can be tribal if you just decide what values you're going to keep and what values you're going to discard and what part of those values you're going to accept and reject because you get outside that comfort level.

RLH: I really appreciate what you're saying about connecting values to the quality of a community.

Rachel Lewis Hilburn: Michael Johnson is co-author of the book, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People. Another book mentioned in this conversation: Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt – by Arthur Brooks. 

Thanks for watching. See you for part 3 when we explore Congressional reforms. 

For Encore, I’m Rachel Lewis Hilburn.