* When the media are conveying the news, they are doing their job. When the media are commenting on the news, they are doing their job.
It’s a job so important, its abridgment is prohibited in an iconic Amendment. Playwright Arthur Miller once put the press in perspective when he said, “A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself.” William Randolph Hearst, if not Rupert Murdoch, would probably agree.
Fast forward to now.
Cultural, technological and generational changes have transformed the nature of information delivery.
Choose your own cable-TV bloviator or favorite online website for validation. Outsource your ideology. Avoid the mainstream by denigrating it as establishment bias.
Or just hang out on Facebook.
It’s evolved beyond Zuckerbergian vision. It’s about more than shared opinions, insights, beliefs and experiences. There’s also a news feed. Only problem, the feed is fed by both legitimate and fake news sites. The new news normal: Facebookers beware. An estimated 40 percent of American voters now use Facebook to get their news. Scary.
That’s a lot of consumers with preconceived biases who won’t be wading into the mainstream. That’s a lot of consumers vulnerable to algorithmic misrepresentation. That’s a lot of potential voters further skewing an electorate already susceptible to partisan pandering, spin and flat-out misinformation.
For the record, founder Mark Zuckerberg denies that Facebook, which reaches 1.8 billion people globally and has a market capitalization of some $300 billion, influenced the recent presidential election. He’s less than inclined to mess with the de facto formula of neutrality. And surely those reading about Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump saw right through such a hoax.
Surely.
With apologies to Marshall McLuhan, when the medium is the message, things get dicey in a First Amendment-venerating democratic republic.
* By appointing Steve Bannon as his consigliore, Donald Trump has trampled on whatever cosmetic Administration spin he was aiming for by bringing in Mitt Romney and some people of color for photo-ops. You don’t go to Breitbart and hire the alt-Reich embodiment of racism and anti-Semitism and expect the other side to give you the benefit of the doubt.
* Note to President-Elect Trump. Don’t like the Alec Baldwin send-up on SNL? Suck it up; stay off Twitter; and don’t provide so much material.
* We lost a good one with the passing of Gwen Ifill, 61, the political reporter and co-anchor of “PBS NewsHour.” In an era of over-the-top, celebrity newscasters and anchors, she was a professional–not a performer. We won’t see her kind again.
* Bob Dylan, who was unfashionably late in recognizing his Nobel Prize in Literature, just doubled down by announcing that a schedule conflict will prevent him from going to Stockholm to actually receive his Nobel from the Swedish Academy. A reminder that being an iconic talent for the ages doesn’t ensure class.
* Try catching the Tracey Ullman show on HBO. It’s a forum for the comedian’s impressive versatility, from looks to accents–from royalty to commoners. But the show-stopper is her impersonation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Spot on and hilarious.
And this just in. Merkel, who has been chancellor since 2005, will run for re-election again next year. That’s good news for European stability–as well as Tracey Ullman fans.