How media monetized polarization and other commentary
Media beat: How Media Monetized Polarization
How did our public square become so intensely polarized? By sucking up advertising dollars, the Internet devastated traditional newspapers that treated opinion “like a volatile substance” to be “fenced off from ‘factual’ reporting,” Martin Gurri argues at City Journal. That prompted a switch “led by The New York Times” that “sought to squeeze revenue from digital subscribers lured behind a paywall,” which also “entailed a wrenching pivot from a journalism of fact to a ‘post-journalism’ of opinion” — a term coined by media scholar Andrey Mir. “Rather than news, the paper began to sell what was, in effect, a creed, an agenda, to a congregation of like-minded souls.” The result is a journalism that aims “to commodify polarization and threat.”
Cancel-culture watch: Censorious Imprints
“President Joe Biden is calling for unity, but not everyone is ready to kiss and make up,” Kat Rosenfield archly notes at Reason. The “quest to hold members of the Trump administration accountable has resulted in a remarkable document” originally titled “No Book Deals for Traitors.” More than 500 people in publishing have signed the letter insisting Team Trump alumni be banned from “our beloved publishing houses.” It even draws a comparison to “Son of Sam” laws “that bar convicted felons from profiting off their crimes.” Yet it’s “foolish” and “dangerous” for “those who never want to see another Trump in the White House” to contend we “have nothing to learn from the people who tried, and failed, to make it work the first time.”
Conservative: So Much For Unity
Hours after making “an impassioned call for unity” in his inaugural address, President Biden “broke well-established precedents to fire a top Labor Department official at the behest of his union allies,” reports the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein. Unions had been pushing Biden to prematurely “oust” Peter Robb, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, which “plays an influential role in enforcing labor law through prosecution and settlements.” The counsel is typically “only replaced upon expiration of a term,” and his brusque dismissal “may be an early sign of how Biden intends to govern — speaking publicly in lofty tones about unity, while out of the public eye, he smashes norms to further left-wing policy goals.”
Foreign desk: Biden’s First Blunder
President Biden and his team have thus far eased concerns “that the US will rush into negotiations to re-enter the flawed 2015 nuclear deal with Iran,” but “appointing Robert Malley as special envoy to Iran could change that,” worries Bloomberg Opinion’s Eli Lake. Malley “seems to believe that engagement with rogues is the only way to tame them,” and he would likely not seek a stronger deal as others on Team Biden have recommended. Twelve former Iranian hostages and human-rights activists argued in a letter that Malley’s appointment “would send a chilling signal to the dictatorship in Iran that the United States is solely focused on re-entering the Iran nuclear deal and ignoring its regional terror and domestic” rights abuses. Since Biden has expressed support for “targeted sanctions to punish” Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime, it would undermine the cause “if the administration’s envoy to Iran believes no Iranian leader could ever agree to stop making war on its neighbors.”
Libertarian: Kudos to Liberty-Minded Progs
In response to the riots on the US Capitol, 10 “progressive members of the US House of Representatives have declared that national-security powers should not be expanded, nor civil liberties curtailed,” Walter Olson cheers at Cato.org. In a letter, the lawmakers write that expanding national-security and surveillance powers “has often been our country’s reaction to horrific acts of violence,” but they believe government powers are already too broad and so more shouldn’t be given. Olson agrees: While “no one should try to downplay the seriousness of the attack,” “putting new powers in the hands of the government . . . after a violent outrage” is a road we’ve already walked before. Let’s hope “other liberty-minded lawmakers” follow in the lead of the progressive 10.