Quick Question
As I was reading the last two chapters, I was struck by the contrast in public engagement with impeachment proceedings between Nixon and Trump. During Nixon’s impeachment hearings related to Watergate, “an estimated 80 percent” of Americans watched. In contrast, during the Ukrainian impeachment hearings, “fewer than 5 percent of Americans watched them on television” (299). While many may have followed the Trump hearings through press reports or social media, the comparison still suggests a stark drop-off in Americans’ attention to and concern for the democratic process. Importantly, Brettschneider also notes that while Nixon’s approval ratings dropped dramatically even among Republicans in response to the hearings, “republicans voted to acquit Trump, whose approval ratings remained steady,” (299). In a way, this indicates that Trump’s supporters didn’t care about Trump’s actions whereas Republicans during Nixon’s time were horrified by his actions. This makes me curious: what has changed? In other words, why did Republicans in Nixon’s era respond so differently from those during Trump’s? And more broadly, what does this shift suggest about how partisan loyalty and media fragmentation may be reshaping Americans’ sense of constitutional responsibility? Looking forward to see what the class and Brettschneider’s answers are…
I believe the dominant platforms of media consumption and political discourse at the time play a massive role in how public opinion is formed. This point may seem obvious, but it is worth forwarding. It may also be completely different than Brettschneider's answer to this question—which I am also curious about.
ReplyDeleteIn the Adams chapter, when discussing responses to the Sedition Act, Brettschneider points out how the press was openly partisan: "In eighteenth-century American, journalistic notions of objectivity had yet to be invented: newspapers were partisan organs, proudly owned and operated by Democratic-Republicans or Federalists deeply enmeshed in their nascent parties" (31). Today, when many people on both sides of the political aisle blame "fake news" from the other side for causing political tension, partisan journalism seems like a terrible thing. Our news should give us facts and allow individuals to form their own opinions based on those facts. However, in the 18th century, newspapers and journalists were openly partisan, allowing for citizens to recognize political biases before they begin reading.
Today, journalism often contains partisan bias, but we do not read the New York Times, or CNN, or Fox recognizing this. Nearly all journals today are proven to have some political bias (see AllSides Media Bias Chart: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart), yet very few of them would openly admit it and be known—by both political poles—as partisan.
The other thing I believe was at play in the Trump vs. Nixon hearings is how the dominant platform for media changed overtime. For Adams, it was print newspapers. For Nixon, it was television (and maybe radio?). For Trump, it was online news outlets and social media. While sources of information went from having open bias to secret bias, people also opted for consumption of short-form media over primary sources. Why should I sit at my television for hours to watch the legal proceedings of Trump's hearing if I can just read the highlights of it on my preferred news outlet or even Twitter? This consumption of short-form media for the sake of efficiency makes it all the more easy for short snippets of partisan media to be seen by citizens as objective truths. During the Trump proceedings, Trump supporters consumed primarily this short-form, bias media without realizing its bias, more easily falling victim to falsehoods (i.e. it's a "witch-hunt") that led them to continue to support Trump. During the Nixon proceedings, Nixon supporters viewed the objective facts of the proceedings, heard quotes from both sides, and formed their own opinions on the truth.
I also want to this comment to be seen as a response to Gabe's point in our last seminar—that falsehoods are not proportionally more prevalent in our modern media than they used to be, it just seems so because there is more information overall. The changes in the technology we use as platforms for media consumption have allowed for falsehoods (often in the form of biased truths) to be far more pervasive in public discourse.