Toobin begins by debunking the conventional belief that "liberals and conservatives . . . live in separate bubbles, where they watch different television networks, frequent different web sites, and live in different realities." The implication of this view, Toobin says, is that the two sides "resemble each other in their twisted views of reality. Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity, in other words, are two sides of the same coin."
He then refers to a new book that shows that this is precisely wrong. Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics, by Benkler, Faris, and Roberts, is based on their academic study of the way stories with strong partisan appeal get circulated in the media and how this differs on the right and on the left.
Quoting Toobin about the book's thesis:
"The two sides are not, in fact, equal when it comes to evaluating "news" stories, or even in how they view reality. Liberals wants facts; conservatives want their biases reinforced. Liberals embrace journalism; conservatives believe propaganda. . . . [T]he right-wing media ecosystem . . . has been much more susceptible to disinformation, lies, and half-truths."
The book's lead author, Benkler, is a Harvard professor. Toobin explains that his is not a book of media criticism but rather an academic data analysis of "millions of online stories, tweets, and Facebook-sharing data points."
The authors of the book found that "something very different was happening in right-wing media than in centrist, center-left and left-wing media." In the right-wing media, false stores are launched on extreme web sites, such as InfoWars, where rules of professional journalism do not apply. The stories are then picked up by outlets like Fox News and others that do claim to follow journalistic norms but often fail in that function.
According to the book, "This pattern is not mirrored on the left wing." Toobin then describes how they prove their case. "The most persuasive sections of the book concern case studies of stories that did, or did not, go viral in these politically disconnected universes. Consider two stories that emerged over the course of the 2016 Presidential campaign: in one, Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in acts of pedophilia, which included the abuse of Haitian refugee children and visits to an orgy island -- preposterous claims for which there was no shred of evidence.
"In the other, Donald Trump supposedly raped a thirteen-year-old girl, in 1994 -- something that he was accused of in a lawsuit filed in 2016. At first, there was great interest on the left in the Trump story. There were five times as many Facebook shares of the most widely shared article about it . . . as of the most widely shared story about the imagined Clinton pedophilia.
"But all that chatter was followed by near silence in the liberal and mainstream media, as the story failed to survive the most basic fact-checking scrutiny. . . ." He goes on to explain that, on the left, media consumers are more likely to measure stories with their own judgment, as well as turning to fact-checking sites.
"The Clinton orgy-island story met a very different fate in the right-wing media, which pushed versions of it over the course of the campaign. . . . The dynamic on the right, the authors found, 'rewards the most popular and widely viewed channels at the very top of the media ecosystem for delivering stories, whether true or false, that protect the team, reinforce its beliefs, attack opponents, and refute any claims that might threaten 'our' team from outsiders.
"Referring to the orgy-island story, the authors note that 'not one right-wing outlet came out to criticize and expose this blatant lie for what it was. In the grip of the propaganda feedback loop, the right-wing media ecosystem had no mechanism for self-correction, and instead exhibited dynamics of self-reinforcement, confirmation, and repetition so that readers, viewers and listeners encountered multiple versions of the same story, over months, to the point that both recall and credibility were enhanced."
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So . . . now we have it confirmed by an academic study. Yes, there is something different about Fox and all its friends.
Ralph
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