The average American spends an hour consuming news daily. Whether we're reading right-leaning or left-leaning news, articles often grab our attention by utilizing language or focusing on stories that inspire anger or fear, and often serve to reinforce our preconceptions. It's often anger- or fear-provoking articles that best grab our attention and serve as "click-bait". News organizations can now quickly judge how well an article garners clicks, and are able to continually refine their techniques so as to demand more and more of our attention. Since we spend so much time ingesting such articles, the news inevitably leads to an increase in anger and fear even beyond the hour we spend reading it. Most Americans cite the news as a source of stress in their life, myself included. And while the news is sometimes actionable (i.e. voting, helping out candidates with our money or time, canvassing, attending protests, writing our congressman, and getting involved with local politics), most of the news we read is beyond our control. It's not necessary to read the news every day in order to take meaningful action- we use this excuse to justify our time spent, but in reality we're spending so much time reading the news because it is addictive, particularly in the modern fear/anger-provoking format.
And by ingesting polarizing news, we become irrationally pessimistic. As Steven Pinker notes in Enlightenment Now, most of us (even academics and journalists) are unaware of the innumerable ways in which the world is improving. The news provides us with dramatic stories about destruction, death, and decline that our minds interpret as a pattern, when really they're the exception. Over 100,000 people lift themselves out of extreme poverty daily- extreme poverty will likely become a thing of the past in some of our lifetimes. War? Increasingly uncommon. Teenage pregnancy rate in the US? Currently lower than it's been in 50 years. Divorce rate in the US? Declining since 1980's. Global deforestation? Is now slower than reforestation- net reforestation the size of India is expected in the next 30 years. And while global warming is clearly a vital threat to humanity that we must do everything we can to address, we may be underestimating the exponential growth in knowledge/technology that is likely to help us weather the storm (rapidly declining costs of solar power and electric car batteries, for instance).
The news also inspires hate, on both sides of the political spectrum. Yes, Fox News regularly features anecdotes of illegal immigrants that are criminals, leading their viewers to incorrectly assume that illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crime than citizens (actually they're LESS likely to commit crimes, and cities with higher percentages of illegal immigrants are SAFER than cities of comparable size). But likewise, readers of left-leaning news get the impression that Trump voters are all racists and deserving of our contempt. Yes, white republicans on average score worse on implicit bias testing towards Blacks, but that doesn't give one license assume all republicans are racist. Is it any worse to be prejudiced towards republicans than prejudiced towards minorities?
Liberal contempt for rural and working class white folks is likely one of the chief reasons Trump barely lost to Biden. How is it possible, after all the bad press, all the scandals, all the lies, for Trump to still get 47% of the popular vote? How is it possible that most republicans favor liberal policies (53% of republicans support a wealth tax, 62% of republicans support raising minimum wage to $15, 69% of republicans support lowering eligible age for Medicare, 72% of NRA members support universal background checks), and yet they still don't identify as liberals? For many republicans, it may be related to the impression that liberals don't like rural or working class whites. Andrew Yang notes:
"I would say, ‘Hey! I’m running for president!’ to a truck driver, retail worker, waitress in a diner, and they would say, ‘What party?’ And I’d say ‘Democrat’ and they would flinch like I said something really negative or I had just turned another color or something like that. So you have to ask yourself, what has the Democratic Party been standing for in their minds? And in their minds, the Democratic Party, unfortunately, has taken on this role of the coastal urban elites who are more concerned about policing various cultural issues than improving their way of life that has been declining for years."
If you were a rural or working class white, and sensed that liberals instinctively thought you were racist or ignorant, wouldn't it be difficult to join their political party? Party identification is often more related to a sense of belonging than to policy positions. And who is it that's making rural whites feel like they aren't a part of liberal culture? I would say it's not primarily liberal politicians- I doubt you'd find Obama or Biden quotes that denigrate rural white folks. It's the media. It's movies like Borat, that make fools of rural white folks. It's the press- which has a double standard when it comes to racism- it shouldn't be ok to label racist white women as "Karen", you certainly wouldn't do that with female names common to other ethnicities. The specious argument in response to this is that whites benefit from white privilege, thus would benefit from some demoting. But hate doesn't inspire love, only love can do that. Be the change you wish to see in the world- we must treat everyone with respect, if we want others to do the same.
So what can I, as an individual, do to bridge the divide? First, we don't need to be reading the news everyday, it increases stress, anxiety, fear, and dislike of those who think differently than us. Second, we must vote with our clicks- utilize news that is measured in its presentation, such as Reuters, that simply presents the facts without a lot of emotional language. Third, just as we're learning to be anti-racist, we should apply this to media that encourages contempt of rural/working class whites as well.
