Broken Media: The Roots of Today's News Crisis. With Chris Stirewalt

Let's Find Common Ground

USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future

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5 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

While many American consumers have given up their daily news habit, millions of others are now addicted to rage media— cable news and social media that push sensationalism, groupthink, and tribalism. This trend of "news bubbles" is relatively recent. Over the past 30 years, the decline of many regional newspapers has given way to a new form of slick, easy, and profitable national opinion journalism that caters to narrow segments of the population. In this episode, we look at the current state of the news industry and ask why the media and news consumers should insist on better journalism. Our guest is Chris Stirewalt, a columnist for The Dispatch, author, and former political editor for Fox News. Chris's new book is "Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back."

Transcript

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0:00.0	A lot of Americans have given up their daily news habit, but millions of others are now
0:05.2	addicted to rage media.
0:08.6	Cable news and social media that push sensationalism, groupthink, and tribalism.
0:19.2	This is Let's Find Common Ground.
0:21.3	I'm Ashley Melntite.
0:23.2	And I'm Richard Davies.
0:24.7	The dramatic changes in the news media are actually quite recent.
0:29.2	Over the past three decades, many regional newspapers went bust, countless numbers of
0:34.4	reporters were laid off.
0:36.6	In their place, we've seen the rise of slick, easy, and profitable national opinion journalism
0:44.2	that caters to narrow segments of the population.
0:48.2	Very different than when most people read the same local newspaper or watch the same
0:52.1	nightly network news.
0:54.6	Our guest on this show is Chris Steyerwald, a contributing editor at the conservative news
0:59.8	site, The Dispatch, and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
1:04.5	He's also the author of the new book, Broken News, why the media rage machine divides
1:10.4	America and how to fight back.
1:13.5	In this episode, we hear about the current state of the news business and talk with a journalist
1:17.6	who fell in love with his industry when he was still a teenager.
1:21.4	You had a pretty wide-ranging conversation, right?
1:24.2	Yeah, Chris is a talker and passionate about journalism and what we can all do, not just
1:30.9	journalists, to make the media better.
	...

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