Why liberals and conservatives create such different media (with Danna Young)

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2019

⏱️ 91 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The debate over polarized media can make the two ecosystems sound equivalent. One is left, the other right, but otherwise they’re the same. That couldn’t be more wrong. They’re structured differently, they work differently, they value different things, they’re built atop different aesthetics. And behind all these differences is something we don’t talk about enough: their audiences, and what those audiences demand. Danna Young is an associate professor of communications at the University of Delaware and author of the forthcoming Irony and Outrage, a fascinating study of the differing aesthetics of the left and right media universes, and how those differences are rooted in the psychological composition of their audiences. This is tricky stuff to talk about, but it’s necessary for understanding why political media looks the way it does today. Book recommendations: Constructing the Political Spectacle by Murray Edelman The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility by Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics by Nicole Hemmer Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States by Danna Young (pre-order) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I've been increasingly aware of these moments of flashes of anger that come from our
0:08.8	predominantly liberal satirists, where it seems like they abandoned humor all together,
0:13.8	and they're just mad.
0:16.5	Hello, welcome to the concho on the box Media Podcast Network. So something that has been on my mind a lot,
0:34.1	writing my book and trying to think about American politics right now is the differences in how media
0:39.1	on the left and the right have evolved. They are not the same. And I don't just mean journalistically,
0:44.0	not the same. I mean that the audiences for them are not the same and don't exhibit the same
0:48.0	behavior. So on the left, do you have people who trust a pretty wide number of new sources? I mean,
0:53.8	dozens and dozens of sources in the center and on the left and even a couple on the right, like the
0:58.0	bros will say they trust the Wall Street Journal and the economist. And on the right, conservatives,
1:02.8	people will identify as conservatives will say, I only really trust Fox News and a couple of others.
1:07.0	And then again, if you look about how people collect, right, what is our most trusted new source? Fox
1:12.3	News is a huge winner. It's like in 2016 among Trump voters, I think 40 some percent said Fox News was
1:17.5	their most trusted new source. And on the left, there was nothing like it. I think CNN was in the lead,
1:21.6	but it was like 15-ish percent. You just don't have the same behavior in the two. And that's given
1:27.9	conservative media, conservative talk radio, a different kind of power over their Republican party,
1:32.9	then you have then any media outlet has over the Democratic Party and certainly then any liberal
1:37.2	media outlet has over the Democratic Party. There's just no, there's no comparison between the
1:42.0	influence Fox News has and the influence MSNBC has. And the question here is why? Something that I've
1:48.6	been surprised by doing my research over the past year is that for all the talk of asymmetric
1:53.2	polarization, political scientists and others, they don't really have an explanation of it. They have
1:57.6	stories about it. They have decisions people made. Newkinger, it's did this and Fox News did that.
	...

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