Political commentators are everywhere. They’re in our newspapers, Instagram pages, TV Channels, podcasts, and most well-known: Twitter. If you’ve seen any of the very well-known ones, such as Ben Shapiro, Brooklyn Dad, and Bridgette Gabriel, you usually find endless loud statements that are mostly annoying. Take this Tweet from Right-Wing Commentator Bridgette Gabriel which says “Michael Flynn — Patriot. Roger Stone — Patriot. Mike Pompeo — Patriot.” It perfectly encapsulates what is wrong with Political commentary. It doesn’t have any nuance, it’s loud, and it’s generally annoying.
https://twitter.com/ACTBrigitte/status/1412930272702631938
But, while we often find political commentators annoying, there’s also a worse side to them. Political commentators are helping fuel political polarization with their words. Their tweets, speeches, and appearances on TV have become more extreme and helped pull this country apart.
The reason they help fuel polarization isn’t about them though. It’s instead an indictment about how we consume media.
The Business Model of the Pundit
Regardless of whatever platform a commentator uses to express their opinion, they need to make money from it. In order to make a living, commentators need to keep an audience. They usually try to appeal to either a liberal or a conservative crowd, which unfortunately now means that they have to parrot positions that their audience agrees with.
While we should theoretically try to listen to opposing views, we don’t consider opposing views anymore. For example, 44% and 31% of consistent Liberals and consistent Conservatives respectively have blocked someone due to different political views. In addition, when both Liberals and Conservatives were given money to just consider opposing arguments on same-sex marriage, over half of them declined. Listeners and readers now will simply stop listening to a pundit who has different views that they don’t agree with.
This leads to pundits choosing the more extreme view to avoid angering their audience, even if they don’t believe it themselves. It’s probably best summed up by a quote from Washinton Post columnist J.J Mccullough who stated that “I didn’t naturally have strong opinions on a lot of the stuff I was made to talk about, so often I would have to force myself to.”
The Effect
When you have an audience that listens, watches, and reads commentators who express increasingly extreme views, listeners start taking on more extreme views themselves. American’s start to believe that in order to get something done, they have to take the most extreme view, or else there won’t be any progress. People start to reject compromise because it ‘won’t do anything,’ and they start to become more adversarial with people who have different views.
We start to reject the humanity that others have, and instead of trying to come to a solution that can benefit everyone, we create a toxic political discourse. We now scream on Twitter, yell at each other, and hate each other all because we have different political views.
Why Though
Our forcefulness to political pundits is due to our close-minded nature to political views. As I previously mentioned, an overwhelming majority of Liberals and Conservatives wouldn’t even consider opposing arguments on same-sex marriage for money. They won’t even consider, not even agree, another political view even for money.
The fact is that we don’t read pundits to consider different views on an issue, we read pundits to reinforce our views. For example, Tomi Lahren was subject to endless attacks by fellow conservatives after she tweeted that people shouldn’t be transphobic to Caitlyn Jenner. Because Tomi Lahren didn’t toe the conservative line that transgender people don’t deserve respect (an idea that is frankly appalling), she was condemned by conservatives.
Tomi Lahren’s defense of Caitlyn Jenner is the perfect illustration of why pundits are driven to such extreme positions. Every time pundits step out of line with their liberal or conservative audience, they risk getting mercilessly dragged by their audience. Eventually, they could essentially lose their audience or their platform and lose their living.
Where do we go from here?
So, how do we go from here? We need to start by accepting others with views that might differ from ours. It’s hard, but people need to be more accepting of views that are different than their own. It would completely bring down the tone of our political discourse.
Secondly, we need to start consuming views that are different than yours. I’m not advocating that you read or support someone who’s spreading lies and disinformation, but you should listen to someone who has a different viewpoint on an issue. When you read a pundit who does have a view that differs from you, you not only open your mind, but you might reconsider your view on an issue.
All these things, while difficult, can help improve the discourse of this country and help improve our relationships with others in the country.