238238 Chapter 7 | The Mediaand John Oliver will skewer the speech on his Sunday show. Tomorrow it will be
front-page news and larger papers will publish the full text of Trump’s speech online.
Countless websites will offer analyses. And you will be able to watch a video of the
speech on YouTube and many other sites. Some of your friends (perhaps even you)
might offer commentary on social media. The point is, there are many places to get
information; you would have to work to avoid them.
The Internet has also made new kinds of political information available to the
average citizen. For example, the Center for Responsive Politics offers a searchable
database of contributions to candidates and political organizations. Many sites,
including FiveThirtyEight and Pollster, collect and analyze public opinion surveys,
including presidential election polls. Increasingly, podcasts such as the left-leaning
Pod Save America or the right-leaning Federalist Radio Hour are used to deliver analysis
and interviews. The Internet also creates new opportunities for interaction between
citizens, reporters, and government officials. Many reporters host live online chat
sessions, allowing people to ask follow-up questions about published stories, or interact
with their audience through a variety of social media sites.
The Internet has also facilitated some entirely new kinds of media sources. People
who know something about political events (or think they do) now have a variety of
ways, from blogs to Twitter, to contribute to the commentary on political news stories
and put information before a wide audience. In 2018, the New York Post published an
article detailing how “blue-collar voters” in Pittsburgh reacted to President Trump’s
State of the Union speech—until some individuals with Twitter accounts did some
searching and posted that one of the parents was chief of surgery at a local hospital
(not exactly “blue-collar”). The Post then updated its story to reflect this information.^13
Other sources publish inside information about agency decisions, such as the
revelations in late 2017 by the website NASA Watch about software problems in NASA’s
new rocket, the Space Launch System.
At the same time, the rise of the Internet has exacerbated the trend toward shorter
stories in major news sources, with fewer details and less background information.
In theory, the elimination of space limitations should have produced longer, more
in-depth reporting on the Internet, but in fact the opposite has occurred. Many popular
Internet sources, such as Twitter and Axios, are designed to present information in
short, easy-to-digest form. Similarly, news accounts that individuals may post on social
media sites are often light on details. There is also some evidence that major news
sources such as the New York Times and the Washington Post are shifting both what they
report and how they report in favor of stories that can gain the attention of an easily
distracted public.“Viral” is not the same thing
as “true.”— Kevin Drum, Mother Jones
magazineFrom coverage of protests to refugees
filming their journeys, the Internet
makes it easy for ordinary citizens to
share political information and report on
political events as they happen.Full_08_APT_64431_ch07_232-261.indd 238 16/11/18 1:38 PM