Ted Koppel interviewed Sean Hannity on Sunday Morning on March 26. This exchange took place:
[Hannity] "We have to give some credit to the American people that they're somewhat intelligent and that they know the difference between an opinion show and a news show. You're cynical.""I am cynical," said Koppel.
"Do you think we're bad for America? You think I'm bad for America?"
"Yeah."
"You do? Really?"
"In the long haul I think you and all these opinion shows --"
"That's sad, Ted. That's sad."
"No, you know why? Because you're very good at what you do, and because you have attracted a significantly more influential --"
"You are selling the American people short."
"No, let me finish the sentence before you do that."
"I'm listening. With all due respect. Take the floor."
"You have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts."
You can view the exchange here.
I had never watched Sean Hannity before this. I don't watch cable news. Back around 1980, I would occasionally watch the newly created CNN, but that ceased no later than 1981. As an adult, I have never gotten my news primarily from television. I got my news by reading printed news sources up until the late 1990's, and from digital news sources ever since.
I used to watch Ted Koppel's Nightline on rare occasions. I didn't watch it often because it was on too late: after midnight. But when I watched it, I thought Koppel asked intelligent questions. He was a typical liberal ideologically, but he was not stupid. He also let the person answer the question he had just asked. I was in the taped interview business at the time, and that's what I always assumed the interviewer should do. He should ask intelligent questions. Then he should let the person answer the questions. This is what the viewers or listeners deserve.
Back in the days when there were only three TV networks, the same viewpoint dominated all three networks. The same stories dominated all three networks. We conservatives had to put up with this through the entire period after Pearl Harbor. I grew up in this echo chamber world. I never bought into it. Even at age 14, I had to live with it.
Koppel complains that there are people who believe that ideology is more important than facts. This is the standard liberal's outlook. He does not recognize a fundamental aspect of epistemology: there are no brute facts -- a fact that was hammered into my head by Cornelius Van Til. There is no uninterpreted factuality out of there. The worldview of the modern world is built upon this myth, and it is false. There is some ad hoc coherence of interpretation, which is why human beings can cooperate with each other. There is some ad hoc coherence of interpreted factuality, which is why technology and science can exist. But on fundamental issues, there is no agreement. There are religious conflicts going on, and these conflicts are not always about issues supernatural. They are about issues natural. Scientists don't believe what each other teach. Albert Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics.
Most of the chatter about facts versus ideology is colored by the assumption that ideology does not shape the selection of facts and the interpretation of facts. It also shapes the reporting of facts. Koppel accepts the liberal's presupposition, namely, that the facts reported by conservatives are not the right facts. They are not the facts that should be reported to the American people. He doesn't like the fact that conservative talkshow host has a spin on the facts that is different from the spin that CNN, NBC, CBS, and the New York Times want to place on the facts.
These people possessed near-monopoly domination of the selection and interpretation of facts after Pearl Harbor. They convinced themselves that the unanimity of opinion, meaning unanimity of the selection of facts and interpretation of facts, had something to do with the fundamental unity of facts. It had far more to do with FCC licensing, state accreditation of education, the public school system, and the steady bankruptcy of local newspapers that did not share the party line of the New York Times. In other words, Koppel not only believed the liberals' headlines; he believed the copy. We who are conservatives never did, but our opinions didn't matter from Pearl Harbor until the Goldwater campaign in 1964, because we had no outlets that reached the general public.
Today, this is all changing. Liberals no longer have anything remotely resembling a monopoly. Their newspapers are dying. Their TV networks are dying, and there is nothing they can do about it. They see this as a disintegration of agreement over facts. They are correct on this point. This is exactly what it is.
By reducing the costs of digital communications, Moore's law and the Internet have combined to destroy a unanimity of opinion that never existed, but which appeared to exist because liberals controlled mainstream media outlets. Their gatekeeping function has died. Matt Drudge is the symbol of this setback. Gatekeeping died no later than Drudge's exposé of the suppression of the Lewinsky story by Newsweek. That was in 1998. That was almost two decades ago. Koppel and his world are under assault. They are losing the battles. There is nothing they can do to get back what existed prior to the rise of the graphical browser in 1996.
This disintegration of opinion is now visible all over the world. We are seeing the Balkanization of information: the selection of facts, the interpretation of facts, the discussion of facts, and political action based on ideologically selected and interpreted facts.
Liberal intellectuals controlled the selection of facts, the interpretation of facts, and the dissemination of facts for so long that they came to believe that their control over facts in fact reflected a unanimity of opinion, a unanimity of interpretation, and a unanimity of legitimate political action. That world is gone. It is never coming back.
THE IRRELEVANCE OF TALKING TV HEADS
The idea that Sean Hannity is a threat to America is really preposterous. He has about three million viewers. Cable news viewers are in the low millions. Hardly anybody watches cable news. There are about 100 million households in the United States. That means something like 240 million adults. The fact that Sean Hannity gets three million of these adults to watch him is neither here nor there for the future of America, although certainly it affects the future of his retirement portfolio.
Ted Koppel lives in a fantasy world. He honestly thinks Sean Hannity is important. He thinks that the country is moving in the wrong direction because of about three million people who watch Hannity's program. This so vastly overestimates the importance of talking heads that only a talking head like Koppel could believe it.
What I am saying is that Mr. Hannity and Mr. Koppel vastly overestimate the importance of themselves and their peers.
I watch Sunday Morning. It is a news show that is a pleasant diversion from headline news. When it offers a segment on modern art or women's fashion, I fast forward. I watch most of the interviews, as long as they are not interviewing a modern artist. I watch the human interest stories. None of it is earthshaking, which is why I watch it. If I thought something was earthshaking, I would turn off the television and go to the Web. Television is not the way to get informed on earthshaking news. It never has been. Television is the way to gather viewers who will then be forced to watch a lot of advertisements. Into this world came TiVo, and that is one of the great developments in recent years. These words are crucial to maintaining our perspective: fast forward.
The world that made Ted Koppel famous is long gone. It is not coming back. Hardly anybody watched Nightline anyway. Wikipedia reports:
Nightline (or ABC News Nightline) is a late-night news program broadcast by ABC in the United States with a franchised formula to other networks and stations elsewhere in the world. Created by Roone Arledge, the program featured Ted Koppel as its main anchor from March 1980 until his retirement in November 2005. It is currently anchored by Dan Harris, Byron Pitts and Juju Chang on an alternating basis. Nightline airs weeknights from 12:37 - 1:07 a.m. Eastern Time after Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which previously served as the program's lead-out from 2003 to 2012.
Has anyone actually heard of Dan Harris, Byron Pitts, and Juju Chang? I doubt it. The thought of somebody named Juju actually shaping American public opinion is beyond my powers of comprehension.
Nothing that is broadcast after midnight is going to have any measurable effect on much of anything. Nightline targets early morning liberals. There aren't many. Early morning people don't watch talking head liberal TV news shows. They listen to early morning radio, which reports on UFO's, conspiracies, and Area 51.
The FCC-created unanimity of opinion that prevailed from December 7, 1941 until 1996 is never coming back. Good riddance.
SOUND AND FURY
In a world in which the welfare state cannot be rolled back by anything except federal bankruptcy, gridlock is good. As long as we can't make things better through legislation, we can at least rejoice that there isn't much legislation anymore. There will not be another New Deal. There will not be another Great Society. The swamp in Washington is not going to be drained until the Great Default.
The departmental federal budgetary allocations this year will be just about the same next year. They rarely change. The central political battles are over these budgetary allocations. The rest of it is entertainment.
Watch what they do, not what they say. They don't do much.
So, you might as well sit back and enjoy the Punch and Judy show that is brought to you by the bipartisan political system that has moved into gridlock. It is mostly rhetoric. With respect to significant political change, Macbeth had correct: it is sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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