{"id":11484,"date":"2015-11-01T21:45:38","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T21:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=11484"},"modified":"2015-11-01T21:46:30","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T21:46:30","slug":"new-polarization-pols-vs-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=11484","title":{"rendered":"New polarization: pols vs. media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"mainstream-media\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I hear it from time to time. People I meet during a given week occasionally engage me in a conversation that begins: Do you think the nation is more polarized than ever\u00a0 before?<\/p>\n

My short answer generally goes like this: Well, maybe not since the Vietnam War. But we got through it. I believe we’ll be OK.<\/p>\n

The polarization today, though, seem to be taking on another dimension.<\/p>\n

Politicians, chiefly those on the right, now are taking dead aim at the media. Oh, I forgot: the mainstream media<\/em>, those\u00a0folks with the liberal bias.<\/p>\n

Ted Cruz is the junior U.S. senator from Texas. He’s running for the Republican presidential nomination. He took some reporters pheasant hunting with him in Iowa this weekend.<\/p>\n

Cruz scored plenty of points <\/a>at the latest GOP presidential debate by taking aim not just at CNBC, which moderated the event, but at “all media.” The crowd in the Boulder, Colo., hall roared its approval — as did conservatives all across the nation.<\/p>\n

The media now are seen as the enemy of the right. The left-wing, liberal media are out to “get” those who hold different views, say Cruz and other politicians on the right.<\/p>\n

Cruz then took his beef an interesting step further. He suggested — with a straight face at that — that GOP debates should include “moderators” more friendly to their cause. He mentioned Fox New commentator Sean Hannity as one who he’d prefer to “moderate” a debate among GOP presidential candidates.<\/p>\n

I agree with my pals on the right on this score: The establishment media — and I include conservative-leaning journalists in that group — have become legends in their own minds. They at times interject themselves into the stories they are covering. They become confrontational and snarky when neither is warranted. I believe we saw some of that from the CNBC moderators.<\/p>\n

Then again, have our Republican friends forgotten — already!<\/em> — what happened at the first GOP debate that Fox News sponsored. Fox’s Megyn Kelly got things started with a question to Donald Trump about the candidate’s history of anti-female statements. It went downhill rapidly from there.<\/p>\n

The Republican presidential field of candidates has done a good job of demonizing the mainstream media as a tool of the left. It has cast the MSM as an institution to be loathed and mistrusted.<\/p>\n

Are we polarized? Yes, we are. I’ll stand by my short answer: We’ll get past this … eventually.<\/p>\n

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I hear it from time to time. People I meet during a given week occasionally engage me in a conversation that begins: Do you think the nation is more polarized than ever\u00a0 before? My short answer generally goes like this: Well, maybe not since the Vietnam War. But we got through it. I believe we’ll … Continue reading New polarization: pols vs. media<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13,14],"tags":[1042,1788,1941,2858,2993,3622,4537],"class_list":["post-11484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-cnbc","tag-fox-news","tag-gop","tag-mainstream-media","tag-megyn-kelly","tag-polarization","tag-ted-cruz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11487,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11484\/revisions\/11487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}