Obama apparently told CBS News a few days ago that the proliferation of media, and the loss of gatekeepers, is partially responsible for our political instability. The reliably wrong Rich Lowry disagrees; he thinks the issue is a fundamental difference of opinion within the American public, which is merely amplified (not created) by the media. Could he possibly be right this time?
No. It is true, of course, that there have been paranoid extremists within the GOP as long as I can remember–think the John Birch Society here. Media gatekeepers, however, mostly kept their opinions out of public view, so millions of people who didn’t experience what they considered left-wing oppression in their daily lives didn’t believe their culture was under an existential threat. Today, social media outlets proliferate extreme arguments through algorithms; from that point, Fox News picks them up, and they become unquestioned facts for the vast Fox audience within days. On the left, Twitter has given undue publicity to woke opinions, thereby driving both parties away from the center, although that may change with the new ownership. That would not have happened when I was growing up.
Obama knows you can’t unring the bell; he wasn’t suggesting that Fox News and the internet should be censored. It is the right, not the left, that is advocating the legal suppression of unorthodox opinions. You can also make a plausible argument that blocking extreme positions is undemocratic and adverse to the public interest. On the whole, however, Obama’s nostalgic view of media gatekeepers was completely defensible.