It’s Getting Extreme Out There!
October 2019:
The news is tumultuous these days. Growing threats of impeachment, allegations that the leading presidential candidate broke the law in the Ukraine and China for family gain, the current president accused of numerous mistakes, partisans pointing angry fingers at each other, gaggles of “experts” assuring us that one side or the other is all wrong, wars and rumors of wars. It never seems to let up. Each newscast, day after day, brings the latest “Breaking News”, which amounts to the newest and worsening allegations, gotcha politics, and promises of more to come.
But we shouldn’t be worried about this. Seriously. The news media today isn’t nearly as extreme as it was in the 1830s with its battles between Andrew Jackson and the National Bank. That was a time of major division, anger, and a lot of violence. The 1850s news media was even worse. And the media climate in the Boss Tweed period (1870s), the height of the Muckraker era (1905-1925), and the counter-culture wars of the 1960s were far more divided than anything we now experience. Today’s media extremes aren’t even as tumultuous or noisy as the Jefferson vs. Hamilton conflicts, which were immediately followed by the Jefferson vs. Adams battles. Yes, today’s news is intense, partisan, and adversarial—but nothing as bad as these other times in American history.
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