As an experiment and in an attempt to get out of my bubble and seek to understand some of the thinking, I committed myself to reading some of the right-wing media supporting Trump – in particular Brietbart as it seems to be perceived as the source of much of the thinking and supportive comment.I don’t know if I want to continue.
The bile, the hatred, the racism, the conspiracy theories (one today being that ‘they’ are letting in “TB ridden” refugees so they can infect the true Americans and in turn collapse the country) are overwhelming and horrendously alien to my own mindset and values. Some of it makes the Daily Mail read like pink fluffy liberalism.
I guess that the real worry is that the publishers and many (most?) of their readers truly believe all this stuff, much as the relatively uneducated (by which I mean ‘do not really understand how the media works’) left and right in this country believe their own mouthpieces. The Guardian is no more ‘correct’ than the Telegraph.
Having been involved with the media over the years I believe that I do understand how most channels will represent even the most innocent story in a way which suits their agenda. Just think of the headlines and stories written about HS2 (not that HS2 is necessarily an ‘innocent’ story, it’ just a very good example of my point):
- “Billions invested in UK jobs”
- “Billions to be wasted on foreign trains”
- “Trade and industry helped by faster journey times”
- “Thousands of homes blighted”
- “Property values near route rocket”
- “Hedgehogs tunnels to be built”
- “Lesser Spotted Winklewort habitat under threat”
You buys your paper and you takes your choice. None of the above are ‘wrong’, just different views on the self-same scheme. But unless the promoters of a scheme seek to understand the positions of other stakeholders the chances of accommodation are almost zero.
So it is with Trump, Brexit etc – bile in response to their bile just generates and even stinkier swamp, hatred in response to hatred just sets parties at war with each other, denial of positions closes down any possibility of change. As Stephen Covey said in his “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, ‘Seek first to understand’. And you can only ever understand if you are willing to risk bursting your own bubble and investigating those things with which you disagree.
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