America needs real political discourse

Our grandparents got their news from the radio, our parents got their news from TV stations and we get our news from BuzzFeed (which is actually a somewhat respectable news source). While this may be a huge oversimplification of how different generations stayed informed, there are some profound changes coming to the political landscape of this country.

When radio was the primary news source, there were only a handful of popular nationally syndicated stations. As a result, news tended to be more objective and unbiased — a report of the facts that most Americans received at the same time every day. And as a result, the average American on the street was far freer to formulate his or her own opinion based solely on the objective reality of the times. If everyone gets the same news from the same places at the same time, then healthy clashes of opinion are inevitable.

Once television became a national phenomenon in the 1950s, Americans still only had a few sources of news: ABC, CBS and NBC. As time went on, however, more stations began to broadcast, and all of them began to cater to their individual audiences through airing an increasing amount of “opinion” content. As time went on, the proportion of “opinion” content to actual news on television increased significantly. It also grew increasingly stratified. Moderate news stations were simply not as profitable as those that lauded extreme opinions. It was sink or swim and to swim they had to spin. So the American public began to grow loyal to the station that best catered to their views. This process has only continued since 1960s — our modern day Fox News and MSNBC didn't exactly reinvent the wheel; they each just spun it two different directions faster than anyone else had before.

The problem with such a bipolar news landscape is that it causes a sounding room effect — people only listen and watch what they agree with. As time passed these sounding rooms have only increased in number, and the views expressed inside have only increased in amplitude. As we pick our preferred sounding rooms and let the extreme opinions (and ad money they bring in) polarize our own beliefs, the truth gets lost somewhere in the process, and our minds begin to close.

Sometimes opinions must clash for the truth to emerge. This conflict is hard-pressed to find when we've all locked ourselves inside our preferred sounding room filled with only those who share our views. Unfortunately the Internet has presented our generation with exponentially more sounding rooms to choose from than in any other time in history. Even if real political debate does occur on contemporary news shows, it seems to quickly devolve into a shouting match where all parties are so dedicated to expressing their own extreme perspectives that they do not once pause to consider the points of the opposition. It's not just the pundits on news shows who are guilty of this. We all need to start listening to each other.

I believe that many members of the millennial generation have grown jaded about politics. When the only places to get news are loud, polarized sounding rooms, many of us have simply opted out. A staggering proportion of my friends are completely apathetic about politics. This is a dangerous trend, and I believe that the sounding room phenomenon and its disastrous consequences will only grow stronger in the future. If we do nothing, we will have a generation of adults who are either totally apathetic or fanatically left- or right-wing. Us moderates already seem to be in the minority. The best that any millennial can do is two-fold. We must not resign ourselves to the lazy indolence of political apathy, and we must also refuse to let the welcoming voices of the familiar sounding room draw us in. We must do what few others want to do: Challenge our own opinions as much as those of the opposing extreme. It is unfortunate that the truth is so hard to find in the news these days, but it is there. We just have to listen to both sides to find it.