The News | Scene on Radio

Summary

Podcast Summary: Drilled – “The News” | Scene on Radio

Podcast: Drilled (by Pushkin Industries)
Episode Feature: Scene on Radio – Season 8, Episode 1, “The News”
Date: July 7, 2026
Host(s): John Biewen, Chenjerai Kumanyika
Notable Guest: Danigal Young (University of Delaware Professor)

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Overview: Main Theme & Purpose

This episode launches the eighth season of Scene on Radio, focusing on the crisis of American news media—its roots, evolution, and impact on democracy and public trust. Through storytelling, interviews, and critical discussion, hosts John Biewen and Chenjerai Kumanyika unpack why trust in journalism is at an all-time low, how structural issues shape public perception, and what “the news” actually means in a deeply polarized, fragmented media landscape. The episode challenges nostalgia for a media “golden age” and asks: what’s really wrong with the news, and is it what we think?

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The American Information Crisis

• Media Landscape: There’s an overload of information from endless sources—mainstream to fringe—and Americans are both “awash in media” and dissatisfied with most of it.
  • “A lot of it is trash.” (Chenjera Kumanyika, 04:17)
• Crisis of Trust: Only 28% of Americans trust the major media (Gallup, 2025), with 70% expressing little or no confidence.
  • “People are not happy. According to a Gallup poll… only 28% of Americans had even a fair amount of confidence in the major media…” (John Biewen, 04:32)
• Why It Matters: Beyond personal irritation, journalism is framed as vital to daily life and self-governance: weather, emergencies, policy information, and basic awareness hinge on reliable news.
  • “How are you going to run a democracy where the people are supposed to govern ourselves if we don’t have any shared sense of what’s going on?” (Chenjera Kumanyika, 05:14)

How Americans Consume News

• Setting—The Border Belt, North Carolina: Biewen reports from rural, economically struggling counties (“news deserts” with minimal local coverage, 12:21) and explores how people actually find news—local radio, Facebook, news aggregator apps, and personal networks.
• Case Study: Ethan Jordan
  • Young farmer, lifelong Republican (“all Democrats until 10 or 20 years ago”), gets news from Fox, Facebook, and an aggregator app (Newsbreak).
  • Critical of biases in all media—left and right—and values personal experiences with politicians.
    • “If you feel like you got a close personal connection with him, that’s kind of… way I look at…” (Ethan Jordan, 19:14)
  • Prefers balanced reporting, frustrated by one-sided coverage.

Why “Our Side” Shapes Our Beliefs

• Guest Insight: Danigal Young
  • News consumption is less about seeking accuracy and more about fulfilling three core needs: Comprehension, Control, and Community (23:40).
    • “Your goal is not to be accurate, because your goal really is survival… Those three needs: comprehension, control, and community.” (Danigal Young, 23:40)
  • Community, or group belonging, is the strongest driver—explains polarization and “team” mentality.
• Political Sorting and Identity:
  • Historical shifts since the 1960s led to homogenized parties: Republicans as largely white, rural, evangelical; Democrats as more racially diverse and urban (26:02–28:15).
• Affective Polarization:
  • Americans increasingly dislike the opposing party’s members, often regardless of issue positions, driving partisanship (29:22).
• Media’s Role: Social media and cable amplify tribalism through algorithms and framing, not necessarily through “echo chambers”—viewers are exposed to opposing views, but always reframed as threats to “us.”

The Myth of the Media Echo Chamber

• Echo Chamber Myth:
  • Empirical research suggests Americans do see opposing views, but almost always filtered negatively through one’s own side (32:56–34:27).
    • “You are seeing claims that are being made by the other side, but they're often presented to you… as a violation of our moral order.” (Danigal Young, 34:02)
  • Example: Coverage of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation—both Fox and MSNBC showed the “other side,” but always via negative framing (34:27–35:49).

Does Media Create Beliefs or Reflect Them?

• Bidirectional Relationship:
  • People select media that matches their preexisting views as much as media shapes those views (36:35–37:04).
• Limits of Influence:
  • Government structures limit public will. A 2014 study (Princeton/Northwestern) found little relationship between public preferences and actual policy outcomes (37:11–38:06).
    • Major democratic checks stem from both flawed government design and inadequate journalism.

The Stakes and Way Forward

• No Nostalgic Golden Age:
  • The “good old days” weren’t so good for many Americans—media consensus was narrow and excluded marginalized perspectives (31:38–32:11).
• Why Journalism Still Matters:
  • Despite failures, investigative journalism remains essential for exposure, accountability, awareness—something both Biewen and Kumanyika emphasize.
    • “Most of what I know about the world comes from journalism… We actually have to solve this problem.” (Chenjera Kumanyika, 40:04–41:00)
• Season Preview:
  • The coming episodes will examine the historical roots, social and economic forces, and possible fixes for the news media crisis.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On trust and misinformation:
  • “A whole lot of us don't know what's true or we firmly believe and will fight you over things that are not true.” (Chenjera Kumanyika, 03:01)
• On motivations for consuming news:
  • “Your goal is not to be accurate, because your goal really is survival.” (Danigal Young, 23:40)
• On news as community:
  • “We are individualists because everyone around us also prizes that value of individualism, which I think is kind of hilariously ironic.” (Danigal Young, 24:04)
• On the myth of consensus:
  • “This idea that Americans used to agree on things… there was more of a consensus maybe among white people, especially white men, middle class and above, who held all the power.” (Chenjera Kumanyika, 31:38)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:11] – Misinformation and public distrust described
• [04:32] – Gallup poll: trust in media statistics
• [05:14] – Why media is vital for daily life and democracy
• [12:21] – Introduction to North Carolina’s “border belt” and the concept of news deserts
• [13:46] – Farming, Fox News, and personal media habits (Ethan Jordan)
• [17:22] – Partisan voting and influence of personal experience in politics
• [22:48] – Interview with Danigal Young; core survival needs and news consumption
• [26:02–28:15] – How political parties have become more homogeneous
• [29:22] – Affective polarization: rise of inter-party hostility
• [32:56] – Echo chamber myth explored and refuted
• [34:27] – Supreme Court confirmation, media framing example
• [37:11] – Structural barriers to representation: Princeton/Northwestern study cited
• [40:04] – Defense of journalism’s core value and need for improvement

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Tone & Language

The episode is thoughtful, conversational, and lightly humorous, with a strong analytical component. Both hosts balance critique with hope, candidly acknowledging journalism’s flaws while affirming its irreplaceable role. The inclusion of ordinary voices and scholarly insight grounds the discussion in both everyday experience and academic research.

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Takeaways for Listeners

Even for those new to the debate over America’s “media crisis,” this episode lays out the historical, sociological, and psychological forces that drive mistrust, polarization, and frustration with the news media. It avoids simplistic answers, instead inviting listeners to question common assumptions (like the dangers of echo chambers or nostalgia for consensus media) and underscores that fixing the news matters deeply—because democracy and daily life both depend on it.

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Find more: This episode is episode one of an eight-part series. Scene on Radio is available wherever you get your podcasts. For transcripts and further resources, visit sceneonradio.org.

Transcript

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.

[Charles Loy]

It's time to move past doom and gloom. Because while the climate headlines make us feel like we're losing, we met the people winning. And they just might change how you see your role in this fight. I'm Charles Loy and this is a Fighting Chance, available wherever you get your podcasts.

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

Pushkin. Foreign. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed our latest season Carbon Cowboys. Today I want to share with you one of my favorite podcasts and one I think you'll enjoy and might already be familiar with. It's hosted by John Bwin and it's called Scene on Radio. I actually co hosted their former series on the climate emergency. Now they're back with a brand new season, aptly named the News. Some have called the news media the oxygen of a functioning democracy. But if that's true, America's lungs are in rough shape. Most Americans say they don't trust the media. The business model for local journalism has all but collapsed. And we all know about the barrage of misinformation that flows from our splintered mediascape. You can't separate the state of our news media from the other profound crises that America keeps on failing to solve. Now in its eighth season, the two time Peabody Award nominated show explores the roots of the crisis and asks what's really wrong with the news. It's an eight part series and you'll want to listen to the rest. But for now, here's episode one of the News Find seen on radio wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

All right, we're rolling.

[John Biewen]

Good to see you, sir.

[Ethan Jordan]

Here we go.

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

Asian markets are mostly down today.

[Danigal Young]

That's dangerous flash flooding ripping through parts of Milwaukee. This is a Fox News alert. This is our camera angle from our

[John Biewen]

Americans, if we want to be, are inundated with news from countless sources. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Lavar.

[Danigal Young]

Welcome back to One American News.

[John Biewen]

Thanks so much for and at the

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

same time was stuck in a deep information crisis.

[John Biewen]

It seems like we're helpless to solve our problems. It doesn't help that we have no shared narrative and few shared facts.

[Danigal Young]

What is happening right now in the world and what just happened to my friend Charlie Kirk is a battle of sheer evil versus goodness to me. Fox News just not they don't tell the whole story.

[John Biewen]

I consider myself a centrist, not particularly interested in msnbc.

[Danigal Young]

No, what I'm saying is don't do me.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Don't try me today. Scotty, what I'm saying to you, we

[John Biewen]

put out a CNN here's A letter

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

to the New York Post, Yo.

[Ethan Jordan]

Ain't worth the papers. Put it on.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

On big questions. A whole lot of us don't know what's true or we firmly believe and will fight you over things that are not true.

[Ethan Jordan]

Let's get rid of these voting machines. There's a half a dozen people, whether it's the House or Senate, Larry, that

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

are up here as we speak, that did not get elected. It was all bogus.

[John Biewen]

Just so people understand, wind and solar

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

only work when there's wind and sun.

[Ethan Jordan]

We don't have technology to store the energy from wind and solar.

[John Biewen]

So if you make yourself.

[Ethan Jordan]

I'm very disappointed in the mainstream media. That's all I'll say about that.

[John Biewen]

It's hard to imagine putting the toothpaste back in place, the tube, and maybe there's no golden age to return to anyway. So now what? Change your eye.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Hey, John.

[John Biewen]

You know, our little montage could have just kept on going.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

I better stop now because I feel like you're gonna get us in trouble. You know what I mean? We got hundreds, thousands more news and news ish outlets to choose from.

[John Biewen]

We are awash in media, at least some of us are. But we don't seem very happy about it.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Yeah, man, everybody's mad at the news media. And if I'm being honest, yeah, like, I get it, right? Because if you look around, so much of what passes for news out there is, like, not that good. In fact, a lot of it is trash.

[John Biewen]

We could easily find people who would disagree with you or me about which acts of journalism are the trashy ones. But no question about it, people are not happy. According to a Gallup poll in 2025, only 28% of Americans had even a fair amount of confidence in the major media. 70% of us say we have not much or no confidence at all.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

That crisis of trust is a huge problem for American journalism. And it's not the only problem.

[John Biewen]

A lot of people at first blush might not care about a media crisis, especially if they think the media sucks. But.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

But people need the media to live, right? They need to know what the status of their health care is. They need to know what the weather is, you know what I'm saying? And if there's going to be like an earthquake, they need to know if their rights are going to be violated. Right. I mean, it's just like something that you need to live your everyday lives. And also, how are you going to run a democracy where the people are supposed to govern ourselves if we don't have the information if we don't have any shared sense of what's going on out there.

[John Biewen]

That's more or less what Thomas Jefferson said, our good buddy. Wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

That's good because I only try to say things that Thomas Jefferson said. You know that about me. That's when I checked the chat, every time before I say something. Did Thomas Jefferson say this?

[John Biewen]

Okay, yeah, exactly. Right. We've picked on him a number of times on this show.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Yeah, but I mean, look, he was right. You know what I'm saying? Being a slaveholder and a racist, that don't mean you're not right about anything.

[John Biewen]

Right. But yeah. Does anybody here think that the fourth Estate, the news media as it's now constructed, is doing its job? That Americans are well enough informed to be trusted with our own government? From the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, welcome to Scene on Radio Season eight. I'm John Biewen, producer and host of the show.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

And I'm Chenjera Kumanyika, excited to come back as the co host.

[John Biewen]

Chenj, you are an award winning podcast maker, Empire City. Uncivil, unruly subjects and seen on radio. You were my co host for seasons two and four. And you're a professor at New York University's journalism school with a PhD in Mass Communication and critical media studies. So you're officially an expert on the thing we're here to explore this time

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

around, finally, you know what I'm saying? We in my lane now, you know what I mean?

[John Biewen]

You got the paper credentials this time. We're calling this season the News. We're going to take a hard, deep look at the troubled state of the news media in the US and how that crisis relates to the other profound problems we seem unable or unwilling to solve.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Another key thing we're going to do is sort through the various crises in our news and information system and the most common reasons. People say they're pissed about the media. And we're going to ask what's really wrong? Is it what we think it is?

[John Biewen]

We will do some history along the way. We might challenge some mythology around journalistic tradition in America and parts of US History itself, for that matter, in ways that could also shed light on how our news media are failing us and in this pivotal historical moment.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

And eventually we're going to talk about solutions, what it might look like to unbreak the media. Because the thing is, this stuff really matters. The stakes are about as high as they could be.

[John Biewen]

Media are so much a part of our lives that in a real sense, we're made of media. The media helps to shape a society, but also acts as a mirror showing us who we are.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

And John, like I have a confession, we talk about people being angry at the news media and of course folks are angry for wildly different reasons. But when I'm looking at so called journalism that I see is completely false and dishonest, I find myself getting mad at the people who consume that news and believe it. Like, why are y' all drinking a Kool Aid?

[John Biewen]

I know what you mean. And let's put a pin in that thought, as they say right now. Before we go further, just a quick note for the grammar purists. Yes, you will hear us do that thing that a whole lot of people do now where we say the media as if it's one thing, right?

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

But the word is plural. And we'll never lose sight of the fact that the media is a tangled web, not a monolith.

[John Biewen]

Here in episode one, let's start with us. Not Chenjerai and me, but us, everybody who consumes news media, whether you take in a ton of it or hardly any. What drives us as we try to inform ourselves?

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

That's the question. You know what I'm saying? We talk so much about whether we can trust our news sources, but can we trust ourselves?

[John Biewen]

I've spent some time over the last year or so in a corner of North Carolina talking with folks about a lot of things. Their politics, what their lives are like and about the news.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

And why'd you go to that particular place?

[John Biewen]

It's a good question. In one sense, we could have gone almost anywhere. But as folks will hear throughout the season, this patch of North Carolina, which is not far from where I live, is a compelling place to see some of the most pressing problems with our news media and some impressive efforts to respond and fill the gaping holes in the system. By the way, Chang, you know, I think it's safe to say some of those news consumers you're frustrated with live in this place.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

All right, well, in that case, let me take a deep breath. All right, I can't wait to hear what you found.

[John Biewen]

All your favorite country play back to back to back. Today's country, the big 957. We're going to refer to this part of North Carolina as the border belt. It's an old term used over the last century for a tobacco growing region that ran along both sides of the north and South Carolina border. A lot of the tobacco is gone now the farms grow corn and soybeans and other crops. The radio signals in these rural counties come from a ways off, mainly the bigger cities of Wilmington and Fayetteville, and they sound like it.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

So get your Wednesday off to a good start with me, Gilbert Bayes on News Talk 640, WFNC.

[Danigal Young]

Turn left onto North Carolina 41 South.

[John Biewen]

I spent time just on the North Carolina side in a cluster of counties, Scotland and Robeson to the west, Bladen and Columbus to the east. This place is racially diverse with large white, black and indigenous populations and long struggling. North Carolina ranks in the bottom half of states in per capita income. In the border belt, folks make 12 to 20 thousand dollars less than the state average. There are a lot of manufactured homes, trailer parks, single wides, double widespread, kind of dotted everywhere. The Breakfast Club Turn it up.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Interviewing surprise guests, music and more.

[John Biewen]

It's all on the Breakfast Club weekday

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

mornings on Fayetteville's official number one station for hip hop and R B, the big stick, Foxy 99.

[John Biewen]

Most of these counties are also what are called news deserts. That means they have no more than one local news source. And often the surviving newspapers have shriveled to a few pages of mostly sports and features. They don't print a whole lot of news.

[Danigal Young]

John, you want to come in or

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

you want to sit on the porch?

[John Biewen]

I talked to a range of people in the border belt about their media diets.

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

I usually sit here and have my coffee and I'm sitting here on the

[Danigal Young]

couch and I'm watching the news.

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

Local stations, which are located in Wilmington,

[Danigal Young]

but they carry this area.

[John Biewen]

I don't watch a lot of news,

[Ethan Jordan]

but what I watch, I watch Newsmax or Fox.

[Danigal Young]

I try not to get my news from social media too much, but sometimes I'm scrolling through Twitter and I see something and it catches my eye.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

I still think that a lot of our people get their information from their local radio station too. Whenever they play in between songs and stuff like that, whatever type of news update,

[John Biewen]

we're gonna spend more time getting to know this guy, Ethan Jordan. I find him in Columbus County. He's driving a big John Deere tractor, pulling a planting rig down the road near his family's place. I can just leave it here. I climb the ladder to his two person tractor cab.

[Ethan Jordan]

You got enough room to make it work?

[John Biewen]

Oh, yeah. How you doing?

[Ethan Jordan]

Good.

[John Biewen]

Nice to meet you.

[Ethan Jordan]

Here, let me get that door a little bit better so it won't rattle.

[John Biewen]

Ethan's in his late 20s. He has reddish brown hair and a Round Face. He and his family raise corn, soybeans, peanuts and beef cattle. On this April day, he's planting corn right here.

[Ethan Jordan]

We Farm total 2,200 acres. Between me and my dad and two employees, I believe if you go back, I'm the eighth generation of Jordan farming on this land that we're on right now. Actually this is some of the original farm we're on.

[John Biewen]

In front of Ethan in the cab are a half dozen screens. They monitor the seed and fertilizer he's dropping, the weather conditions, the technology that's doing the driving.

[Ethan Jordan]

Yes sir, that's my GPS which controls the auto steering. You see, I'm not touching the steering wheel and it's steering.

[John Biewen]

And for the long hours he spends in the tractor, he also has media handy.

[Ethan Jordan]

I know I have Fox News on this iPad and I will watch Fox News from time to time. And it's not Newsmax, it's that app that has all the news in it. Well, you see I have Fox News here, but there's an app that I can't call the name of right now.

[John Biewen]

He finds it his Go to news aggregator right here.

[Ethan Jordan]

It's this app right here, matter of fact, Newsbreak newsbreak app. And it kind of, you know, I guess it goes through your algorithm of what you look up and stuff like that. Because if you look at mine, talks about farmers, react to Trump's tariffs, tells me about the local news and stuff like I have that, that pops up and it'll be anywhere from CNBC to wct, the Daily Daily Beast, I don't know what. But anyway, it just shows, you know, local and national news. And if it's national news, it's more related to what I look up which is obviously farming, you know, agriculture related topics. It's where I get a lot of my news from. To say I actually sit down and watch the news, it's kind of hard to say Now I will watch it if something interesting is going on on the iPad, if I'm in a tractor running it.

[John Biewen]

Ethan lives with his fiance who's a lawyer. There's a local newspaper, the news Reporter out of nearby Whiteville that comes out twice a week. Ethan sometimes looks at its website, but he and his fiance don't subscribe.

[Ethan Jordan]

I've lived by myself. I lived out of my parents house for now going on the fifth year. And I can say I've honestly never had a newspaper in my house or even picked one up. I know there's not one that'd been in my house. My parents get one every week.

[John Biewen]

But for local news, he relies on Facebook, which includes reports from nearby outlets and comments from the community. He mentions a recent criminal incident in a nearby town.

[Ethan Jordan]

We're sitting there talking with a group of friends and where'd you read that at? Oh, if you go on Facebook, look at WWA Wise post about it. But look at the comments and you can see the video. So now you kind of, you know, you look at Facebook. Cause yeah, the papers and you know they'll tell you about it. But a lot of times you can read through the comments and find somebody who actually lived it and see their opinion. And you know, sometimes opinions are biased, but you do get kind of see more of a real live feeling by reading the comments on it. So a lot of my news, not gonna say I trust Facebook by no stretch of the matter. Cause everybody has a different opinion, but you can kind of see the gist of what's going on.

[John Biewen]

Ethan votes Republican along with everybody in his family and their neighbors. He says historically, this region, white folks included, voted for Democrats. Until 10 or 20 years ago, we were all Democrats.

[Ethan Jordan]

And then all of a sudden we wake up one day and we're Republicans.

[John Biewen]

As much as we all rely on the media to get information and to decide how to vote, it's worth highlighting what Ethan says when I ask who he voted for in the North Carolina governor's race in 2024.

[Ethan Jordan]

Mark Robinson.

[John Biewen]

You did?

[Ethan Jordan]

Yes, I did.

[John Biewen]

You may remember hearing about Mark Robinson no matter how far you are from North Carolina. He was the Republican nominee who lost to Democrat Josh Stein. Robinson made international news for inflammatory statements he apparently made, including on a porn website maligning Martin Luther King, defending Hitler, questioning the Holocaust and calling himself a black Nazi. Ethan tells me he had to choose between the two candidates, suggesting it was a vote for his preferred party. But he also says this about Robinson.

[Ethan Jordan]

I had met him personally. So I mean, you know, I look at politics different than some people. You know, you got die hard Republicans, you got die hard Democrats, you got die hard liberals. And there's other parties. There's a whole list of.

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

Now

[Ethan Jordan]

I look at the ones like that that I've personally had shook their hand or met in person. And I had met Mark Robson. He spent some time down in Columbus county. And I had met him personally. So he probably didn't remember my name or know who I was, but he called my name one time and shook my hand. So I mean, if you feel like you got a close personal connection with him, that's kind of Way I look at whether you're doing Democrat, Republican, maybe,

[John Biewen]

there's still special power in what comes to us, not from a screen, but through in person experience, the way people used to learn most of what they knew about the world. Despite his conservative views, Ethan says he finds Fox News too far to the right at times when it harps too much on gun rights or undocumented immigrants. But then a network like NBC will annoy him even more in the other direction.

[Ethan Jordan]

During the election, it was always negative on Trump. Negative on Trump constantly. You know, this, that, and the other, you know, and I kind of look at it, I'm like, well, everybody's not perfect, but the one. Y' all were pro for it. Kamala, you were pro. Kamala. Like, I can find problems with her too, just as good as you can find with Trump. It's kind of, you know, if you're going to tell the story, tell it on both sides. Tell the pros and the cons of both. Not just constantly over and over and over and over again. And that's where I'd get irritated and not want to listen to it.

[John Biewen]

Best thing that's ever happened to you, financially. Go easy. Sold my car on Carvana.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Amazing offer, really.

[John Biewen]

I hit 200 on the scratcher. Did the scratcher come to your house and hand you a check? No. How many scratchers did you hit to get that? I hit a button on Carvana.com once. Okay, that's fair. It's like the lottery, except you always win. Not like the lottery at all, actually. Exactly. Inexplicably good offers worth bragging about. Sell your car today on Carvana.

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

Pick up.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Fees may apply.

[Charles Loy]

It's time to move past doom and gloom, because while the climate headlines make us feel like we're losing, we met the people winning. And they just might change how you see your role in this fight. I'm Charles Loy, and this is a fighting chance. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Biewen]

Hey, Chenge, what are you thinking so far?

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Well, I gotta say, I really like listening to Ethan, you know, and I'm not mad at him. I mean, if you said to me, white North Carolina farmer who votes Republican, I feel like I was gonna picture somebody very different. Somebody who's maybe not as open or really just has their mind made up. Now I would like to hear Ethan explain why he voted for Mark Robinson, who's a Holocaust denier who called himself a black Nazi for governor. So there is that part.

[Ethan Jordan]

Yeah.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

But putting that aside for a second, just listening to him, I Got a feel for where he's at, even though we only heard him for a few minutes.

[John Biewen]

You wouldn't vote for the people he votes for, you're saying. But he comes across as a sincere person doing his best to make sense of things, right?

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Yeah. Like, based on the information he has. You know what I'm saying? And when he talks about the news he pays attention to, he sounds real familiar to me. He wants the facts. He wants fairness. And when the news tells him something very different from what he and the people around him think is true, the then it sounds unfair or oversimplified. That makes him want to change the channel or tap over to a different source.

[John Biewen]

We said this episode was going to be about us, those of us on the receiving end of the news. I talked to an expert who has fascinating insights into our biases as news consumers, including how changes in our society have amplified those biases.

[Danigal Young]

Often when I'm talking about this to audiences, I'll say, you know, how many of you would say that your main goal as you're engaging with the world is to be accurate in what you perceive? And everyone raises their hand, and I'm like, actually, it's not. Actually, you're wrong.

[John Biewen]

This is Danigal Young.

[Danigal Young]

I'm a professor of communication and political science at the University of Delaware, where I direct the center for Political Communication.

[John Biewen]

Young studies how people process information in connection with our politics. She wrote the recent book How Media, Politics and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation. Dana says when you turn on a cable news and opinion channel or go to a news website, you're bringing along deep desires, needs, really, that go well beyond wanting accurate information.

[Danigal Young]

Your goal is not to be accurate, because your goal really is survival. And there are three areas that sort of speak to survival needs that serve as sort of the underbelly of human survival. They all facilitate action because in order to survive, you need to act in your own survival interests. So those three needs are comprehension, control, and community.

[John Biewen]

As we go about our lives, we want to feel that we know basically what the hell is going on in our world, and we want to feel some ability to control what happens to us. But Dana says maybe even more important than comprehension and control is that third C word, community.

[Danigal Young]

And this simply captures the notion that we are social animals who do not exist truly as individuals in a vacuum. We only exist embedded within a social context. And that has to do with how we were able to survive historically. Historically, even here in the US that notion, even of rampant, you know, ardent individualism is itself, believe it or not, a group norm. We are individualists because everyone around us also prizes that value of individualism, which I think is kind of hilariously ironic.

[John Biewen]

So, Young says, as we take in the news, we do so, consciously or not, as members of the social groups we identify with. And in a country that's bitterly divided politically, most Americans identify with a political team. We might as well be wearing our team's uniform as we go looking for news.

[Danigal Young]

That means that when we comprehend the world, we're going to comprehend the world the same way that our team does, and we're going to want to comprehend the world in ways that make our team look good.

[John Biewen]

Dana is talking about gender, general human tendencies, in part, but it hasn't always been like this. She says historical trends in the US in politics and the media have helped to intensify our divisions. These changes have made Americans less open to information we don't like and more vulnerable to mis and disinformation. To start with, she points to the sorting of the political parties starting in the middle of the 20th century.

[Danigal Young]

Up until the 50s and 60s, our two major political parties were actually quite mixed in terms of policy positions, in terms of the kinds of people who identified with each, in terms of where those people lived, in terms of the religious identification of the people within the parties. And part of the reason that that was the case was because there was this great compromise that was made on the issue of race in the United States.

[John Biewen]

That's a nice way of saying the two parties were pretty much in sync. White supremacy wise.

[Danigal Young]

Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party had members, elite members within them, who supported the idea of states rights, who supported the idea of the disempowerment of African American people.

[John Biewen]

As millions of black people migrated out of the Jim Crow south, populating northern cities and turning into voters. That put pressure on the Democrats and gave them an opportunity.

[Danigal Young]

And we ended up with that sort of great racial realignment where the Democratic Party became the party of civil rights and the Republican Party became the party in opposition to that movement.

[John Biewen]

Most black people moved from the gop, the party of Lincoln, to the Democrats. Most white Southerners and other conservative white people, many of whom had been Democrats, joined the Republicans. Other kinds of sorting followed. Evangelical Christians and people in rural places turned mostly Republican, while secular and city people grew more overwhelmingly Democratic, such that

[Danigal Young]

the Republican Party of today is overwhelmingly white, rural, Christian and culturally conservative. And the Democratic Party today is overwhelmingly racially and ethnically diverse, secular, agnostic, urban, suburban, and culturally and ideologically Liberal research

[John Biewen]

has found that increased homogeneity within a political party serves to crank up the emotional temperature for those on that side.

[Danigal Young]

There is something primal in us that happens when we look like our team. We live like our team. We live in the same places as our team. We worship like our team. There's something really primal that ignites in us because we have such good group fit. That is what has happened in American politics. And it's happened in a way that is not symmetrical. Because as you may have noticed, as I described it, in the Republican Party, those identity categories are far more homogenous than they are within the Democratic Party. And so the engine runs fast and furiously on the right in the US

[John Biewen]

right now, that is the engine of visceral us against them sentiment. But that's not just a Republican thing. Political scientists have documented an increase in what they call affective polarization.

[Danigal Young]

And that is simply the extent to which regular people, members of the public, dislike members of the other political party. That does seem to be pretty equal across the parties. Democrats don't like Republicans and Republicans don't like Democrats. It's not necessarily that we become more radical on our position on gun control or abortion. It's more that I just hate people who feel opposite me more, which is interesting.

[John Biewen]

So change.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Yeah, I mean what Danigal is really saying is that news consumers in the US are less open minded than ever. Less willing to be persuaded by information that conflicts with what we already believe.

[John Biewen]

Yes. Now stir in the social media algorithms that feed us rage bait and in general our fragmented, often blatantly partisan us against them. Media environment. I grabbed a couple clips. This is Sean Hannity of Fox News and Rachel Maddow of Ms. Now notice in each case the talk about them. They the other side. They want you to feel pain.

[Ethan Jordan]

They want it.

[John Biewen]

They want you to pay more at the pump. They want your energy bills to be higher.

[Danigal Young]

The chief threat among them now is

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

not the rioters and the kooks, but

[Danigal Young]

the slick political professionals who are turning

[John Biewen]

their considerable talents to laundering violently revolutionary

[Danigal Young]

claims that America' elections aren't real.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

So when all the talk about so called political polarization in America, there's a tendency to think that the fragmenting of the media into a thousand sources, all saying different things, that that's the problem. And if we could just go back to a time when everyone watched Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings, we'd come together again as a nation.

[John Biewen]

And I'm just going to guess partly by your tone of voice, but also knowing you that you're not really buying it, Professor Kumanyika. For one thing, I know you well enough to know you don't believe there was once upon a time when the major media told the American people the unvarnished truth on all the important questions.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Right. When was the media telling people the truth about white supremacy and how pervasive it is, the truth about US History and how brutal it is when or the truth about U.S. behavior around the world. Right. And the way America's economic system works, why folks are struggling to get by. And also this idea that Americans used to agree on things, that we really ever had this consensus as a society? Nah. I mean, there was more of a consensus maybe among white people, especially white men, middle class and above, who held all the power in the country.

[John Biewen]

Yeah. But lots of other people who fit that description and saw a very different reality were just left out of the public conversation. For the most part.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Yeah. And if you kind of aren't sure you want some receipts on that, I encourage you to go check the other seasons of this podcast.

[John Biewen]

But there are other reasons to doubt that somehow reversing the splintering of the media, if that were possible, would help Americans to find common ground on what our problems are and how to solve them. First of all, it seems a lot of us have gotten a somewhat mistaken idea about just how siloed the news media are. This whole idea of the echo chamber. Here's Danagal Young again.

[Danigal Young]

By and large, political scientists and communications scholars have come away from the empirical evidence with a conclusion that the echo chamber is largely a myth in that people are not only seeing content that supports their side.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

So the usual idea of the echo chamber is that people on different sides of the political divide aren't even exposed to voices from the other side.

[John Biewen]

Yeah, the idea that you only hear right wing voices on right wing media and likewise on the left.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

But Danigal is saying that's not how it works. If you watch Ms. Now, what used to be called msnbc, you see a whole bunch of Donald Trump and his allies and what they have to say about things. And if you watch Fox News or look at his website, you'll see a ton of content about Democrats and the left. Like, that's actually like the major thing that they're doing is getting people outraged about what the left is doing.

[John Biewen]

So the question is not do opposing perspectives get covered? It's how are they presented? Here's what Dana said.

[Danigal Young]

You are seeing claims that are being made by the other side, but they're often presented to you, perhaps shared by someone who's on your side, right. Who says, look at how awful these people are. This is the kind of thing that they're saying over on that other network. Here is what they're saying. And it is a moral violation. It's a violation of our moral order.

[John Biewen]

Dana brought up an example. Remember when Ketanji Brown Jackson was being confirmed for the Supreme Court in 2022. In your understanding, what does critical race theory mean? What is it, Senator?

[Danigal Young]

My understanding is that, oh, I remember

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Republican senators on the committee asked her a bunch of questions about her views on crt, which was like the conservative rage issue at the time. And Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, asked her about an anti racism book that suggested babies can be taught to be racist.

[Ethan Jordan]

Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist, Senator?

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

So you had a black nominee for the court and lots of the questions were about her views on race.

[John Biewen]

To Dannagal's point, about the echo chamber issue, msnbc, as it was called at the time, the heavily pro Democratic, anti Republican cable channel, gave these exchanges a lot of attention. I mean, there's no question that Ted Cruz figured prominently on the so called, you know, left leaning channel, along with analysis like this from a Democratic political strategist. This is about her being a black

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

woman, basically casting her as a radical, as a black radical who, who is

[John Biewen]

out to get white people.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

I mean, quite frankly, it looked like I saw Ted Cruz commit a hate crime in that hearing room.

[John Biewen]

Meanwhile, over on Fox News, Sean Hannity brought Cruz onto his show. That evening, Ted Cruz was with us, Senator, and invited him to talk some more about his grilling of the judge. And when it came to critical race theory, she didn't want to answer the questions. She claimed she didn't.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

So it's an interesting clarification that Dana is making, right? She's, she's saying no matter how much you're in your news bubble, you're still hearing voices and ideas from the other side. Maybe a lot, but that doesn't really change the fact that people are getting wildly different views of the world. If they're watching Fox News versus MSNBCow, whether you call them echo chambers or not, really, it just highlights how crucial framing and analysis are in presenting what's happening out there.

[John Biewen]

There's another common idea that people are strongly influenced by the media they consume, especially if it's news that we think of as strongly biased. That whole my Uncle Ned's a right winger because he watches Fox News idea.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

But it's more complicated than that. Did Fox News turn your uncle into a right winger or did Uncle Ned turn to Fox because he already had right wing views?

[John Biewen]

This whole discussion can only almost make you wonder if it even matters what the media reports.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Yeah, and I mean, there's another reason to wonder about that. It has to do with our hobbled, corrupt system of government. There was a study in 2014 by scholars at Princeton and Northwestern.

[John Biewen]

2014. So back when I think, well, let's say when more Americans felt reasonably secure that the US Had a functioning democracy,

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

right before the Trump administration launched its newest assault on democratic norms, it was before Congress basically neutered itself and let the president decide everything. But even then, this study found that there was almost no relationship between what American citizens wanted, according to opinion polls, and the policies we get from our government. Large majorities favor higher taxes on rich people, more gun safety laws, stronger action on the climate crisis, and that's just listing a few things. And year after year, our representative government doesn't deliver what the people want.

[John Biewen]

We did a whole series our season four, the Land that Never Has Been yet, about the ways America's democratic system of government was designed from the start to be. Not too democratic and too stymie the will of the majority of the people.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

I mean, it's not all media, but can't let the media off the hook. Journalism is a core mechanism of a functioning democracy.

[John Biewen]

Right.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

And there are real problems with the way our media system carries out this crucial role. And some of those problems are structural. We'll have a lot more to say about that.

[John Biewen]

Chang. When I told people we were working on a season on the news media and the country's information crisis, some people said, oh, so it's going to be about AI and how we can't trust what we see and hear anymore. Think AI photos and videos especially. Other people said, oh, so it'll be about the Trumpian attack on news companies and the First Amendment.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

And I mean, look, all that stuff is wild, no doubt about it. But at the same time, I don't think anybody thinks this all started with AI. Right?

[John Biewen]

Right.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

I think it goes back a little further than that. So those things will definitely come up. We're going much deeper into the structures and forces that have shaped American news media for a much longer time.

[John Biewen]

And it can all seem pretty daunting. But I don't know about you, I'm not ready to throw up my hands and say we're doomed. The news is just a way to amuse ourselves and it can never change anything because the system's rigged. And anyway, people are hopelessly dug in and won't listen to facts they don't like. There are so many examples where journalism has made a difference and is making a difference. Information comes out and shifts public opinion, leading to change that affects people's lives.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Look, yo, let me tell you something. As somebody who literally, like, this is what my degree, this is my job. Nobody gets mad or at just journalism in the media than me, right? But at the same time, most of what I know about the world comes from journalism. You know what I mean? When I see ice kidnap somebody, that's because a journalist reported on it. When I know that, like, it's about to snow or that there was an earthquake, it's because, you know, I didn't see it myself usually. And I think as angry as we are, the end of the day is we have to have journalism because we have to know what's going on in the world just to live our everyday personal lives. If we're fired up. A person who's fired up about social justice or feels like something wrong, chances are everything that you know that's getting you angry is something you learned because of some kind of journalism or media. So I think we can be infuriated about it, but we actually have to solve this problem.

[John Biewen]

Here's a taste of what's to come here in season eight with local county

[Danigal Young]

commissioner races here, I tried like the dickens to find out where people stood, because I'm not going to vote if I can't get the information.

[John Biewen]

I recognize, sadly, that the Washington press corps is all too often the praetorian

[Ethan Jordan]

guard of the left.

[John Biewen]

No wonder people hate the media. Depends what one means by left wing. You know, Wait a minute.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

If you even address the issues of climate change and environmental destruction, that signifies a strong left leaning philosophy.

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

One thing that can be hard for

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

us to imagine is that a lot

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

of news you would actually get in church.

[John Biewen]

The early founders, they truly believed that democracy was impossible without a free press and a press that people could actually access. So today we rededicate a part of the airwaves which belong to all the people.

[Danigal Young]

When you're Suddenly fighting with 30 channels

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

instead of just two for eyeballs, you

[Danigal Young]

start to get the rise of political entertainment.

[John Biewen]

You're doing theater when you should be doing debate, which would be great. It's not honest.

[Danigal Young]

The new report is raising alarms about the state of American democracy.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

I wrote a piece before the election saying if Trump wins, blame the New York Times and I meant it.

[John Biewen]

And eventually we'll wrestle with what to do about it. All the news was created and produced by me, John Biewen with Chenjerai Kumanika and story editor Diane Hodson assistant producer Arlene Arevalo fact checking by Anna Pujol Mazzini music by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band, Michelle Osis, Alex Weston, James, Nathan Jones and Jason Hill Music consulting by Joe Augustine of Narrative Music. You can find transcripts at our website sceneonradio.org the show is distributed by our friends at PRX. Scene on radio comes to you from the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.

[Charles Loy]

It's time to move past doom and gloom, because while the climate headlines make us feel like we're losing, we met the people winning. And they just might change how you see your role in this fight. I'm Charles Loy, and this is a Fighting Chance, available wherever you get your podcasts.

[Podcast Host (Pushkin)]

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.