Introducing Scene on Radio’s The News

Summary

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Master Plan x Scene on Radio — “The News” (June 9, 2026)

Overview

In this special crossover episode of Master Plan, host David Sirota introduces the launch of Scene on Radio’s new podcast season, “The News.” Co-hosted by John Biewen and Chenjerai Kumanyika, this series investigates America’s fraught relationship with journalism, the systemic collapse of trust in media, and how these issues intertwine with broader democratic crises. Episode one focuses on news consumers—how we seek, process, and are shaped by the media ecosystem—and explores the roots of today’s deep polarization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Crisis in American Journalism

• Collapse of Trust and Local Journalism
  • Sirota frames the episode, highlighting the “information crisis” in America where public trust in news is at historic lows and local media has all but evaporated.
  • Quote (Sirota, 01:13): “Journalism and the news have been referred to as the oxygen of a functioning democracy. If that's true, America's lungs are now struggling to breathe.”
• Widespread Media Distrust
  • According to a Gallup poll cited, only 28% of Americans have even a "fair amount" of confidence in major media.
  • Quote (Biewen, 04:06): “According to a Gallup poll in 2025, only 28% of Americans had even a fair amount of confidence in the major media. 70%...not much or no confidence at all.”
• Media’s Democratic Function
  • The discussion turns to the fundamental democratic role of journalism: “People need the media to live right? ... How are you going to run a democracy where the people are supposed to govern ourselves if we don't have the information?” (Kumanyika, 04:47).

The Human Element: Media Consumption Habits

• Consumer Perspectives in a ‘News Desert’
  • John Biewen travels through the “Border Belt” of North Carolina—rural, racially diverse, economically struggling, and designated as a news desert—to interview locals about their news diets.
  • Notable moment (Ethan Jordan, local farmer, 14:44): “We Farm total 2,200 acres between me and my dad... If you go back, I'm the eighth generation of Jordan farming on this land.”
  • Ethan relies on Fox News, a news aggregation app, and Facebook comments for information; he no longer reads newspapers, and identifies his political alignment as Republican but expresses a desire for fairness in reporting.
  • Quote (Ethan Jordan, 17:15): “You can kind of see more of a real live feeling by reading the comments on [Facebook]… But you can kind of see the gist of what's going on.”

The Psychology of News Consumption

• Biases & The Three Cs (Comprehension, Control, Community)

  • Danigal Young (University of Delaware) explains that our approach to news is governed less by accuracy than by survival instincts: comprehension (understanding the world), control (agency over events), and community (belonging).
  • Quote (Young, 23:54): “Your goal is not to be accurate, because your goal really is survival… The three needs are comprehension, control, and community.”
  • In a polarized society, these needs manifest in deep identification with a “team”—driving us to seek information that serves group interests.
  • Quote (Young, 25:10): “When we comprehend the world, we're going to comprehend the world the same way that our team does.”

• Party Sorting & Polarization

  • Historical review: The U.S. parties' ideological homogenization, especially regarding race, led to today’s intense tribalism: “There is something primal… We live like our team...the engine runs fast and furiously on the right.” (Young, 28:14)
  • Both sides now see the other as antagonistic, leading to “affective polarization”—disliking the out-group more than caring about specific policies.

Media Structure & The Myth of the Echo Chamber

• Echo Chambers Are Overstated
  • Contrary to popular belief, research shows Americans are routinely exposed to opposing viewpoints, but typically through a filter that frames the other side as morally objectionable.
  • Quote (Young, 32:45): “The echo chamber is largely a myth in that people are not only seeing content that supports their side.”
  • Quote (Young, 34:02): “Here is what they're saying and it is a moral violation. It's a violation of our moral order.”
• Role of Framing
  • The example of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation illustrates how both MSNBC and Fox cover the same event, but with radically different framing.

Audience Autonomy, Media Influence, and Democratic Dysfunction

• Does Media Shape Us or Do We Choose Our Media?
  • Discussion questions whether people are made partisan by media (e.g., “Uncle Ned is a right-winger because of Fox News”) or if they select media that reinforce pre-existing worldviews.
• Limited Impact of Public Opinion
  • The 2014 Princeton/Northwestern study found a near-zero correlation between public preferences and resulting government policies, suggesting deep democratic dysfunction beyond just media influence (Kumanyika, 37:12).
• Journalism Still Matters
  • Despite disillusionment, journalism is vital: “Most of what I know about the world comes from journalism…So I think we can be infuriated about it, but we actually have to solve this problem.” (Kumanyika, 39:51)

Moving Forward: What’s Really Broken, and What Next?

• The season promises to unpack the historical, economic, and structural roots of the media crisis, going beyond hot-button topics like AI and “fake news” to critically examine how we got here—and potential solutions.
• Quote (Kumanyika, 38:52): “We're going much deeper into the structures and forces that have shaped American news media for a much longer time.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Trust in Media
  • “Only 28% of Americans had even a fair amount of confidence in the major media.” (John Biewen, 04:06)
• On Democracy & Information
  • “How are you going to run a democracy...if we don't have any shared sense of what's going on out there?” (Kumanyika, 04:47)
• On the Persistence of Tribalism
  • “There is something primal in us that happens when we look like our team… The engine runs fast and furiously on the right.” (Young, 28:14)
• On Echo Chambers
  • “The echo chamber is largely a myth in that people are not only seeing content that supports their side.” (Young, 32:45)
• On Journalism’s Role
  • “Most of what I know about the world comes from journalism.” (Kumanyika, 39:51)

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Key Segment Timestamps

• Media Crisis Overview & Introduction: 00:13–07:07
• Exploring the Media Desert in North Carolina: 11:14–19:49
• Ethan Jordan and Local News Habits: 14:21–21:08
• Interview with Danigal Young on Media Psychology: 22:38–29:47
• Discussion of Echo Chambers and Media Framing: 32:19–36:25
• Princeton/Northwestern Study on Policy and Public Will: 37:01–38:32
• Conclusion & Season Preview: 38:52–41:10

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Tone & Language

The episode maintains a conversational, sometimes humorous, but fundamentally serious tone as Biewen and Kumanyika—both accomplished journalists and media critics—debate, empathize, and challenge each other. They favor plainspoken but nuanced language, always with an eye toward the stakes for democracy.

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Episode Summary

Scene on Radio’s “The News” launches with a probing, self-aware investigation into the American news crisis—not just as an industry collapse, but as a test of self-government and collective reality. Through local interviews, expert analysis, and personal reflection, episode one sets up a season asking not just “What’s wrong with the media?” but “What’s at stake for democracy—and what can be fixed?”

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For more, follow the rest of Scene on Radio’s season or subscribe for future early-access episodes of Master Plan at The Lever.

Transcript

[David Sirota]

You're listening to the free ad supported version of our podcast. For an ad free experience, visit lever news.com upgrade

[News Anchor]

the lever.

[David Sirota]

Hey, everyone, it's David Sirota. We're still hard at work reporting out the rest of season two of Master Plan, but while you wait, we've got something we think you'll want to hear. Today we're sharing a full episode of a new podcast series from our friends at Scene on Radio. The series is called the News. Journalism and the news have been referred to as the oxygen of a functioning democracy. If that's true, America's lungs are now struggling to breathe. Most Americans say they do not trust the media. The business model for local journalism has all but collapsed. We're flooded in a river of misinformation every day, and it seems impossible to separate the state of our news media from the other profound crises that America is failing to solve. Scene on Radio, which has been nominated twice for a Peabody Award, is digging deep into the roots of this problem, exploring the challenges of the modern media landscape and asking what's really wrong with the news. We're sharing the first episode of their new season today. If you enjoy it, check out the rest of Scene on Radio, Season 8, the news, and all of their other seasons. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

All right, we're rolling.

[John Biewen]

Good to see you.

[Ethan Jordan]

Here we go.

[News Anchor]

Asian markets are mostly down today. That's dangerous. Flash flooding ripping through parts of Milwaukee. This is a box 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 Lalock.

[News Anchor]

Welcome back to One America News. Thanks so much for.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

And at the same time, we're stuck in a deep information crisis.

[John Biewen]

I read the news today.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Oh, boy.

[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.

[News Anchor]

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. I'm not particularly interested in msnbc.

[News Anchor]

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

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Don't try me today, Scotty. We put out a.

[John Biewen]

We put out a. CNN give a

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

letter to the New York Post. Yo, ain't worth the papers.

[John Biewen]

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.

[John Biewen]

Let's get rid of these voting machines.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

There's a half a dozen people, whether

[Ethan Jordan]

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 only work when there's wind and sun. We don't have technology to store the energy from wind and solar. So if you make yourself.

[David Sirota]

I'm very disappointed in the mainstream media.

[Ethan Jordan]

That's all I'll say about that.

[John Biewen]

It's hard to imagine putting the toothpaste back in the tube and maybe there's no golden age to return to. Anyway, so now what? So why the media information age of hysteria? Hey John, you know our little montage could have just kept on going.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

I better stop now. Cause I feel like you're gonna get us in trouble, you know what I mean? We got hundreds, thousands more news and newsish 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 check 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]

Ceng, you are an award winning podcast maker, Empire City on Civil 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 gonna 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 in this pivotal historical moment.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

And eventually we're gonna 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.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

And John, like I have a confession, we talk about people being angry at the news media and. 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, 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, but

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

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 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. 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.

[David Sirota]

Hey, it's David Sirota. When we first launched our investigative news outlet, the Lever, we had our own master plan to follow the money that controls so much of our daily lives. But to follow the money, we have to make money. So it helps to have a partner like Shopify on our side. Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory and international shipping to processing returns and beyond. Get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. What if people haven't heard about your brand? New Shopify helps you find your customers with easy to run email and social media campaigns and what if you get stuck? Shopify is always around to share advice with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com mp go to shopify.com mp that's shopify.com mp

[John Biewen]

all your favorite country way back to Back to back today's country the big 95.7kml 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's 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.

[David Sirota]

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

[News Anchor]

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 manufactured homes, trailer parks, single wides, double wides, kind of dotted everywhere,

[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 and B,

[John Biewen]

the Big Stick Foxy 99. 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.

[News Anchor]

John, you want to come in or

[John Biewen]

you want to sit on the porch? I talked to a range of people in the Border Belt about their media diets.

[News Anchor]

I usually sit here and have my coffee and I'm sitting here on the couch and I'm watching the news. Local stations which are located in Wilmington, but they carry this area.

[Ethan Jordan]

I don't watch a lot of news, but what I watch, I watch Newsmax or Fox.

[News Anchor]

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 to 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 to 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 is 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 calls. 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 because 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, got die hard liberals. And there's other parties. You know, there's a whole list of them. Now, I look at the ones like that that I've personally had shook their hand or met them personally. 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 the way I look at whether you're Democrat or replaced.

[John Biewen]

Maybe 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]

Hey, Cheng, 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.

[John Biewen]

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

[John Biewen]

a few minutes, 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, 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.

[News Anchor]

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.

[News Anchor]

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.

[News Anchor]

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.

[News Anchor]

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, 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.

[News Anchor]

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 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.

[News Anchor]

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.

[News Anchor]

White supremacy wise 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.

[News Anchor]

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

[News Anchor]

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.

[John Biewen]

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

[News Anchor]

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 right now, that is

[John Biewen]

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.

[News Anchor]

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 at me more, which is interesting.

[John Biewen]

So change.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

Yeah, I mean what Dana Gal 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.

[News Anchor]

The chief threat among them now is not the rioters and the kooks, but the slick political professionals who are turning their considerable talents to laundering violently revolutionary claims that America's 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 gonna 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. Right.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

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, 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 didn't fit that description and saw a very different reality were just left out of the public conversation for the most part.

[Ethan Jordan]

Yeah.

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

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 Danigal Young again.

[News Anchor]

By and large, political scientists and communications scholars have come away from the empirical evidence with the 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, the echo chamber, is that people on different sides of the political dividend 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 in the left. Like that's, 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.

[News Anchor]

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.

[Dana Gal Young]

Right.

[News Anchor]

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,

[News Anchor]

Senator? 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, you know, 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

[John Biewen]

is being taught with kids that babies are racist,

[News Anchor]

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 Danagal'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 woman, basically casting her as a radical, as a black radical who is out to get white people. I mean, quite frankly, it looked like I saw Ted Cruz commit a hate

[Chenjera Kumanyika]

crime in that hearing room.

[John Biewen]

Meanwhile, over on Fox News, Sean Hannity brought Cruz onto his show that even 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 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 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, 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 to 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. Right. And there are real problems with the way our media system carries out this crucial role. Some of those problems are structural. We'll have a lot more to say about that.

[John Biewen]

Ceng. 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. 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 madder at 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 a 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

[News Anchor]

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

[John Biewen]

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

[Ethan Jordan]

praetorian guard of the left.

[News Anchor]

No wonder people hate the media.

[John Biewen]

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.

[News Anchor]

One thing that can be hard for us to imagine is that a lot of news you would actually get in church.

[John Biewen]

The early founders, they truly believed that democracy was impossible without a free press

[David Sirota]

and a press that people could actually access.

[John Biewen]

So today we rededicate a part of the airwaves which belong to all the people.

[News Anchor]

When you're Suddenly fighting with 30 channels instead of just two for eyeballs, you start to get the rise of political entertainment.

[John Biewen]

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

[News Anchor]

A 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.

[Bill Kirk]

From artificial intelligence to the gig economy to global volatility, the economy is changing at a dizzying pace. Enter the Managing the Future of Work podcast, the chart topping and critically acclaimed podcast from Harvard Business School. Hosted by me, Bill Kirk and by Managing the Future of Work project Co chair Joe Fuller, this show explores technology trends, demographic changes, the rise of the care economy and many other forces transforming the landscape of work. We'll highlight the insights of business leaders, technologists and experts like Business Roundtable's Kristin Silberg on corporate workforce strategy and Khan Academy founder sal Khan on AI education and the future of work. With more than two and a half million downloads and close to 300 episodes, there is something for everyone. Follow HBS Managing the Future of Work on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now.

[Dana Gal Young]

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[David Sirota]

Wow, you made it all the way to the end. Want to keep going? The next episode is available right now for paid subscribers. They already know what's coming next, so don't wait. Become a paid subscriber today@ lever news.com upgrade. You'll get every episode of Master Plan, early and ad free, plus exclusive bonus interviews, access to our research and more. Again, that's lever news.com upgrade. There's a link in the show notes.