The press and the missing point of view, part 2

In part 1, California Moderates (CM) argued that the mainstream press unreasonably ignores non-mainstream points of view. Public opinion and/or the press itself generally acts as the public's default press publicity gatekeeper. Press attention tends to give traction to political arguments. Inattention tends to cause the associated arguments to wither away, even if the disfavored arguments might be the best.

Apollo 8 photo - Earthrise over the moon
Christmas eve 1968

What is the missing point of view?

What's missing from mainstream press political discourse? According to the press, nothing. According to California Moderates, something. Something you rarely (never?) hear from the press is a reporter, commentator or guest pundit who openly lists their credentials as non-ideological and pragmatic realist who doesn't care about liberal, conservative or religious solutions to problems. That's the point of view the public doesn't get from the press. They, their listeners and advertisers just might not like to hear the things that a true non-ideologue/anti-ideologue might have to say. A small or modest minority of Americans may share that pragmatic point of view. If popularity of opinion is what dominates the discourse, minority opinions shouldn't get much or any air time compared to mainstream opinion.

That would be just fine if mainstream opinion was happy with the status quo. However, there's a lot more than a small amount of discontent with politics as usual. Just ask the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street or people who register as independents.

  NASA’s galaxy evolution explorer photo

hot gas and dust cloud in the Cygnus Loop Nebula

The press and/or owners of press entities probably believe that puny ad revenues would come from airing hard core non-ideological pragmatism. Given the high numbers of independents, that may or may not be mostly true. Also, essentially every commentator, journalist and talk show guest will claim to be pragmatic, regardless of their biases or ideologies to the contrary. Such claims of true pragmatism are not credible.

You can't fix a problem you can't see

The unremarkable observation is that the press, like the rest of us has weaknesses or flaws. One flaw is that they are highly constrained by economic pressures. How the constraints play out is likely mostly subconscious, bit its there. Another is that the press pretty much believes that the two sided liberal-conservative world of politics represents about all there is with merit to talk about. At least, they appear to believe that. Some press outlets fully buy into one side or the other and present the public with a lot of harmful propaganda and distraction, both of which defend the status quo. On top of that the press seems to have little patience or time for minority opinion they believe has limited merits. In short, the press sees nothing much wrong so there's nothing much to fix. As long as that perception of reality prevails, nothing will change and the press as an institution will continue to do a pretty lousy job.