Provocative New Book Challenges Us to Really Ask "Why?"

By Andrea Batista Schlesinger, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.. Posted July 15, 2009.

News We Can Believe (In)

Our ideology even directs how we choose to learn about the world around us. According to a study undertaken by Natali Jomini Stroud, using data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey, people are interested in consuming media that shares their ideological bent. After analyzing newspaper, cable television, talk radio, and political Web site consumption habits, Stroud found that almost two-thirds of conservative Republicans consumed at least one conservative media outlet, compared to a quarter of liberal Democrats. On the other side, over three-quarters of liberal Democrats consumed a liberal outlet, compared to about 40 percent of conservative Republicans. It’s not a surprise, I suppose, that we, in our ideologically segregated neighborhoods, would invite onto our television sets only those who share our ideology.

The way Americans filter media through an ideological lens can be extreme. One study that tested whether the logo of a news company appearing on a screen would determine the likelihood of a participant clicking on the news headline found that “no matter how we sliced the data—either at the level of individuals or news stories—the results demonstrate that Fox News is the dominant news source for Americans whose political leanings are Republican or conservative.” On political subjects, the likelihood of conservatives clicking on the Fox story was understandably high. But here’s the kicker: this was also true for soft news. Conservatives were more likely to click on sports and travel stories that came from Fox. Apparently, sports and travel coverage also needs to be mediated through our political ideologies.

This increased polarization in how we live and how we learn about how others live has profound implications for the policies that govern our lives. Because our ideologies are increasingly concentrated, we are increasingly electing people who represent that ideology well, by being either very left or very right. This extremism has led to a paralysis in our national politics.

Congressional districts, reflecting their residents, are overwhelmingly Republican or overwhelmingly Democrat. Bishop sees these landslides as an affront to the vision of the Founding Fathers, who intended that members of Congress would meet in D.C., bringing with them a variety of perspectives and beliefs, to hash out the nation’s business.

“Now,” Bishop tells me, “they fly in on Tuesday, oftentimes they live with members of their own party, in their own dormitories with ideologically similar members, then they fly home on Thursday to their homogeneous districts, and they never have to do the work of politicians, which is to make deals and compromise.” And when politics becomes merely an expression of ideologies rather than a process of figuring out how to actually improve the quality of people’s lives, we all suffer.

Don’t Know, Don’t Ask

I agree with Bishop that ideological segregation is destined to have a negative effect on our politics, but not just because our politicians are ill-equipped or unmotivated to do the business of politicking. The environment created by the Big Sort instills in us a sense of complacency. We are less likely to ask questions of those who represent us, because we assume they have our interests in mind.

In 2008, the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy commissioned a poll to find out which policies the current and aspiring middle class think would improve the quality of their lives. We asked a random sample of Americans throughout the country about pieces of legislation that had been voted on by Congress, but not signed into law, during the previous session. For example, we asked about the Employee Free Choice Act, which makes it easier for employees to join unions; an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to provide health insurance to more middle-class children; and taxing the income of hedge fund managers at the same rate as everyone else’s income. When we asked respondents how they would have liked their member of Congress to vote on these bills, the answer was overwhelmingly in favor of a yes vote, among Democrats and Republicans alike. But when we asked, How did your member of Congress vote on this bill?, the overwhelming response was Don’t know.

We don’t know, and we don’t ask. We figure that our members of Congress have our back, because we share a spot along the ideological spectrum with them. We agree on some big-picture issues, maybe on cultural values, maybe on the rhetoric about the role that government should play in our lives. So we don’t ask what they are up to, and they don’t feel obliged to tell us. Despite advanced communications at our fingertips, only one in four of our respondents reported hearing from their member of Congress on a regular basis. We don’t ask, and they don’t tell. And our problems do not get solved.

Transcending Ideological Segregation through Deliberation

Whether we are infants, members of Congress, or regular citizens, it is encountering the unfamiliar that prompts us to question. If people are living in their ghettos of belief, where is the catalyst to inquire?

Bringing people together who don’t already agree is Carolyn Lukensmeyer’s business. I know firsthand, because I worked for Lukensmeyer in my first job out of college. It was the late 1990s, and she was on a mission to engage Americans in a conversation about the future of Social Security. My job was to run the Social Security Challenge, a campaign within the broader campaign, focused on inspiring college students to talk about the seventy-three-year-old program and its future.

See more stories tagged with: elections, democracy, voting, ideology, political media

Andrea Batista Schlesinger is the executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy.

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