{"id":1019,"date":"2026-10-12T15:46:27","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T19:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2026-10-12T15:46:27","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T19:46:27","slug":"frances-brogan-reading-response-week-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/frances-brogan-reading-response-week-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Frances Brogan Reading Response Week 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was particularly struck by the paradox Panievsky illustrates of how the rightwing populists actually love the media that they excoriate, because it provides them with a platform. I wondered if this creates a feedback loop, where rightwing allegations of leftwing media bias push mainstream outlets to increasingly marginalize leftwing voices and highlight rightwing ones. If rightwing politicians are seeking the media out and even expressing their affection for it behind the scenes, then their attacks are clearly spurious; why doesn\u2019t the media ever report on this contradiction?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Panievsky lucidly illustrates how the media has desensitized the public to the radicalism of politicians like Nigel Farage and Itamar Ben-Gvir by consistently elevating their positions. I was fascinated by the study that showed that Americans were more likely to donate to anti-immigration causes after seeing data indicating that Trump would win their state. This demonstrates that people are more comfortable espousing extreme views once extremism is normalized, and the media is a key arbiter of social acceptability. It is remarkable that many journalists are so cowed by potential allegations of bias \u2013 even when their audience is also ideologically siloed \u2013 that they facilitate the spread of hateful views. It is ironic to me that as the mainstream media continues to veer to the right, they increasingly lose the trust of conservative audiences, demonstrating the disconnect between the media atmosphere and reality. Panievsky\u2019s point about how journalists can enable the rise of the far right is particularly notable amongst frenzied discourse about how social media foments extremism: social media just provides an audience, but mainstream news coverage confers credibility, deserved or not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Panievsky\u2019s analysis of strategic bias and \u201cobjectivity\u201d as a metric for journalistic quality was also interesting. The prevalence of strategic bias in coverage of demagogues like Trump and Netanyahu reveals that the compulsion to give equal weight to both sides isn\u2019t even objective, as it can disproportionately amplify less popular or patently false views. Neutrality doesn\u2019t equate to truthfulness, and the failure to debunk false claims can expand their influence. (We see this most clearly in Panievsky\u2019s striking example of how journalists dispassionately report right wing attacks on the media itself without defending themselves. Paradoxically, journalists are platforming only one side of the \u201cdebate\u201d about the legitimacy of the media, and thus risk framing their opponents\u2019 cynical position as fact.) The compulsion to balance suggests that the mere act of reporting the truth is ideological, which amounts to acquiescence to the rightwing characterization of reporting as political persecution. I was curious as to whether, by pushing the demarcation of acceptable views further and further right, and perhaps abetting the populist resurgence across the developed world, the vilified \u201cliberal media\u201d is actually encouraging rightwing politicians to adopt progressively more extreme positions by mitigating the social consequences for doing so.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was particularly struck by the paradox Panievsky illustrates of how the rightwing populists actually love the media that they excoriate, because it provides them with a platform. I wondered if this creates a feedback loop, where rightwing allegations of leftwing media bias push mainstream outlets to increasingly marginalize leftwing voices and highlight rightwing ones.<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6701,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6701"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1020,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}