The increasing divide in our country can only be explained by one thing: media bias, which became accelerated by the invention of the Internet. Sole blame should be placed on (the vastly overrated) Ronald Reagan. In 1987, Reagan pushed the FCC to repeal the Fairness Doctrine, which had required all news outlets in the USA to report fairly and with impartiality. From 1949-1987, the spinning of news stories that appealed to someone's political orientation was mostly obsolete. Now you see it everywhere, on both the left and right. None are more alarming than Breitbart, the news platform of the alt-right, which posts daily "news" that is designed to threaten its readers with extreme right-wing prejudice. (For example, any low-key crime committed by someone in an ethnic minority is thrust into the top stories of the page, reinforcing the racial prejudice that results when people are constantly seeing crimes only committed by those outside their own race.)
The rise in extremist political philosophy since 1988 is not a coincidence. First came the rise of Fox News and MSNBC, two of the most biased outlets of the right and left, respectively. The divide got greater as these two giants of the media got more and more in tune with their audience, knowing they only wanted to read stories that confirmed their worldviews. Now we have radicalized news organizations like Breitbart taking the country by storm. In all likelihood, someone like Donald Trump would not have been elected if not for this platform.
To mend the gap, we need to take a page from our history and restore the Fairness Doctrine, or instate something like the UK's Office of Communications, which regulates the media, forcing all news outlets to report impartial news stories. This is why you don't see any radicalized political groups with a large voice in that country. The UK understands that the media holds a dangerous amount of power, that it can single-handedly decide an election, or influence public opinion better than anything else. The UK understands that a regulated media keeps their country united and doesn't let it spin out of control like it is in the USA. Offcom allows watchers to file complaints if any news organization prints an impartial story, putting a lot of pressure on organizations like the BBC to stay fair and balanced. Honestly, I can't even read the news in our country anymore, because of all the emotionally charged headlines. I read the foreign news from Britain when I want to know what's really going on.
If the UK can figure it out, why can't we?
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