Red America

These two related articles–the first, by Ken Stern, clearly inspired the second–both look at the forces tearing us apart politically.  Stern has clearly found there is a lot to like about red America during his year long venture to the other side.  Stern has also figured out that the bias is real; he even has an explanation for why it exists.  Stern has a book about his time in red America coming out in the next few weeks.  No doubt it will ruffle many feathers on both sides of the great divide which is probably a good thing.)  I urge you to read both these articles.  The links may not be live.  Ron P.

Former NPR CEO opens up about liberal media biashttp://nypost.com/2017/10/21/the-other-half-of-america-that-the-liberal-media-doesnt-cover/Excerpt: This may seem like an unusual admission from someone who once ran NPR, but it is borne of recent experience.  Spurred by a fear that red and blue America were drifting irrevocably apart, I decided to venture out from my overwhelmingly Democratic neighborhood and engage Republicans where they live, work, and pray.  For an entire year, I embedded myself with the other side, standing in pit row at a NASCAR race, hanging out at Tea Party meetings and sitting in on Steve Bannon’s radio show.  I found an America far different from the one depicted in the press and imagined by presidents (“cling to guns or religion”) and presidential candidates (“basket of deplorables”) alike.

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Look What We Can Learn When We Venture Out into Red America!http://www.nationalreview.com/morning-jolt/453035/ken-stern-npr-red-america-discovery?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=171024_Jolt&utm_term=Jolt
Excerpt:  Journalism requires judgment. If you pick up a newspaper (pardon my anachronistic examples) and everything that’s on the front page seems boring, irrelevant, and not that important to you, you probably won’t buy it or read it. Journalists and editors need to have good acumen for what’s important in the lives of their audience and a sense of how to balance what you need to read and what you want to read. We all have a sense of how the world works, and those of us who follow politics tend to develop strong, even intense beliefs of how things are and how they ought to be. Revising those beliefs is a slow and difficult process. The Washington Post’s health-care correspondent dismissed the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell as a “local crime story.” A Democratic senator is currently on trial in corruption, not far from the media capital of the country, with allegations of private jets ferrying the senator to party with gorgeous supermodels at lush tropical resorts and $100 million stolen from Medicare to pay for the lavish lifestyle and fill campaign coffers . . . and it’s gotten intermittent coverage at best. A longtime Democratic staffer was arrested by the FBI as he attempted to flee to Pakistan, wiping his phone of all data hours earlier. Why do reporters in the national news media find these stories . . . not quite as compelling as conservative journalism institutions? A pretty plausible theory is that living and working among so many other like-minded left-of-center people leaves them with an inaccurate perception of how the world actually works. In their minds, abortionists are dedicated medical professionals who risk death threats to provide vital serves to women, not monsters. Democratic senators and their staffers are good people, dedicated, principled, and law-abiding. Cases that contradict these beliefs are inconsequential exceptions, and not worthy of extended public attention.