Burroughs: Who Needs NBC?

“Which channel is NBC,” I asked my husband last night, frustrated I couldn’t find the Olympics.

I had no idea where the network channels were on the television. The last time I watched network television was weeks, maybe months ago.

As a child, I remember the “big three” and PBS. Since the Wall Street Journal was delivered quite early, my father grilled me on the contents of its front page during breakfast. We also got the New York Times, but it came in the evening and was mostly read by my mother.

Like most Americans, my family subscribed to three newsweeklies – Time, Newsweek and US News and Report. We took news seriously. Making sure I grasped contemporary political events, my father and I sat outside, on cool California evenings, and hotly debated an article chosen from these magazines. I had to debate both sides of an issue, as he framed it. It was quite an education.

My father, an engineer-physicist who quickly rose in management leaving the technical world behind, also subscribed to professional journals – but rarely read them. He did read, however, stacks of investment newsletters, newspapers and magazines. A proud man, he did his own investing, with a hard blue engineering pencil on pale green graph paper. I’m sure he lost oodles of money, but will never ask.

That was it – there were no other sources of information. I suppose radio played a role, but not for me. And though counter-cultural rags and papers could be found in weird places, including our public library, I rarely read them.

Until the Internet and cable news, Americans shared the same handful of sources. But even with few and homogenized sources, our nation was culturally and politically diverse. The post-war cultural consensus had already disappeared. By not reporting from and with the breadth of America’s values, homogenized news hid our diverse problems and divisions. Oldline media reporters, though, didn’t accept their own limitations. In the media mind, the cultural consensus was theirs to determine and disseminate. They were the consensus. They shaped us.

But it wasn’t so easy. Ordinary Americans still thought for themselves, learning quickly how to parse media lingo to find a more nuanced, broad view that reflected their own values. They didn’t need more sources as much as bigger ones.

One case in point – religion. Though faith played a determinant role in American values, the oldline media felt uncomfortable with this topic, relegating our deepest values to the “religion page,” or not discussing faith at all. It was easy for the media and academy to break down the electorate into gender, race, age, occupation … but a nuanced analysis of religious beliefs befuddled them.

Now, it’s different. Pollsters understand that religious faith is second only to one’s familial political background as a determinant of political identification and behavior. In the absence of comprehensive, nuanced and representative reportage, Internet sites were formed that sliced and diced the role of religion in contemporary politics.

Today, of course, news sources are as numerous as the bandwidths that carry them. Many Americans now get most of their news from the Internet, which is often a mere secondary portal for news created by the oldline media. This is slowly changing. Internet news sources increasingly carry original writing and reporting. Inevitably, oldline sources, such as my local paper, the Arizona Republic, will be victims of changing habits of news consumption. I don’t cheer this change, but don’t lament it either.

Clearly, though, having many sources of news is akin to having a many books in one’s library. It’s not a big deal. From past history, we know that the number of sources – few or many — does not cause division, but merely reflects existing differences. Even if we choose only sources that mirror our own values and political ideals – the echo chamber conundrum – the social impact of many sources is barely distinguishable from the days of three networks with one point-of-view.

As a kid I sat by the pool and debated both sides of an issue … from one source. Today, I get both sides of issues from many sources.

So, where is NBC again?

Who cares.

Kristen Burroughs is a candidate for the House of Representatives in LD7. An educator, her doctorate and graduate degrees are from the University of Chicago and Yale University.