Polarized Politicians and Media

In Nyhan’s article, I was intrigued by his statement that “misperceptions have seemingly become more sharply polarized as a result of two recent trends in contemporary politics—increased polarization among political elites and activists and the expansion of choice among media outlets” (p3). This increased polarization has a negative impact since it seems as if political elites are less willing to compromise and are more willing to spread false information. It is especially alarming when this false information leads to an increase in misperceptions among the public and “means that individuals are less likely to encounter information that would correct misperceptions” (p4).

What can be done to combat this polarization if that is indeed the cause of much misinformation? One idea might be to lower the amount of “safe” districts in the House of Representatives. Due to gerrymandering, there are more and more districts that are strongly Republican or Democratic. This means that politicians are not required to appeal to the center or to compromise with the other side since they are almost guaranteed to win the reelection. In another politics class, a professor was talking about the Iraq War Resolution in 2002 and how the vote went down. In the Senate, the Democrats voted 29-21 in favor of the resolution. In the House, the vote among Democrats was 126-81 against the resolution. I think that a lot of Democrats in the House were able to say no simply because they did not have to worry about compromise or what independents were thinking. Senators on the other hand are elected in statewide votes so they have to be more flexible and less partisan. Or this vote could just mean that the Democratic party was weak and could not control its members. Still I think it would be a good idea to have fewer safe districts in order to make Congress more responsive and less partisan.

I, however, have little in terms of solutions for the increase in media outlets that specialize in ideological content. I think that media and politics are often entangled and it’s hard to be completely unbiased. There was a really interesting article on Politico about how four very possible future Republican candidates in the 2012 presidential election are all working for Fox News—Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. This makes matters complicated in terms of being non-biased in the future especially if Fox’s former employees decide to run. Still I do not really know how to stop people from just watching one station as opposed to another in order to get more balance. Also I would be curious to see if politics today is really filled with more misinformation than in the past and if the internet helps or hurts correcting it.