{"id":39790,"date":"2018-10-28T16:55:26","date_gmt":"2018-10-28T21:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39790"},"modified":"2018-10-28T16:55:26","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T21:55:26","slug":"how-the-media-encourages-and-sustains-political-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39790","title":{"rendered":"How the media encourages \u2013 and sustains \u2013 political\u00a0warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"<section id=\"header\">\n<div class=\"wrapper nocontent\"><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<div id=\"outer\">\n<article id=\"article\" class=\"clearfix has-desktop-magazine has-mobile-magazine\" data-id=\"100941\">\n<figure class=\"magazine\">\n<div class=\"magazine-title\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header class=\"grid-twelve large-grid-eleven\">\n<div class=\"content-header-block\"><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<div class=\"grid-twelve large-grid-eleven\">\n<div class=\"top\">\n<aside class=\"grid-two content-share\">\n<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-the-media-encourages-and-sustains-political-warfare-100941\"><strong style=\"color: #222222;\">How the media encourages \u2013 and sustains \u2013 political\u00a0warfare<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"grid-ten large-grid-nine grid-last content-body content entry-content instapaper_body\">\n<p>Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has been waging war against the American press by dismissing unfavorable reports as \u201cfake news\u201d and calling the media \u201cthe enemy of the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a countermeasure, The Washington Post has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/fact-checker\/?utm_term=.bc5d5ca153f1\">publicly fact-checked every claim that Trump has labeled as fake<\/a>. In August, The Boston Globe <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/business\/2018\/08\/10\/newspaper-calls-for-war-words-against-trump-media-attacks\/DG5ijE6VSuWCEsvi8lKHBL\/story.html\">coordinated editorials<\/a> from newspapers across the nation to push back against Trump\u2019s attacks on the press. The Associated Press <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/business\/2018\/08\/10\/newspaper-calls-for-war-words-against-trump-media-attacks\/DG5ijE6VSuWCEsvi8lKHBL\/story.html\">characterized this effort<\/a> as the declaration of a \u201cwar of words\u201d against Trump.<\/p>\n<p>News organizations might frame themselves as the besieged party in this \u201cwar.\u201d But what if they\u2019re as much to blame as the president in this back-and-forth? And what if readers are to blame as well?<\/p>\n<p>In an unpublished manuscript titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ucpress.edu\/book\/9780520298125\/the-war-of-words\">The War of Words<\/a>,\u201d the late rhetorical theorist and cultural critic Kenneth Burke cast the media as agents of political warfare. In 2012, we found this manuscript in Burke\u2019s papers and, after working closely with Burke\u2019s family and the University of California Press, it will be published in October 2018.<\/p>\n<p>In \u201cThe War of Words,\u201d Burke urges readers to recognize the role they also play in sustaining polarization. He points to how seemingly innocuous features in a news story can actually compromise values readers might hold, whether it\u2019s debating the issues further, finding points of consensus, and, ideally, avoiding war.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A book born out of the Cold War<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 1939 \u2013 just before Adolf Hitler invaded Poland \u2013 Burke wrote an influential essay, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.csun.edu\/%7Ehfspc002\/442\/txt\/burke.pdf\">The Rhetoric of Hitler\u2019s \u2018Battle,\u2019<\/a>\u201d in which he outlined how Hitler had weaponized language to foment antipathy, scapegoat Jews and unite Germans against a common enemy.<\/p>\n<p>After World War II ended and America\u2019s leaders turned their attention to the Soviet Union, Burke saw some parallels to Hitler in the way language was being weaponized in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How the media encourages \u2013 and sustains \u2013 political\u00a0warfare Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has been waging war against the American press by dismissing unfavorable reports as \u201cfake news\u201d and calling the media \u201cthe enemy of the American people.\u201d As a countermeasure, The Washington Post has publicly fact-checked every claim that Trump has labeled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13373,22632,149,7844,2779,22631,22634,22629,512,570,11592,22630,8487,22633,5228],"class_list":["post-39790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-associated-press","tag-boston-globe","tag-cold-war","tag-donald-trump","tag-fake-news","tag-jack-selzer","tag-kenneth-burke","tag-kyle-jensen","tag-media","tag-news","tag-polarization","tag-political-warfare","tag-the-conversation","tag-the-war-of-words","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39791,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39790\/revisions\/39791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}