JESSE SINGAL 

FEB 24, 2014

If there’s one thing American media does well, it’s outrage. Take a quick glance at your favorite news source, whether The O’Reilly Factor or Pardon the Interruption, and you’ll see it: wide-eyed, incredulous, puffed-up outrage that anyone could be so stupid!

Despite our nation’s saturation with outrage, argue two Tufts researchers, we know very little about how the genre works. So Jeffrey M. Berry, a political scientist, and Sarah Sobieraj, a sociologist, assembled a research team and dove into the spittle-flecked world of outrage media. They listened to and read countless transcripts, coding it for content; interviewed fans of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and other superstars; and examined the regulatory and business shifts in American mass media that led to our current screamfest.

In a recent interview, Sobieraj spoke with Pacific Standard about the formula of outrage media, why the right wing dominates it, and the weirdly intimate relationship between talk radio hosts and their listeners. The below transcript is edited for length and clarity.

So what exactly is outrage media, and how do you differentiate it from a regular lack of civility?

When we think about outrage, we think of political speech that is intended to provoke an emotional response. So fear, anger, or moral indignation—that sort of thing. Most of the existing literature on incivility talks about interruptions or sighing or things like that, and what we notice is that outrage is such a muscular negativity that it’s not captured by those kinds of studies or questions. It’s just a whole different ballpark. The research on incivility tended to look at things like political advertisements, for example, and we were thinking about this whole other area, this genre where there is a mainstay of emotionally laden speech and behavior that is really designed to rile up the audience.

Emotion has a place in political speech. It’s actually quite important if you think about something like the civil rights movement or 9/11. People’s stories and the social problems they animate are often very important. But what’s different here are the calculated techniques that they use in an effort to evoke those emotions.

"Most of the research shows that we only talk about politics with people we already know agree with us and we usually do it in the privacy of our own homes."

And it sounds like “calculated” is the right word, because you guys write that outrage media is pretty formulaic.

It is. It’s very predictable. In fact, sometimes when I’m having a better day or in a better mood or feeling more tolerant, I can find it in myself to find it amusing, the way that the techniques are so similar on the left and the right.

You know you could hear, for example, a host talk about the fringe far-left and if you’re on another network you can hear them talk about the fringe far-right, and so sometimes the language is literally the same. And not just the language, but the techniques, the things like misrepresentative exaggeration and belittling and conspiracy theories.

Are there any other big markers? Misrepresentative exaggeration, belittling....

Insulting language is another really important one. Calling people idiotic or pompous. Name-calling is definitely one too. I’ve heard, for example, bloggers refer to Obama’s supporters as “Obamatards,” things like that.

As for exaggeration, there is lot in political life, but this is a different level of a very dramatic negative exaggeration. For example, saying that something is intended to bring down capitalism. That would be a good example—very few things are actually designed to bring down capitalism. So I would say that misrepresentative exaggeration, mockery, definitely the ideologically extremizing language like “radical right-wing nut,” “socialist,” “fascist.” Those types of things are probably the most common.

I think a lot of people are skeptical of the claim that it’s as bad on the left as it is on the right, and you did a good job of pulling quotes from folks like Mike Malloy that really are angry and negative and out there. But you did find, overall, that there’s something about this sort of media that appeals more to folks on the right, and there’s a huge gap in the amount of outrage media between the two sides.

Yeah, so there are actually two different questions embedded in there. One is whether it’s the same or different in terms of the intensity and the volume and that sort of thing. Some people have suggested that when we point out that it happens on the left it’s a false equivalency. And that’s actually not what we’re doing at all.

What we notice is that the techniques are very similar on the left and the right. So something like belittling or exaggeration—you’re going to find that with Ed Schultz or Lawrence O’Donnell just like you’ll find it with Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity. But the volume is very different, in terms of the sheer number of platforms on the right. Talk radio is over 90 percent conservative so there’s just more of it.

Now the other question that you’re asking is whether outrage is more attractive to those on the right, and I think it is for a number of reasons. It’s actually kind of complicated—there are a lot of things going on. One is that the left is less distrustful or more accepting, depending on how you want to say it, of conventional news. So the right has historically been less comfortable with the major networks or The New York Times, for example, and the left is more comfortable in those spaces.

Another thing that comes into play is that there is some research that suggests that conservatives have a personality type—this is, of course, not all of them—and that there’s a greater propensity for comfort with black-and-white argumentation, which is very common in the outrage genre. There are good guys and there are bad guys. You are with us or you are against us. So there is that type of appeal.

But also, and I think probably most interestingly, since the rise of multiculturalism, with words like “tolerance,” “inclusion,” and “diversity” being viewed as good and important, for those who are conservative, to share your political views on things like same-sex marriage or immigration—those views can be viewed as intolerant and you can feel as though you are being judged and stigmatized. So we think that these shows, or what we hear when we talk to fans, are that these shows and blogs really become a safe space where their views are validated and they’re not criticized.

That struck me actually, because I really did like the interviews you had with fans of Beck and Limbaugh and some other conservative hosts, and there was this genuine fear that I found surprisingly easy to empathize with. They said they feel like they can’t talk about these issues or they’re going to be tarred as racist.

It makes me feel really happy to hear that you were able to empathize with it because I think that whether someone is racist is sort of beside the point. I think we can find racism on both sides of the political spectrum, and it just wasn’t the question that we were measuring for, but what we find is that fear of racism just looms over them in such a different way.

I felt like when we were doing the interviews and a respondent would start to tell a story of a time that that happened to them, that someone perceived them as racist, it was as if that had just happened. They really react strongly to being perceived as racist—it was so fresh in their memories and so powerful to them because it’s really upsetting.

I think it’s a big social risk. Nobody likes to talk about politics very much publicly these days no matter what your views are, but I think the difference between those on the left and those on the right is that those on the left are criticized as being bleeding heart or being socialist or unpatriotic. It’s insulting, but it just doesn’t sting in the same way that being called a racist does. And so I think that the conservatives feel that it’s not that their policy preferences are judged necessarily, but rather that they themselves as people are judged because of their views. And I think that that’s a terrible feeling, and I think that it’s meaningful, and these shows do everything imaginable to make coming and tuning in feel good, and it does.

Whatever you think of Limbaugh or Beck, their shows are some form of political discussion. But you write that part of their appeal is they let peopleavoid more contentious real-world political discussion.

This was something I didn’t necessarily expect. I thought that on these programs there would be more on-air conflict. But there’s actually so little of it—they rarely have people on who disagree with them, and if they do they’re folks who disagree but who are more prone to acquiesce, or they are going to disagree softly or quietly. And so I think that that conflict isn’t present but if you’re even on Facebook, on the other hand, if you share your views publicly, you could end up with a slap on the wrist quite easily. Most of the research shows that we only talk about politics with people we already know agree with us and we usually do it in the privacy of our own homes.

I was very much struck by the rather intimate relationship between outrage hosts and their audience, as though the hosts are serving some sort of deep-seated psychological needs.

They eliminate the fear of social conflict, that someone’s going to reject you. They also reduce discomfort that people express in feeling ill-informed. That’s another thing that can happen if you talk politics, even with somebody who agrees with you. Maybe you don’t know enough about whatever the events of the day are, and when folks tune in to these shows they feel like they are being informed, and so that’s another fear that sort of disappears for them.

You also write that part of the appeal of outrage hosts is that they’re a bit self-deprecating. So how does that jive with research suggesting that people are drawn to figures who provide strong predictions or black-and-white authoritarian viewpoints? It sounds like part of the art of being a successful outrage host is marrying those two almost conflicting characteristics.

I think that part of what’s really important, especially on the right where there’s a lot of criticism of the liberal elite—you may remember at various points during Obama’s campaigns he was called “professorial” as an insult—there is a real disdain for being talked down to. There’s that accessibility, the fact that somebody is going to say, “Well, I’m just a regular guy,” or “Well, you and I, we’re sort of cut from the same cloth.”

This happens on the left, too: Ed Schultz is really proud of talking about hunting and fishing and meat and potatoes. He gives all these working class or middle class signifiers constantly to let people know this he is someone you can relate to. There’s an appeal to that that really resonates in an era where we’re used to things like reality television and we want people to be sort of “real.” We want it to feel authentic.

On the other hand, what fans admire in these folks is not necessarily just their breadth of knowledge—though that comes up a lot when people talk about Glenn Beck, for example, or sometimes Michael Savage or Rachel Maddow. But they also really respect the way that they can articulate the things that are frustrating them. So it’s sort of: You or I may have these feelings of frustration or anger that we can’t really put into words, but when we tune into our favorite radio show or television show and we wait and we listen to the person we admire sort of zing it to the other side, they’re saying the things we wish we had thought to say. They are us, but better.

That ability—the charisma and the zing—is what’s desired. Somebody was saying recently, and I thought this was a really good analogy, that in a way it’s like professional hockey, where you’re waiting for the big conflict to happen, the big fight to happen. And if it doesn’t you almost feel disappointed, and that is how you watch outrage programs in some ways. Maybe fans are enjoying the information or the details, but what I think they really value are those outrageous moments, the zing, the insult that’s flung in an artful way. It feels good. It’s satisfying. As one respondent told me, “I guess these guys are obnoxious in a way we can’t be.”

So you had to listen to a lot of this stuff and code the individual moments of outrage. Do you think that did any lasting psychological damage to you or your research team?

You know, there are moments when I came to really appreciate the art form, the genre as a genre, and I would enjoy listening to someone do this routine well, and there were moments I found it funny or ridiculous. But there were also moments when I found it really disturbing. And the one that stands out for me was when health care was on the agenda in 2009 quite some time ago, watching the misinformation wing around from program to program to blog to social media and really have quite a significant impact. I found that pretty sobering, a reminder that this isn’t just entertainment, that this has significant political consequences.

So what are the next steps for research into the outrage industry?

I think one thing that’s interesting, which we thought about including but decided we already had plenty on our plates, is that advocacy groups certainly use these same techniques. They’re not trying to get ratings, per se, but they’re trying to get donations or members, and so you might have your favorite advocacy group using these very same techniques. It would be interesting to look at how outrage appears in other spaces.

It would also be useful to do a content analysis when we have a Republican in the White House and see if the balance of outrage tips. You could make the case that perhaps there was more outrage on the right because the right had more fodder with Obama in office—that may be the case. And so I would be very curious to see if that gap narrows somewhat if we did that.

That could at least provide some insight as to why Air America was such a colossal flop.

Yeah, I think Hollywood in general has a real reluctance around innovation, so when something—not just Hollywood but entertainment—when something fails like that it sends a very strong message, and it becomes something that looms over thoughts of repeating that attempt in the future.

Similarly, when something works we end up with spinoffs and sequels and prequels and all of these type things, because they want to continue to work that. And I think that’s one reason, again, that outrage on the right has been successful, because there were models that it could be very profitable: Rush Limbaugh probably has many folks who have come in his wake because of his success.

Anything else you wanted to add or anything I should have asked?

I guess one thing that didn’t come up that I think is significant is sort of the consequences that we see. On one hand, as you mentioned, it is political discussion and there is some research that suggests that people who watch and use these programs are more politically engaged. And that feels positive, so there may be some good things that come of this in that way.

On the other hand, we worry somewhat that there is a fair amount of misinformation. I alluded to the health care issue before: 30 percent of Americans believed that death panels were a part of the proposed health care plan and 45 percent of those who reported watching Fox News thought that was true. So if you’ve got folks who are misinformed and are more active than the average person that’s probably not great.

But there are other consequences, too: We worry very much that it lessens our openness to the views of people who disagree with us in our communities and our workspaces and neighborhoods. We also worry that it stigmatizes collaboration and compromise in Congress because every vote becomes a test of party purity and ideological truth, with legislatures very well aware that their votes are being monitored by the outrage industry. It can be scary to rethink a position and that’s not healthy—that’s certainly not healthy. So those are two things that we worry about as potential consequences of the success of the genre.

about as potential consequences of the success of the genre.  

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Who’s Paying the Pro-War Pundits?

Talking heads like former General Jack Keane are all over the news media fanning fears of IS. Shouldn’t the public know about their links to Pentagon contractors?

 

If you read enough news and watch enough cable television about the threat of the Islamic State, the radical Sunni Muslim militia group better known simply as IS, you will inevitably encounter a parade of retired generals demanding an increased US military presence in the region. They will say that our government should deploy, as retired General Anthony Zinni demanded, up to 10,000 American boots on the ground to battle IS. Or as in retired General Jack Keane’s case, they will make more vague demands, such as for “offensive” air strikes and the deployment of more military advisers to the region.

But what you won’t learn from media coverage of IS is that many of these former Pentagon officials have skin in the game as paid directors and advisers to some of the largest military contractors in the world. Ramping up America’s military presence in Iraq and directly entering the war in Syria, along with greater military spending more broadly, is a debatable solution to a complex political and sectarian conflict. But those goals do unquestionably benefit one player in this saga: America’s defense industry.

Keane is a great example of this phenomenon. His think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which he oversees along with neoconservative partisans Liz Cheney and William Kristol, has provided the data on IS used for multiple stories by The New York Times, the BBC and other leading outlets.

Keane has appeared on Fox News at least nine times over the last two months to promote the idea that the best way to stop IS is through military action—in particular, through air strikes deep into IS-held territory. In one of the only congressional hearings about IS over the summer, Keane was there to testify and call for more American military engagement. On Wednesday evening, Keane declared President Obama’s speech on defeating IS insufficient, arguing that a bolder strategy is necessary. “I truly believe we need to put special operation forces in there,” he told host Megyn Kelly.

Left unsaid during his media appearances (and left unmentioned on his congressional witness disclosure form) are Keane’s other gigs: as special adviser to Academi, the contractor formerly known as Blackwater; as a board member to tank and aircraft manufacturer General Dynamics; a “venture partner” to SCP Partners, an investment firm that partners with defense contractors, including XVionics, an “operations management decision support system” company used in Air Force drone training; and as president of his own consulting firm, GSI LLC.

To portray Keane as simply a think tank leader and a former military official, as the media have done, obscures a fairly lucrative career in the contracting world. For the General Dynamics role alone, Keane has been paid a six-figure salary in cash and stock options since he joined the firm in 2004; last year, General Dynamics paid him $258,006.

Keane did not immediately return a call requesting comment for this article.

Disclosure would also help the public weigh Keane’s policy advocacy. For instance, in his August 24 opinion column for The Wall Street Journal, in which he was bylined only as a retired general and the chairman of ISW, Keane wrote that “the time has come to confront the government of Qatar, which funds and arms IS and other Islamist terrorist groups such as Hamas.” While media reports have linked fundraisers for IS with individuals operating in Qatar (though not the government), the same could be said about Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, where many of the major donors of IS reportedly reside. Why did Keane single out Qatar and ignore Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? Is it because his company, Academi, has been a major business partner to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar’s primary rival in the region?

Other examples abound.

n a Washington Post story about Obama’s decision not to deploy troops to combat IS, retired Marine General James Mattis was quoted as a skeptic. “The American people will once again see us in a war that doesn’t seem to be making progress,” Mattis told the paper. Left unmentioned was Mattis’s new role as Keane’s colleague on the General Dynamics corporate board, a role that afforded Mattis $88,479 in cash and stock options in 2013.

Retired General Anthony Zinni, perhaps the loudest advocate of a large deployment of American soliders into the region to fight IS, is a board member to BAE Systems’ US subsidiary, and also works for several military-focused private equity firms.

CNN pundit Frances Townsend, a former Bush administration official, has recently appeared on television calling for more military engagement against IS. As the Public Accountability Initiative, a nonprofit that studies elite power structures, reported, Townsend “holds positions in two investment firms with defense company holdings, MacAndrews & Forbes and Monument Capital Group, and serves as an advisor to defense contractor Decision Sciences.”

“Mainstream news outlets have a polite practice of identifying former generals and former congressmembers as simply ‘formers’—neglecting to inform the public of what these individuals are doing now, which is often quite pertinent information, like that they are corporate lobbyists or board members,” says Jeff Cohen, an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College.

Media outlets might justify their omissions by reasoning that these pundits have merely advocated certain military strategies, not specific weapons systems, so disclosure of their financial stake in the policy need not be made. Yet the drumbeat for war has already spiraled into calls for increased military spending that lifts all boats—or non-operational jets for that matter.

When the Pentagon sent a recent $2 billion request for ramped-up operations in the Middle East, supposedly to confront the IS issue, budget details obtained by Bloomberg News revealed that officials asked for money for additional F-35 planes. The F-35 is not in operation and would not be used against IS. The plane is notoriously over budget and perpetually delayed—some experts call it the most expensive weapon system in human history—with a price tag now projected to be over $1 trillion. In July, an engine fire grounded the F-35 fleet and again delayed the planned debut of the plane. How it ended up in the Pentagon’s Middle East wish list is unclear.

“I think an inclination to use military action a lot is something the defense industry subscribes to because it helps to perpetuate an overall climate of permissiveness towards military spending,” says Ed Wasserman, dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School for Journalism. Wasserman says that the media debate around IS has tilted towards more hawkish former military leaders, and that the public would be best served not only with better disclosure but also a more balanced set of opinions that would include how expanded air strikes could cause collateral civil casualties. ”The past fifty years has a lot of evidence of the ineffectiveness of air power when it comes to dealing with a more nimble guerrilla-type adversary, and I’m not hearing this conversation,” he notes.

The pro-war punditry of retired generals has been the subject of controversy in the past. In a much-cited 2008 exposé, The New York Times revealed a network of retired generals on the payroll of defense contractors who carefully echoed the Bush administration’s Iraq war demands through appearances on cable television.

The paper’s coverage of the run-up to a renewed conflict in the region today has been notably measured, including many voices skeptical of calls for a more muscular military response to IS. Nonetheless, the Times has relied on research from a contractor-funded advocacy organization as part of its IS coverage. Reports produced by Keane’s ISW have been used to support six different infographics used for Times stories since June. The Times has not mentioned Keane’s potential conflict of interest or that ISW may have a vested stake in its policy positions. The Public Accountability Initiative notes that ISW’s corporate sponsors represent “a who’s who of the defense industry and includes Raytheon, SAIC, Palantir, General Dynamics, CACI, Northrop Grumman, DynCorp, and L-3 Communication.” As the business network CNBC reported this week, Raytheon in particular has much to gain from escalation in Iraq, as the company produces many of the missiles and radar equipment used in airstrikes.

In addition to providing reports and quotes for the media, ISW leaders have demanded a greater reaction to IS from the Obama administration. In The Weekly Standard this week, ISW president Kim Kagan wrote that President Obama’s call for a limited engagement against IS “has no chance of success.”

ISW’s willingness to push the envelope has gotten the organization into hot water before. In 2013, ISW suffered an embarrassing spectacle when one of its analysts, Elizabeth O’Bagy, was found to have inflated her academic credentials, touting a PhD from a Georgetown program that she had never entered.

But memories are short, and the media outlets now relying heavily on ISW research have done little to scrutinize the think tank’s policy goals. Over the last two years, ISW, including O’Bagy, were forcefully leading the push to equip Syrian rebels with advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry to defeat Bashar al-Assad.

For Keane, providing arms to Syrian rebels, even anti-American groups, was a worthwhile gamble. In an interview with Fox Business Network in May of last year, Keane acknowledged that arming Syrian rebels might mean “weapons can fall into radical Islamists’ hands.” He continued, “It is true the radical Islamists have gained in power and influence mainly because we haven’t been involved and that is a fact, but it’s still true we have vetted some of these moderate rebel groups with the CIA, and I’m convinced we can—it’s still acceptable to take that risk, and let’s get on with changing momentum in the war.” That acceptable risk Keane outlined has come to fruition. Recent reports now indicate that US-made weapons sent from American allies in the region to Syrian rebels have fallen into the hands of IS.

Keane, and ISW, is undeterred. The group just put out a call for 25,000 ground troops in Iraq and Syria.

http://www.thenation.com/article/whos-paying-pro-war-pundits/

Why Media Talking Heads Claim ISIS Will Attack US 9/11-Style

The talking heads in media are now painting a terrorist threat scenario against the US to fear-monger the public into believing that the al-Qaeda “splinter” group known as ISIS is planning an attack on America.

Senator Lindsey Graham, co-author of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) spoke on Face the Nation, is claiming that “officials have warned the next major attack on U.S. soil could emanate from the region.”

Graham said: “The seeds of 9/11s are being planted all over Iraq and Syria. They want an Islamic caliphate that runs through Syria and Iraq…and they plan to drive us out of the Mideast by attacking us here at home.”

On This Week, retired General Peter Chiarelli echoed Graham by saying that “all Americans should be concerned” about ISIS’ sudden appearance in Iraq.

House Representative Mike Rogers told Fox News: “I guarantee you: this is a problem that we will have to face and we’re either going to face it in New York City or we’re going to face it here.”

Rogers elaborated: “These are not monkey bar terrorists out in the desert somewhere planning some very low-level attack. These are sophisticated, command and controlled, seasoned combat veterans who understand the value of terrorism operations external to the region, meaning Europe and the United States. That is about as dangerous a recipe as you can put together.”

The Congressman also mentioned a “jihadist Disneyland” happening in Syria because of tremendous radicalization.

Rogers said that ISIS “is an al Qaeda-inspired group that certainly has al Qaeda ties, that now has the capability to tap people with Western passports to send them back to Europe and the United States for terrorist activity. That’s a problem for us.”

Another talking head, Army Colonel Kenneth King maintians that ISIS has made “indications” of the al-Qaeda spin-off’s intent because, according to King, the alleged leader of ISIS said in 2009, “I’ll see you guys in New York.”

Michael Morell, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and current intelligence and national security expert for CBS News, claims that in 2013, it was predicted that ISIS would become a serious threat to America via al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen.

Morell said: “If it looks like the U.S. influence in Iraq is increasing once again, the threat from ISIS could also rise. That’s one of the downsides of U.S. involvement. The more we visibly get involved in helping the [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] government fight these guys, the more we become a target.”

Unverifiable photos were published online that claim to show ISIS members killing Iraq soliders.

Juan Zarate, analyst for CBS News told the media al-Qaeda is influencing the group called ISIS who is made up of rebels from Syria.

Zarate said: “You do have very senior al Qaeda figures who have migrated to the Syrian conflict to provide strategic guidance and direction and to me that’s incredibly dangerous because you have operatives and strategists who have had squarely in mind to turn the attention of these groups toward the west.”

The rebels in Syria, known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are comprised of Salafi militants from Saudi Arabia.

These same faction of terrorists that attacked the villa where US Ambassador Stevens was murdered is in Syria fighting the proxy war for the US.

The Salafi terrorist cells are given different names depending on their location geographically (such as al-Qaeda, FSA, etc. . .) so that the idea that they are separate is purveyed to the general public. However, they are subscribing to an extreme form of Islam that is encompassing in Saudi Arabia.

The Partisans of Sharia (PoS), or Ansar al-Sharia, are directly connected to the Muslim Brotherhood who believe that those who do not adhere to Sharia law should be crucified .

During the manufactured Arab Spring in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was able to obtain power through violence against the Egyptian citizens.

Partisans or followers of the Muslim Brotherhood are tied to the Salafi version of Islam that demand complete adherence to the religion, lest they be deemed an infidel and killed.

The Salafis being used in Syria are exceptionally violent and adhere to sectarianism with complete abhorrence for the US.

This ideal is fostered because it helps to facilitate the psychological mindset necessary for manipulation.

Back in October of 2012, the FSA were being armed by Saudi Arabia.

The attack in Aleppo was actually funded with ammunition and weaponry from the US-aligned Middle Eastern nation. The FSA denied knowledge of how they came to obtain this shipment from Saudi Arabia; however it is fairly obvious that the Salafi extremists in their country are supporting the US-backed terrorist faction.

Saudi officials declined comment thinking that refusal to speak will correspond with their ignorance. Yet, Saudi ammunition has been used since the inception of the CIA-trained “rebels” paid for my “foreign aid” from the US and British governments.

This subversive supplying of weapons to terrorists has resulted in the use of IEDs and car bombs to destroy the intelligence headquarters of the Syrian government in Damascus.

https://occupycorporatism.com/media-talking-heads-claim-isis-will-attack-us-911-style/