Popping the Talk Radio Bubble
Who can better insulate themselves from inconvenient facts than broadcasters with a microphone in one hand, a team of screeners to vet calls, and one finger on a button that can cut the mic of anyone with a devastating rebuttal?
Until a few years ago, the realities of the talk radio medium enhanced the ability of hosts to lie with impunity, and kept their listeners safely inside an information bubble.
But maybe social media changes everything.
I’ve got an idea about how to pop the talk radio bubble.
Please join the experiment.
Hmm … it strikes me as potentially counterproductive to try to communicate with a Levin listener using words like “mendacity”.
— John Schwenkler · Apr 29, 08:20 PM · #
I had to read a fairly long letter to get to the “big lie.”
Apparently someone who has written at least three articles with reasonable sounding titles was called a “zealot.” Also, you’re upset that Levin “attacked me personally.”
Good luck in your mass spam campaign.
— Tman · Apr 29, 08:58 PM · #
Tman,
Critics of pieces like this one are often dismissive, or antagonistic, or impute nefarious motives to the writer, and you’re no exception — but somehow, the critics never seem to dispute the core of the argument: that Mr. Levin is blatantly misleading his audience by labeling someone in a way so inaccurate as to be laughable.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Apr 29, 09:27 PM · #
that Mr. Levin is blatantly misleading his audience
So is everyone at NRO except for Dr. Manzi.
So is Instapundit, Breitbart, PJM, Hotair and the whole effing conservosphere and the entire leadership of the cynical, dying, desperate GOP, not to mention the whole uberfake soi disant “bipartisan tea party” movement.
Let’s start there.
The tea party is neither biracial or bipartisan.
It is a white conservative christian grievence movement.
Mr. Levin is one tiny hydra head of an evil homogeneous multi-headed monster whose heart is NRO.
— matoko_chan · Apr 29, 10:20 PM · #
Dude – you ever listen to “Democracy Now”?
— m00se · Apr 29, 11:15 PM · #
Conor,
I submit that talk radio listeners who engage in social networking would benefit if well-meaning strangers with exquisitely polite manners alerted them to persuasive evidence that they’re being misled
It’ll never work Conor.
I wish it could.
Even when the would-be communicator is extremely polite and logical, the true believer rejects every blandishment. And the influence of the rest of the community, acting as a sounding board for denunciation and skepticism to your view, will always drown you out.
Truth is, I suspect we make the choices we do, for all sorts of deep-psychological, and deep-psychosocial, and even deep-genetic reasons.
Mostly we don’t even understand ourselves why an answer compels our belief – with the power that it does – often despite the evidence.
Because most people are by no means commited rationalists, who always submit to evidence, as a matter of training and discipline.
— Keid A · Apr 29, 11:43 PM · #
Conor,
A serious question for you: why go after Levin? I mean, I know there is only so much one man can do and I know that you sort of got involved in the latest Levin silliness because he insulted Manzi, who you know and respect. But as an example, Michael Savage, who I listen to just because he is extremely entertaining in the way your crazy uncle is entertaining, is something like the third most popular conservative talk radio show host in the country. Levin is a piker compared to Savage. I think, however, that Keid A might be right — no matter what you say to the average Levin or Savage fan, they will shrug it off as no big deal because Levin gets so much else right that one or two mistakes won’t bother them.
— Arminius · Apr 30, 12:52 AM · #
While Friedersdorf is probably right that many conservatives are “well-meaning people earnestly seeking civic engagement,” I seriously doubt this is true of the 90,000+ individuals who fan Mark Levin on the Facebook. Most of them want to be lied to if the lie reassures their illusions. Already, most of this crew buys into the lie that global warming is a hoax. Why should they care if another lie is layered on? In a way, the lies are all they’ve got, the meat of their position. Without lies, they have little left but to dispute Manzi’s analysis, and that effort doesn’t interest them anymore than it does Levin.
Circling wagons is their thing. In their minds, efforts to engage them with disagreeable facts are just attacks. No matter how civil the infiltration, it’s still the enemy. Manzi made this reaction easier by being not-so-civil— ie, blunt and dead-on— but I doubt a decorous campaign, especially one originating from the website of an ex-New Yorker editor, will be any more acceptable.
This just feeds a crank like Levin. So to repeat Arminius for slightly different reasons: why go after him? He reminds me of that breed of arrogant curmudgeon who seems to disproportionately occupy the ranks of boy scout dads.* He knows very little about anything, but has a strong, mostly curdled feeling about everything. He’s the sad, oafish blowhard who relishes combat mentality, even if in his prime he couldn’t even manage a one-armed pushup. Levin’s that dude. However, give him credit. He’s turned the genius trick of making out of it a lucrative career.
(* My apologies to the many genuinely kind boy scout dads who just enjoy campfires and shitty stickdogs.)
— turnbuckle · Apr 30, 04:01 AM · #
I like this,thanks a lot!
— juicy couture · Apr 30, 08:01 AM · #
We should all tilt at some windmills from time to time.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Apr 30, 03:19 PM · #
Conor, I’m sympathetic to your cause — Levin’s style and rhetoric bother me a great deal — but you do yourself no favors with (a) scorched-earth rhetoric and (b) dearth of examples.
Phrases like “Big Lie” suggest something more substantial than a ridiculous smear in a Facebook headline. (It’s not like “Jim Manzi is a global warming zealot” was the thesis of a chapter in Levin’s latest book.)
By making this your one big example (along with the gun to the temple thing), you give the sense of shooting your wad, references to many other examples notwithstanding. Why not provide evidence of a pattern?
— SDG · Apr 30, 05:56 PM · #
Conor: With respect, I think you are overlooking a crucial element: Listeners of Mr. Levin’s show and those who haunt similar sites, shows, etc., likely aren’t conservative or interested in conservative viewpoints. They just want to see liberals bashed. That’s all.
— Matt · Apr 30, 07:37 PM · #
“Listeners of Mr. Levin’s show and those who haunt similar sites, shows, etc., likely aren’t conservative or interested in conservative viewpoints. They just want to see liberals bashed. That’s all.”
I don’t know what’s “likely.” I do know that Levin has fans who don’t fit the profile you describe, who might be open to critiques like Conor’s — and Manzi’s — especially if, like Manzi’s, the critique makes a substantial case. (Not that I’m dismissing the substance of Conor’s critique.)
— SDG · Apr 30, 07:45 PM · #
You want to talk about credibility? It’s been more than 3 months since you promised to revisit the Gitmo 3 murder conspiracy? You said you were still doing reporting on that. When do we get to read that?
— Derek Smithee · Apr 30, 08:49 PM · #
The social media solution will never work. It only leads to “de-friending”. Case in point: My tea-partying cousin habitually posts his nonsense on Facebook, ignored by most but supported by his sycophants. I took issue with his facts and we are now no longer speaking, thus (1) ending the conversation via social media (2) retaining his bubble. My facts did nothing to mitigate his “beliefs”.
— Ray Butlers · May 1, 09:19 PM · #
Derek,
As yet, I’ve done maybe 10 hours of additional reporting, and I’ve yet to unearth anything substantial that isn’t in the public record. I persist in thinking that the official narrative is laughable — so implausible on its face to warrant a new, independent inquiry. The Seton Hall study and the Harper’s piece both point out important problems with the official report (though I don’t endorse everything in both of those because I haven’t yet corroborated everything).
Is there some particular thing that you’d like me to weigh in on? I still intend to go back through Joe Carter’s posts at some point, but unless I unearth something that enables me to get paid for the work it is going to stay low on my priority list — not off it, mind you, but low.
— Conor Friedersdorf · May 3, 07:48 AM · #
very good!
— juicy couture · May 3, 09:03 AM · #
Yes, Joe Carter provided a pretty withering critique of your coverage (and others), and you said you would go through that and respond.
Saying that you haven’t uncovered anything new but persist in believing the official narrative laughable is basically the same position of the birthers. I would like to see a retraction, or at least an acknowledgement that you jumped to conclusions that the evidence didn’t support.
You consistently critique others relating to journalistic ethics, and yet you won’t even give an update on your reporting that basically accused the US Government and military of 3 murders and a massive cover up. I’m sorry, but why should anyone take you seriously when you critique others?
— Derek Smithee · May 3, 05:22 PM · #
Derek,
If you can point me to something I’ve written that is factually incorrect I will happily correct it. As yet, my position remains that the official narrative is laughable, for reasons I’ve laid out. I am sorry that I haven’t gotten around to all of Joe Carter’s arguments, but “Joe Carter made an argument that you’ve yet to rebut” is not the normal standard for issuing retractions.
— Conor Friedersdorf · May 4, 04:34 AM · #
Conor, there are two separate issues. You yourself said that you would revisit in light of Joe Carter’s arguments. That you haven’t probably tells your readers all they need to know.
As far as a retraction, in the Daily Beast, you wrote, “But it is notable that the ongoing coverup of circumstances surrounding their deaths implicates enlisted men; naval officers; interrogators from the CIA or the Joint Special Operations Command; the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology; and civilians in the Defense Department and the Justice Department. When a country’s armed forces and civilian leadership conspire in coverups involving dead bodies, it is inevitably corrosive to the rule of law, the morale of the brave folks who risk their lives to protect us, and our standing in a world that rightly abhors deadly corruption at secret prison sites like the one now revealed to be at Gitmo. We’ll continue to suffer all those consequences whenever we use “harsh interrogation techniques” so indefensible in their particulars that government officials sooner break the law than admit their real-world consequences.”
Unless you have further evidence to offer, you should retract. There’s not even an ‘alleged’ in there.
— Derek Smithee · May 4, 04:32 PM · #
Joe Carter provided a joke of a rebuttal that was summarily demolished by myself and others. Nobody honestly thinks he was convincing. If there’s some new issue he’s raised, I haven’t heard about it, but his argument that it would take “the biggest conspiracy in world history” to murder three people in the night and get half a dozen soldiers to lie about it was a non-starter on its face, and that hasn’t changed.
— Chet · May 5, 05:30 PM · #