The Media is the Message: the Dangers of Distortion and Partisanship

I listened today–I had never heard her program before, though I am quite familiar with her work as a journalist on the Murdoch family owned extremist conservative media company Fox News about eight years ago–to the Megyn Kelly Show Podcast.
It was a very compelling twenty minutes or so of listening. The topic was the intelligence, policy understanding, evasiveness and lack of gravitas of the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris. And she used the Vice President’s very recent appearance on the CBS program 60 minutes as the subject matter for her diatribe and ridicule.

Ms. Kelly is very talented, perhaps rhetorically brilliant–a lawyer by training, an appearance quite appealing to the camera–at criticizing a point of view without also allowing for the credibility of that point of view she so sharply criticizes. In other words, she is excellent at taking a persons comments , pointing out where she thinks they are evasive or ambiguous but all the while distorting what is being said– and denying credit for the meaning or intention behind what is being said. In so doing she uses her rhetoric to arrive at false conclusions regarding a persons point of view. I am not saying this is her modus operandi all of the time–but it certainly can be when she has a political agenda or supports an opposing candidate.

During this podcast she made it quite clear that she didn’t think Vice President Harris had a deep enough understanding of many subjects to be President. For Kelly the Vice President falls short on comprehending economics–” I doubt that she even understands the term ‘macroeconomics'” she states”, and that she does a fairly good job of evading subjects because she simply is ‘out of her depth’. She criticizes the Vice President for her ambiguity about US policy toward Israel–Kelly implies that Harris cannot understand that being supportive of the Israeli people is not the same as supporting the government of Israel. Again, her rhetoric is convincing to those that get caught up in the logic of her inductive and deductive reasoning–if one buys her premiss the logic follows smoothly and easily.

However, Kelly severely underestimates the intelligence and knowledge of the Vice President–and in her nastiness demeans and follows the Trump campaign playbook of minimizing the strategic policy understanding of the Vice President who had been a Senator and full participant in the executive branch for the past four years. She simply is unwilling to allow that the Vice President has arrived at this moment in time where she is a ‘coin flip’ from being President of the United States because she has the depth of understanding and acquired wisdom that has elevated her to this occasion.

The fallacy of Kelly’s attack upon the Vice President is that she does not require the same standards of Donald Trump, and thus has a double standard. The former President seems incapable of answering direct policy positions–and reverts to rants about ‘Haitians eating the pets of a local town when he is pressed for clear thinking about the direction of the country. He reverts to an incomprehensible answer when he is asked about providing ‘childcare in America’, which occurred at the Economic Club of New York recently. His answer to the question in part was “..But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that -because, look, child care is child care. It’s –couldn’t you know, its something–you have to have it. In this country you have to have it…” What ?

Just today, the former President was asked about his policy toward tariffs during a Bloomberg news interview conducted by Editor-in-chief John Micklethwait and he evaded spelling out the consequences of such a policy by starting to talk abut the prospects for World War Three–along with the impurity of immigrants another major talking point that Mr. Trump believes will win him the election. “With great respect”, the interview stated, ” I was asking about tariffs”. Later in the interview the former President was asked a question about currencies, and the he went off on a tangent about French President Macron. Trying to keep Mr. Trump focused, Mr. Micklethwait responded that ” you’ve gone from the dollar to Macron…”

Trump’s economic thinking is horrendous in my judgment. But the media rarely presses him about the consequences of his thinking. But Ms. Kelly has no difficulty alluding to Ms. Harris’ economic ignorance. Yes, a double standard–perpetrated not just by Ms. Kelly but a free pass given by much of the media that has bought into the narrative and feeds to the public that this former President that has bankrupted companies is economically savvy and highly advanced on the subject–obviously far superior to the Vice President.

Trump’s tariff proposals–given a free pass by much of the media– would be a tax on imports that will raise prices for households and, crucially for businesses that rely on imports to make their products. And not only will prices rise for the imported products, but so will the prices of goods produced at home that compete with imports. There is a virtual consensus among economists in American that Trump’s economic tariff policy would create trade wars and act as a barrier to US markets. It would weaken economic growth, cost jobs, and while increasing the US Budget deficit–especially if accompanied by a major corporate tax cut–create a global recession. The stock market would likely plummet as a result of this confrontational trade policy. And as the budget deficit increases as a result of declining GDP, interest rates would likely start to rise again–potentially producing another nasty bout of stagflation ( the worst example of this occurring in the early 1980’s). But Ms. Kelly is quick to ridicule the Vice Presidents economic ignorance. Yes, indeed a double standard–a very dangerous double standard propagated by the partisan media and not questioned by the ostensibly non partisan media.

Ms. Kelly criticized the Vice Presidents clarity toward whether or not she would support Israel. But can Ms. Harris really spell out the complexity of this policy on a short interview that would be subject to intentional distortion by the Trump camp, aided and abetted by his supportive media ? No, she cannot. I would think that Ms. Kelly would understand the strategic necessity of being somewhat discreet at the moment–but instead she implicates the Vice President as being unclear or having an agenda contrary to supporting Israel. Clearly that is not the case. The Vice President on the anniversary of the October 7 massacre and taking of hostages by Hamas–planting a pomegranate tree at her Washington D.C residence that she said was a symbol of hope and righteousness–reiterated her “pledge to always ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and to always work to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish people here and around the world.”

Clearly an intelligent woman such as Ms. Kelly understands that the Vice President cannot say directly what the relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu will be because she is trying to seal the deal with Jewish and Pro-Palestinian voters–a very tough balancing act. There is no question that Ms. Harris needs the Jewish vote in Pennsylvania and the pro-Palestinian vote in Michigan to increase her chances of winning this election. But by imposing upon her the requirement of a clearly stated policy goal for bringing peace to the region Ms.Kelly continues in that double standard of demanding something that Mr. Trump has not revealed whatsoever–except to say that he will deliver peace if elected. This issue is complex and complicated and further complicated by the election. And Ms. Harris cannot possibly deliver a clear, concise statement of policy to a situation that is in a constant state of flux–especially within the parameters of a short news interview.

So, this is the problem that we face today. The use of media to manipulate a situation to make it appear that the media knows best. The Canadian philosopher Marshall McCluhan once coined the phrase. The Media is the Message’ in his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. The idea is that the media significantly impacts how the message is received- bringing to the message another dimension of truth. In essence the media takes a message and makes it its own–expanding it, altering it, imbuing it with meaning and potentially propagandizing it. Such is the case with the exponential expansion of media today–and it certainly applies to podcasts such as this one by Ms. Kelly.

Bruce Farrell Rosen