- Arguments are natural and can be authentic, but today's guest warns that the rise of so-called argument culture breeds cynicism while sapping the public's confidence in reliable news and information.

He's media critic Eric Deggans this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

And my guest this week is Eric Deggans.

A longtime award-winning journalist and media critic, he's now critic-at-large at NPR and night professor of journalism and media ethics at Washington and Lee University.

He's joining us today from Virginia.

Eric, thank you so much for being back on the show.

- Yeah, happy to be here.

I know the title is a mouthful.

- (laughs) It's all right.

You're doing a lot of great work.

You recently had a piece on your Substack where you lamented, and I'm quoting here, "The thing you hate most in modern media today, a runaway argument culture."

I think maybe instinctively we know what that is, but what is this runaway argument culture that you're talking about?

- Yeah, well, basically, we have these two dominant forms of media platforming right now that's happening, cable TV news and podcasting, where the focus is on gaining attention and in creating controversy and going viral, right?

And the way you go viral quickest is by making people angry or by subordinating, feeding some kind of conflict.

And so it's led, I think, us all to a moment where it is increasingly difficult for us to just have measured conversations about things when we disagree.

And it's tough for us to look for the nuances in situations.

People immediately want to condemn something.

They immediately want to cancel something.

We've seen this backlash, Hakeem Jeffries, a Democratic leader in the House, is facing a backlash for secretly meeting with Jared Kushner, as if the idea of sitting down and talking with somebody with whom you substantially disagree is a betrayal.

There's many different moments, and what's sparked it for me was the death of Jason Arday, this intellectual, Black intellectual who was working at Cambridge University.

There was a lot of questions surfaced about his work, plagiarism and other fabulism exaggerations.

And the British press in particular created dozens and dozens of stories critiquing him, angrily debating whether he was a diversity hire and this was the ill effects of a drive for diversity at Cambridge, and he was found dead, and I think people suspect that he killed himself.

And so can we reach a moment where we're not always trying to feed the beast by making people angry and fighting when we disagree about something?

- Is it a market incentive that drives us, drives the creators now to create content that is intentionally divisive?

It's hard to find a lot of programming, particularly that's not on something like public television, where there's just sort of a reasonable serious conversation about something rather than it just sort of being a long litany of talking points and sometimes ad hominem attacks.

- Yeah, well, there's a great book out about this where I got the phrase, called "Argument Culture."

And I do think it's an economic imperative and also a dynamic in social media and online that has become a reflex for people.

So, another sort of odd example to cite is, you know, I was at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention just a week or two ago in Atlanta, and the group is facing a lot of challenges.

The backlash to DEI has created a real employment problem for Black journalists.

People are struggling to prove that they deserve to have the jobs they have and to forge a career in journalism, which is shrinking every day.

And yet the business meeting was dominated by this conflict over whether one of the candidates for office qualified to be a journalist, and there was all this sniping and arguing back and forth amongst people who all generally agreed that the group was something that should be supported and should be advanced.

And then the group gave its Thumbs Down Awards.

We typically give out awards to people and institutions we feel have harmed Black journalists or harmed Black culture, and one of them went to Stephen A. Smith, the Black commentator who works at ESPN, and it started this gigantic media feeding frenzy, where he got upset and he went on Sean Hannity's show to rebut it, and lots of people have written columns about it, and all of a sudden, everybody's talking about NABJ criticizing Stephen A. Smith, and they're not talking about all the issues that NABJ is trying to solve for its members.

And I understand people saying that they also wanted to elevate the idea that Stephen A. Smith was highly critical of Black women, especially Black female journalists, and I understand that, but I don't think that's the discussion that's happening.

People are gathering around this conflict like it's a food fight or like it's a schoolyard scuffle, and no one's thinking about the actual issues that the group is trying to present, but the group looks relevant because it's getting a ton of press.

And we see this happen in a bunch of different ways throughout society, and of course, it's the professor's job, the intellectual's job, the critic's job to try and step back from that and say, "Look, guys, is there another way that we can deal with this?

Is there another way that we can have discussions where we're not shouting at each other and we're actually trying to understand our opponent's position?"

We're allowing that our opponent may have a valid position, and we're trying to figure out what we can each learn from each other.

There's less and less of that kind of dialogue happening in the public space, and it's profoundly disappointing, and I think it's crippling society, and the people who... It's getting to the point, like, you expect the Stephen A. Smiths of the world to communicate that way.

I expect that.

What I don't expect is that people that we generally view as grownups in the room stooping to that level as well, and all of a sudden, there's nobody who's willing to draw a line and say, "That's not how I choose to communicate.

I'm not gonna insult people.

I'm not gonna fight with them.

I'm gonna express my views and I'm gonna draw a contrast with somebody I disagree with, but I'm gonna try and do it respectfully and do it in a way where we're both learning from each other."

- So, I want to say amen.

Sometimes when I'm thinking about these issues, I find myself almost wondering if I've become sort of the grumpy old man, right, who's just like- - I've definitely become that.

- "These kids."

- "Get off of my lawn, kids!"

- Right?

- "Get off of my Instagram feed!"

- And so you talked about sort of professors and intellectuals trying to find this way.

Is there a way to break through?

And I don't know if it's a matter of resetting the terms of the debate, but almost sort of modeling that you can have really substantive, important conversations that are not necessarily performative, but designed to actually educate and even grow your own thinking.

- I mean, all I've been able to do is just try to model that constantly, where I'm disagreeing with people, but I'm trying to do it in a way that I'm focused on what we disagree about and I'm not insulting them personally.

One of the things I try not to do... I mean, of course, you know, now somebody's gonna go through all my social media and find all the posts.

(Jim laughs) I'm somebody who's devoted to my opinions 'cause I'm a critic.

That's a muscle that you develop.

You come up with strong points of view and you learn how to defend them, and I certainly do that.

But I do try to be respectful to people.

I do try to focus on the issues that we're talking about and not talking about the person.

And I do also try to encourage the other person to be more respectful and point out when they're not being respectful, and say, "Hey, can't we talk about this in a way that is less about combat and more about dialogue?"

And that is not a particularly attractive way to communicate with people online.

It doesn't draw clicks.

You find yourself engaging with people who seem determined to fight, and it's hard to deal with that.

It's hard to redirect that energy.

But I always try to do it.

And I sort of believe at some point people are just gonna get sick of the toxicity of the dialogue, and more and more people will try to relate to each other in a better way.

But all I can do, really, is talk about this in my columns, talk about it in spaces like this, try to operate in a different way, and see... The sense that I have is that there's a small cadre of people out there who feel the way that I do, and they follow me on social media and we have great dialogues, and all I can do is just try to keep modeling that wherever I am and hope it catches on.

- Well, one of the things that... This is a pet theory of mine, and so I'm just gonna try it out on you.

I want to see what you think.

Part of the evolution of this sort of coarsening of the public debate, at least, it corresponds in time with the development of the cable news networks, which do not require FCC licensure, which are not regulated the way over the air broadcasters are.

Is that part of what contributes to sort of the entertainmentization of news?

- Well, it's interesting.

I just was interviewed for a documentary on "Amusing Ourselves to Death," the Neil Postman book, the pivotal media book, and so I went back and reread parts of it, and it is amazingly prescient.

It was published in the mid 1980s, but it talks about how we get more involved in entertainment, we expect more entertainment from everything that we consume in media, and that has a negative effect on the content that we're consuming.

And I'm also reading a new book that Tom Rosenstiel put together called "The New New Journalism," I think is what it's called, and he talks about how too many media outlets are trying, have gotten addicted to this model of getting attention.

They've decided that the best way to make money is to create content that gets attention, and they've lost sight of the way that you can really better bond with an audience if you provide them content that is useful to them, that helps them.

And if they feel as if your outlet is constantly providing material that helps them get through the day or helps them achieve something or helps them learn about something, that's when you get trust, and that's when you build connections with an audience that are stronger than, "Ooh, this thing," you know, "A squirrel," like, "Ooh, there's an exciting flashing thing over there that is either scaring me or alarming me, and I'm gonna pay attention to it for a minute."

So there are efforts out there to sort of raise the alarm about what's happening and also get people to get news providers and people in media to perhaps try a different tactic to engage viewers.

I would say this dynamic reaches back further than cable TV, because cable TV's tactics came from radio, AM radio.

People talk about the death of the fairness doctrine.

Once you learn what the fairness doctrine really was, it's not exactly that.

But when the Reagan administration eventually masterminded the defeat of the fairness doctrine, one thing that I think they were focused on is that it would allow religious broadcasters to talk about politics.

And they knew that they had a strong constituency among evangelicals, Republicans knew that.

And if they allowed their radio stations to talk about politics, then all of a sudden, they could reach a valued new constituency without worry about interference from the federal government.

But what also happened is that it allowed commercial broadcasters to advance people like Rush Limbaugh, and eventually, many years later, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity started in radio.

So many of these people who are very incendiary, divisive talk show hosts started in radio or saw people in radio as mentors.

There's an infamous guy named Bob Grant who had a show in New York City in the '70s and '80s, a legendarily racist and right wing, and he was an inspiration to both Sean Hannity and Howard Stern, believe it or not.

So, we have a technique that sort of started in radio that got imported to cable TV pundit shows, that got imported to social media, and now it's everywhere in media.

And the task for those of us who reject this toxicity is to find ways to not reward it.

So I don't spend a lot of time consuming that material.

I don't watch very many of these shows.

And internally at NPR, I discouraged NPR from doing these speculative stories about Stephen A. Smith running for president, which I think is ludicrous.

You know, if he forms a pack and starts collecting money to run for president, then let's talk about whether or not he's a viable candidate for president.

Otherwise, it's a publicity stunt, and it's an excuse for people to talk about, to do a story, it's an excuse for an established news outlet to do a story about a media personality that they know is popular and that they think will draw people to their platform.

And we got to stop making compromises like that.

When I was an active media critic covering local television and trying to inform my viewers about the excesses of local TV outlets, the sense I would get from people who would do crazy stunts.

I mean, one station parked a rider truck next to a federal building the day that the Timothy McVeigh trial started, the Oklahoma City bomber trial started, just to see if security around the federal building in Tampa was heightened in the wake of this attack.

Incredibly insensitive, alarmed the police and public service people, risked people's lives unnecessarily.

I mean, fortunately, the police were professional, but if they hadn't been, someone could have really been hurt.

- That's a wild story.

- And the sense I got from talking to the news director that authorized it was, you know, "These are the things we have to do to get people to watch our TV show."

And I'm like, if you do that enough, what you do is you teach the audience not to trust you.

You teach the audience that your content is built on stunts and inauthentic nonsense rather than trying to find a new way to engage people that's more substantive and less toxic, and I think that's kind of where we are now overall.

If we don't find a new way, then all we're doing is managing decline.

- Yeah, and I think that if we look at sort of public opinion surveys about where are people turning to for news and information, local newspapers are not performing very well at all.

Local broadcasters are doing a little bit better.

But increasingly, at least in the data that I've seen, people are looking more and more to what my least favorite thing of the modern era, influencers.

And I'm wondering, you're working now with students at Washington and Lee, and I'm sure that they're getting the bulk of their news and information from the social media feeds and from influencers.

What is the way to think, what's the right way to think about the role that these individuals can play in a modern information environment?

- Well, I think the thing that's hardest for people of our generation, and maybe a little younger, to understand, is that this is a generation... Like, it's hard, I have to constantly remind myself that 10 years ago, my students were eight years old.

(both laughing) 10 years feels like a blink to those of us who are our age.

- Of a certain age, yeah.

- But for them, 10 years is a lifetime, right?

So, this is a generation that has always had news delivered to their hip pocket whenever it happens.

They didn't have to wait until 6:00 PM to find out that Dolly Parton died.

They found out the second that her family posted it on social media.

I mean, her family posted a video on social media to tell the world she died, and that's how most people found out about it.

Even they understood, you know, sending a press release to the New York Times or to NBC News, which is how they might have handled a death like that 30 years ago, didn't make sense.

Instead, they just made a video that they put online, and then everybody reported on it.

And most people learned about it from watching the video.

So, it's hard for those of us who come from a different media universe, we're raised in a different media universe, to understand what it's like to be someone who never had to pick up a newspaper to figure out what was going on.

They never had to turn on CNN to find out what was going on.

They might do that if there's an ongoing news event that they want up to the minute information about and they want a little more detail.

They might turn on CNN when the war in Iran starts.

They might turn on CNN when there's an election and there's coverage.

But other than that, they're just getting it off their phone.

And it's not necessarily that it's influencers.

I mean, in my case, I'm subscribed to a bunch of free newsletters.

So, when something happens, I get a bunch of emails telling me that it happened, you know, the second that the story's filed.

So, it's hard to figure out how to deliver news to a population where news seeks them out, right?

And if news doesn't seek them out, then to them, it doesn't exist.

And we know that that's not how it works, particularly those of us who work in the media business.

If news doesn't seek you out, you're just ignorant about that news.

And so we constantly have to teach them to seek out news as young journalists, and make sure that you read the New York Times, make sure that you check out npr.org.

At least subscribe to their newsletters so that you are getting a semblance, an array of news headlines kind of sent to you, rather than just waiting to see what people are talking about on Instagram or TikTok.

But kids who are not studying journalism or not in college, they're absorbing it.

I mean, I think we saw this dynamic happen early in Facebook.

Facebook was originally a college only social network, and then it opened up to the general public.

And what we found was that people who were using... I mean, this was through studies.

People who were using Facebook were more likely to believe a friend who passed along information to them than they were to believe a story that was transmitted by NPR or the New York Times.

And I think that dynamic has just extended to social media outlets like Instagram and TikTok, to where people are much more likely to believe something that they see from a TikTok personality that they feel a connection to.

They'll be watching somebody who shows them how to use a pressure cooker, and they love cooking with a pressure cooker.

And then this person starts talking about the news, and they're more likely to believe what that person says than they are to believe even a vertical video created by the New York Times or npr.org.

So, these are the challenges that the modern news industry is facing, constantly figuring out how to reach an audience, how to become part of their news ecology, their media ecology, part of the array of platforms that feed content to them, and how to present it in a way that they will actually pay attention to it and process it.

We talk a little bit about how tech systems and Silicon Valley has taken control of society.

This is one way in which they control society, is that they control the pipelines that feed information to everyone.

People aren't turning on... I mean, there's an older audience that is watching the CBS Evening News, the NBC Nightly News, and ABC's World News Tonight, the evening newscast.

They still draw about 18 million people a day, which is the largest daily news audience, I think, on any media platform.

But that's a relatively small number given all the people who are out there.

And, you know, the vast majority of people are getting their information from questionable sources that they trust, but may not be trustworthy.

- Yeah, Eric, we've got about two and a half minutes left here, and I could talk to you for a week, I think.

There's so much going on.

I do want to talk for a moment though about some of the consolidation that we've seen in the entertainment and news space, and in particular, a look at what happened at CBS, and what it tells us about sort of this era of acquisitions and consolidations, and particularly what it means with the dismissal of Stephen Colbert, the nation's top rated late night host at the time, in terms of, I don't know if censorship is too strong a word, but sort of some editorial- - [Eric] I don't think it's too strong a word.

- Yeah, some minimum editorial decisions, right?

- Well, I don't think Colbert's cancellation was an editorial decision.

I think it was a business decision.

Basically, we're in a dynamic where media companies and streaming services and studios need to get bigger to survive.

The Paramount movie studio and the Paramount Plus streaming platform, which also owns Showtime and owns the CBS Network, it was too small to compete against Netflix and the bigger players, Amazon and Disney.

So, first, it merged with Skydance, which is a production company that was owned by David Ellison, whose father is Larry Ellison, one of the richest people in the world, a tech billionaire.

Now, to make that merger happen, they needed federal approvals.

And so there was a sense that... You know, I think they already had decided probably internally that late night was costing a lot of money, but I think Stephen Colbert's show was also angering the Trump administration.

And one way that they might be able to be sure that the federal government would allow them to merge is by canceling Steven Colbert's show.

Now, CBS insists that it was a financial decision, that the show was losing a lot of money and it was easier to cancel it, but it was number one rated show on late night and they didn't even try to save it.

They didn't try to suggest any costs, any cost savings.

They didn't try to suggest any new role for Stephen Colbert at CBS.

I think that this was an economic decision overshadowed by a political move.

And from that perspective, it worked.

The Trump administration allowed Skydance and Paramount to combine, and Paramount really needed that, because the owners of Paramount had a tremendous amount of debt that would have come due if that merger hadn't happened in time to sort of pay for everything.

And this is the economic reality that we're stuck in.

These companies that are coming together create a tremendous amount of debt, and they have to figure out how to pay it once they come together.

And the way they pay it is by cutting services and jacking up prices.

- Eric Deggans, your voice is so vital.

NPR and Washington Lee, they're lucky to have you.

That's all the time we have this week, but if you want to know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit salve.edu/pellcenter, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

And I want to thank you, too, for sharing some of your time with us.

I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join me again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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