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I've been arguing for years that one of the biggest challenges facing us as a society is the ideological divide.
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The country is divided.
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Families are divided.
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I have friends who basically, when we're getting out for dinner with them, the one topic we cannot discuss is politics, because the husband is anti-Trump and the wife is pro-Trump.
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You cannot have a civilized discussion.
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Welcome to The Ripple Effect, the podcast that takes you on a journey through the minds of Wharton faculty.
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I'm your host, Dan Loney, and in each episode, we'll be diving deep into the inspiration behind the groundbreaking research that Wharton professors have conducted and exploring how their findings resonate with the world today.
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The issue of redistricting is one that has drawn the attention of both the public and the media, and it once again shows the division that we have in our country right now.
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And even more so, looking at the division that we have within our media outlets, we are seeing a greater and greater divide in how reporting is done and how the information is processed and sent to us on a daily basis.
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We wanted to spend some time talking about that component of what we're seeing play out right now, and a pleasure to be joined by Wharton professor Jerry Wynn.
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Jerry, great to have you with us today.
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Thanks for a couple of moments.
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Thanks for having me.
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It is very interesting.
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You wrote about this in an article on The Hill.
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I guess let's start with just what the genesis was to write about this right now.
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Well, I felt that the typical reporting by party line, Republicans say this, Democrats says this, doesn't really capture the new reality.
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The new reality is that the country is ideologically divided.
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There is a strong pro-Trump group and there is a strong anti-Trump group, and this is not aligned by party.
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There are a lot of Republicans who do not support Trump.
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There are some Democrats that support Trump, and the independents are split.
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Some of them support Trump and some do not.
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So why are we ignoring it?
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Why are we continuing to report Republicans say that and Democrats says that, as opposed to trying to identify on specific issues, who are the ones who support the Trump philosophy and those who do not?
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And I think it's clear in almost every domain that we're dealing with, whether it is climate, trade, abortion, you name it, on every one of those issues, the dividing line is not party line anymore, but it's rather the alliance with and loyalty to to Trump versus opposing Trump.
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And really, that seemingly is occurring because of, I assume, the concerns that other politicians have of not having the support of the president when you get to a midterm election or a November election.
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Right.
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And we just saw recently in the loss of all those who opposed Trump, you know, got lost in the primary, but lost in the primary is not a signal as to what's going to happen in the election.
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So I think it's, again, misleading.
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It doesn't suggest the fact that Trump can't support that candidates won the primary does not mean that they are shooting to be to win the elections because the elections will be won by the new coalition that's formed, the Republicans that oppose Trump, the Democrats that oppose Trump and the independents that oppose Trump.
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And you say that this is also playing out to a degree in our media landscape as well.
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Very much so.
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And I think the media, to a large extent, does not report the new reality.
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They're still, you know, basically using the old lens.
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My approach to this is, even though I had my kind of both undergraduate and graduate degree in political science, all my life I've been in marketing and it's a pure marketing issue.
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It's a segmentation.
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You know, it's basically how do you segment the market?
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And unfortunately, the reporting of this has been along the traditional line of party line, as opposed to realizing that the country is really divided ideologically.
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And we have to start recognizing this in our reporting.
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How then do you see this segmentation play out in the general public?
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Obviously, this segmentation does reflect the general public.
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Yeah, it is the general public that is played.
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Look at dinner discussions.
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Look at party discussions where people discuss.
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The focus is not so much, you know, I'm Republican and this is the traditional Republican values.
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The discussion is whether it is a support of the Trump policy or not supporting the Trump policy.
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And in effect, the traditional Republican Party was was kidnapped by the extreme right.
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You know, Lincoln will never recognize mega today as the Republican Party.
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Do you see the use of segmentation occur with businesses in terms of trying to gain consumers over, say, their rival companies as well?
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Like this is obviously playing out in politics, but does this play out in our general lives as well?
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I think it's a great question.
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I have not studied it to look at this specifically.
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My the general reaction that I kind of see from many businesses is try to avoid politics at any cost.
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Basically, they feel it is too, too, especially political leader, either because of the leadership of businesses they're trying to avoid because they're afraid.
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They're afraid the same way that the Republican congressmen and senators are afraid.
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No one is speaking up.
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They're the same way that university presidents are afraid you don't hear from them.
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The same way law firms are afraid.
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The same way that many of the media are afraid.
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You know, there is a fear culture here and people don't don't speak out loudly.
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They can try to stay under the radar.
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So you don't see so much, you know, kind of positions from business that are clearly anti-Trump.
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You try basically people try to ignore it, kind of to basically know that's not an issue to discuss.
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But it's a great question.
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And I think it definitely deserves some research.
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So does this segmentation then potentially have longer term impacts on political parties as a whole as we move forward?
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You know, should we be looking out for even greater change in what political parties are like as we move ahead?
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I would I would hope so.
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I think if the Democrats were smart and we don't really see too much kind of evidence to the fact that they're really kind of galvanizing is the effective strategy against Trump.
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If they were smart, they will stop sending messages, you know, kind of that, you know, as Democrats support us, they will appeal much broader.
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The Democratic approach and candidate should be both for the Democrats, for the Republicans that oppose Trump and to the independents.
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I think it's a very narrow, old fashioned perspective of what we see in promotion by the Democratic Party, ignoring this new reality.
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And they need to find the candidate or candidates for all the positions that take the broader position, not of the old Democratic Party.
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And the Democrats don't know really who they are.
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Are they supporting the kind of the progressive group?
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And the election of the New York mayor definitely strengthened this part of the party.
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But the rest of the Democrats are not necessarily defined as progressive.
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So I think that the Democrats were smart from a political point of view and tried to select the candidates and the campaign.
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They will stop campaigning on the old approach of we, the Democrats, and that's our values.
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But they will focus on this coalition of the liberal Republicans and other Republicans that oppose Trump, the independent and the Democrats.
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And I think that's that's their only chance of winning.
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How much of this segmentation has occurred because of the, quote, unquote, far right that seemingly both parties have right now?
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I think it's the I've been arguing for years that one of the biggest challenge facing us as society is the ideological divide.
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The country is divided.
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Families are divided.
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You know, kind of I have friends who basically they're divided.
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We're getting out for dinner with them.
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The one topic we cannot discuss is politics, because the husband is anti-Trump and the wife is a pro-Trump.
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You cannot have a civilized discussion.
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The only way to is to deal to be with them is avoid the topic.
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Where do we go from here?
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What how do we correct this to a degree?
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Because this feels like it's going to be a longer term process to try and get back to what our political landscape was, say, 20 or 30 years ago.
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I think you're right.
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I don't think it will ever get back.
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And I think the new landscape probably would depend to a large extent of who will succeed Trump and who will be the Democratic candidate.
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Unfortunately, we cannot avoid the kind of the traditional segmentation to Democrats, Republicans and independents because of the elections, you know, kind of the and the machinery behind the election.
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So the party is going to remain with the House.
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But I think in terms of informing the public and providing accurate reporting on the reality that we face, I think it's important that people start augmenting the traditional party reporting by the new reality of the pro-Trump, anti-Trump.
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And I think this will I think responsibility is really on the media to a large extent.
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Right.
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Because the media is the one that that feeds the public the information.
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So if the media will start reporting accurately, I think we'll make a big difference.
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Well, and then I guess part of the challenge is also and a lot of people have talked about the impact that social media has had on reporting, but also on conversation in that in many cases, people feel like they can say anything on social media and don't have to have any consequences.
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And now we're also going into the realm of A.I. where you may or may not be actually seeing a video that's real or not.
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So the technology that we have has even complicated this process even further.
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Absolutely, and I think so someone has to take the lead, and I think that the the easier lead will come and the more impactful, at least initially, will be the media, you know, kind of the institutionalized media.
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If they start, hopefully this will impact then the conversation we see on social media.
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The challenge is those media outlets are as divided as the country is right now, and it doesn't seem like that they are willing to make a move to to change this back.
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That's a great point.
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You do not expect Fox News to start reporting anti-Trump segment or sentiment.
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But hopefully there are many other media outlets, at least that try to be independent, you know, kind of into the extent.
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Let's start with the big the big name.
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Let's start with New York Times, Washington Post, Time magazine.
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Let's start talking with the TV channels, CBS, you know, ABC and the like.
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Even though with the current firing of, you know, kind of the CBS, I'm not sure there's much hope there.
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Right.
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But even when let's use the Washington Post as an example, when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, even before he had a chance to have an impact on what was going to be produced in that paper, the theme out there was, OK, he's going to change everything.
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He's going to be pro-Trump.
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He's going to be pro-Republican.
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And I don't know if that's actually occurred to the level that people thought.
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But just that story, that narrative was out there even before he really had a chance to have an impact on the paper.
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I think it's a great you're bringing up a great point.
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You know, people's reaction and and behavior drives expectations, drive what they're saying, drive the commentary.
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I'm glad that the Washington Post tried to maintain its independence.
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Let's hope they could continue this.
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The challenge is that also the traditional media is losing, you know, kind of, you know, following because people don't trust them anymore.
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So I think it's really an opportunity for the media to, especially the more independent media, to try to start portraying the correct perspective and correct perspective, in my view, is augment the party reporting with the Trump, anti-Trump perspective.
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How much is just the control that both sides want to have a factor in this entire process, do you think?
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Like the control that we see Democrats and Republicans want to have on Capitol Hill, the control that the media outlets want to have, the control that the public on each side of the political aisle wants to have.
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There's that element of control that seemingly is driving a lot of this.
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I think you're absolutely right.
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And I think it's a real challenge that goes back to our educational system.
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I think our education system really failed in encouraging people to listen to the other side, to seek win-win solutions as opposed to, you know, kind of, I have to win and, you know, kill the other side.
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I think it's truly a failure of our educational system, but not developing this ability to listen to the other side and try to find, you know, win-win solutions.
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But given this, that the solution here, as opposed to just giving up, and control definitely explains part of the behavior here, I think we should try to change it.
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We have to try to change it and have enlightened journalism report.
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I was delighted that you accepted my kind of little op-ed.
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I'm delighted that you want to follow up on this.
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And I hope that more independent journalists will do it and start realizing the reality we're dealing.
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Because on every single issue that we face, the division is not Democrat-Republican.
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The division is pro-Trump and anti-Trump.
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Jerry, always great to have a conversation with you.
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Thanks very much for your time today.
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Thanks, Dan.
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I appreciate it.
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Always nice being with you.
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Always great to talk.
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Jerry Wynn, Wharton professor, joining us here on The Ripple Effect.
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Thank you for listening to The Ripple Effect.
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