Morning Jolt: Look What We Can Learn When We Venture Out into Red America!

Ken Stern, who worked at NPR from 1999 to 2008 and served as the institution's CEO, chose to spend an entire year living in "red America" and getting to know the Americans who saw issues differently from him: evangelical Christians, gun owners, Tea Party activists, NASCAR fans, etcetera. He's pleasantly surprised by what he found, and he concludes there's a strong argument to be made that the country's largest media institutions poorly serve large swaths of the country, out of a combination of bias, ignorance, and cultural barriers:

Over the course of this past year, I have tried to consume media as they do and understand it as a partisan player. It is not so hard to do. Take guns. Gun control and gun rights is one of our most divisive issues, and there are legitimate points on both sides. But media is obsessed with the gun-control side and gives only scant, mostly negative, recognition to the gun-rights sides.

Take, for instance, the issue of legitimate defensive gun use (DGU), which is often dismissed by the ...

October 24 2017

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Look What We Can Learn When We Venture Out into Red America! Jim Geraghty Ken Stern, who worked at NPR from 1999 to 2008 and served as the institution's CEO, chose to spend an entire year living in "red America" and getting to know the Americans who saw issues differently from him: evangelical Christians, gun owners, Tea Party activists, NASCAR fans, etcetera. He's pleasantly surprised by what he found, and he concludes there's a strong argument to be made that the country's largest media institutions poorly serve large swaths of the country, out of a combination of bias, ignorance, and cultural barriers: Over the course of this past year, I have tried to consume media as they do and understand it as a partisan player. It is not so hard to do. Take guns. Gun control and gun rights is one of our most divisive issues, and there are legitimate points on both sides. But media is obsessed with the gun-control side and gives only scant, mostly negative, recognition to the gun-rights sides. Take, for instance, the issue of legitimate defensive gun use (DGU), which is often dismissed by the ... READ MORE The Ivory Tower William F. Buckley Jr. Editor's Note: As part of our Fall 2017 Webathon, we're sharing some classic pieces by Bill from the early years of National Review. The following piece was first published in our April 5, 1958... It's Up to Us to Preserve the Sacred David French It's Up to Us to Preserve the Sacred ADVERTISEMENT Asylum Now Jay Nordlinger People can't talk about this case without referring to Kafka. It is, indeed, Kafkaesque: a nightmare of injustice. "Laughable," they also say. The case would be laughable if it weren't so... Connecticut Republicans Should Vote against Irresponsible Budget Red Jahncke After a four-month battle, Connecticut appears to have a tentative budget — and, of course, more than $1 billion of new taxes to close the deficit in the state's roughly $40 billion two-year... Half of All Health Spending Is Wasted Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry Editor's Note: Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a conservative writer and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is writing a series of columns on uncomfortable truths about health care in... The Facebook Farce Rich Lowry The Kremlin knows a bargain when it sees it. We are supposed to believe that it bought the American presidential election last year with $100,000 in Facebook ads and some other digital... ADVERTISEMENT Passchendaele: The Lost Victory of World War I Nick Lloyd 'Confirms his position among the best young scholars of WWI in this comprehensively researched, convincingly presented analysis . . . [His] thesis is controversial, but his scholarship makes it impossible to dismiss.' - Publishers Weekly LEARN MORE Operation Barkhane Faces of the Catrinas Parade ADVERTISEMENT Follow Us & Share 215 Lexington Ave., New York, NY, 10016, USA Your Preferences | Unsubscribe | Privacy View this e-mail in your browser.