That’s the reality of the information environment heading into Thursday’s prime time hearing. While a bipartisan committee of lawmakers is trying to present the full story of 1/6 to the public, a media universe full of Trump allies is trying to do the opposite.
It’s not just that Republican-aligned media outlets are downplaying the 1/6 committee’s work or heaping skepticism on the process, although both those things are true. It’s that the GOP’s biggest stars are calling the probe “illegitimate” and shouting that they don’t care and ridiculing people who do care and airing conspiracy theories about the riot instead. They have rejected the hearings before the hearings begin.
For example: Will Fox News even show Thursday’s prime time hearing in full? Fox continues to decline to comment, but it’s hard to imagine Carlson giving up his airtime for a hearing that he calls “illegitimate.”
I searched for references to “January 6” across cable news, and found more than 800 mentions on MSNBC so far this year, versus just about 144 on Newsmax. And many of those comments on Newsmax were either dismissive of the riot or sympathetic to the accused rioters.
So the result is another American info-divide — or maybe another three-way split, with politically engaged viewers on both sides and uninterested folks in between.
Another challenge: Short attention spans
Woodward & Bernstein’s view
>> “What happened on January 6? POTUS, his lawyers, his aides,” tried to keep the election “from happening,” Bernstein said. They tried to “stage a coup so that Joe Biden could not become the duly elected and installed president.” He said “I think there’s a misunderstanding about the enormity and the actual timeline of what happened…”
Costa’s question to Cheney
He asked: “Are you confident that what you have found, as a committee, will somehow grab the American people by the lapels and say, ‘Wake up: You have to pay attention’?”
“I am,” she said… “The threat, and it’s an ongoing threat — you know, we are not in a situation where former President Trump has expressed any sense of remorse about what happened. We are in fact in a situation where he continues to use even more extreme language, frankly, than the language that caused the attack. And so, people must pay attention. People must watch, and they must understand how easily our democratic system can unravel if we don’t defend it.”
Fair — but “people must watch” doesn’t reckon with the reality that a great number of Americans not only won’t watch but will proudly display their disinterest as part of their political identity.
