A Failure of Civility, Not Just Communication

What we as a country have here, according to two different sources from opposite sides of the political spectrum, isn’t a failure to communicate. Or, at least, not just a failure to communicate, a line famous from Cool Hand Luke.

We have a failure of civility.

We’re not going to address the specifics of politics in this blog (though one headline cited two paragraphs down clearly touches on politics). No one comes to our blog to read about politics. But we do talk about communications and the media.

As a country, we do have a failure to communicate between people on either side of the partisan divide. And the reason for that, in part, is due to a lack of civility.

When Opposing Voices Agree

That’s according Clark Hoyt, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with decades of experience including at Knight Ridder newspapers and the New York Times. In an Atlantic article, “Why Trump Gets Away With It: The institutional checks that got the country through Watergate are far weaker now,” he discusses the weakening of trust and guardrails.

That’s also according to Sean Duffy, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, who claims the problem of a lack of civility, on the airlines, is because too many people wear pajamas when they fly. Duffy’s solution is for Americans to dress up when they travel.

It’s a bit surprising to find agreement these days. But bringing civility back is going to take more than not wearing PJs when boarding.

Civility and Trust: Hoyt’s Warning

According to Hoyt, the lack of civility goes hand-in-hand with a lack of trust in our institutions.

Here’s what Hoyt has to say:

“One thing that my long career as a journalist tells me is that restoring civility and community will require rebuilding a trusted news system… Local media should be a particular focus. National media may have their problems with trust, but local news, where engagement with community and the larger world begins, is disappearing altogether. Over the past two decades, according to the State of Local News Project at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, nearly 40 percent of all local newspapers have shut down, leaving 50 million Americans with little or no reliable news about their communities. That includes Friday-night high-school football scores, official decisions at city-commission meetings, and data about local crime. The result is that people are disengaged from their communities.”

We’ve stated for years that local media is important for the towns outside big cities. Local media can inform residents about news affecting their communities, shedding light and helping them understand decisions being made that will impact them at a local level, news that certainly won’t be covered in regional or metro papers.

Local news is important for community’s sense of cohesion.

Local newspapers, written by people in the community, tend to be more civil, rather than pit neighbor against neighbor.

Certainly more civil than social media hot takes that hope to go viral.

We’re all for bringing back civility, and we’re not suggesting anyone is against civility. (Though certainly some folks are making money by not being civil.) What we’re saying is that we agree with Hoyt that it can start with having local newspapers to bring communities together.

But It Doesn’t End With Local News

There are so many sources for information that it’s overwhelming. Even PR people who are news junkies having trouble staying on top of reporters, podcasters, influencers, etc. As Michele Songy notes in a recent LinkedIn article: “‘We’ve got Yahoo writers who are also running their own creator networks getting upwards of one million views on articles and Substack writers with 30,000+ subscribers in really specific niches.”

Meanwhile, Jill Manuel, a Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist, recently wrote in another LinkedIn article that a looming problem for newsrooms is that teens don’t trust them. Teens seem more likely to get their news from influencers and social media because they seem more authentic. She offers some worthwhile ideas to gain teens’ trust. It’s worth checking out.

So an important step is for media organizations need to find people who can report and write objectively and provide a reliable news product that communities will trust.

And they also need to devise a business model that can attract newsroom staff, advertisers and subscribers. We know of one local media that does a decent job but their costs are significant so in a recent restructuring, they’ve let go some staff, which puts more of a burden on fewer people. Which may impact the quality of the news they produce.

The Hard Road Ahead — and the One Concrete Step We Can Take

All that’s to say it’s not going to be easy for the 50 million Americans with little or no reliable news. And the increasing fragmentation of news continues to be a problem.

Unfortunately, we don’t have an answer for that.

But we do know this: any effort to restore civility in this country has to start somewhere—and rebuilding trusted, local, community-rooted news is one concrete step we can take.