“Partisanship has made the news media a battlefield where each side cherry-picks facts, exaggerates threats, and turns politics into a morality play of pure heroes and pure villains,” David Brooks once observed, warning that this climate “diminishes our capacity for empathy and honest conversation.”
That line captures a big part of our current media bias problem. Instead of informing, too many outlets are incentivized to intensify tribal identities and moral outrage. Audiences get affirmation, not illumination.
When coverage becomes a team sport, even accurate stories are framed to score points rather than to understand reality. The result: people increasingly live in separate information universes, each convinced the other is deluded or malicious.
Brooks’s critique challenges both media producers and news consumers: if we want a healthier public square, we have to reward nuance, humility, and good-faith disagreement over partisan theater.