Our View: Media to blame for anger

A lot of people are angry.

Some of that is caused by fear of the unknown and of what will become of our families and friends as we head into a new political era. It’s natural to fear what we don’t know and to be angry at what we cannot understand.

And we’re sorry to say that we in the media shoulder much of the blame.

If you peruse the national headlines, you’re not likely to find much of anything along the lines of news.

Most of what our national media covers these days is nothing more than speculation. Those things once relegated to a few pages marked “opinion” have found their way onto the front pages of our newspapers and to the tops of our mobile and social media-based news feeds.

These shadowy forecasts shape our thoughts and ideas, but it is wrong to put too much faith in them.

We in the media strive to get our readers’ attention and that is most effectively done by pointing to the conflict of a story. National media agencies tend to take this too far.

So the anger is based upon what might happen, but has not yet happened.

For example, with each name introduced as potential members of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet, some news agencies have reported on the possible doom and gloom that comes from the individual’s ideology.

That becomes problematic when we turn that anger toward people who do not think or dress like us, or believe in the same ideas as us. We should keep a wary eye toward actions that might cause injury to ourselves but no matter how thrilling they are to read, these doomsday forecasts are not real.

It has been eight years since the Democrats took control of the Executive

Branch of our federal government. That change caused widespread fear among those people who thought their civil liberties would be taken from them.

But here we are, almost a decade later and the most notable change is that which jingles in the pockets of those who have profited by stoking

those fears.

As we head into this new era of Republican control of the White House we would all do well to remember that most of us have been on the losing side of an election.

And that is just one of many things that we all have in common.

And that it is the struggle of ideas that makes our country strong.