The silence is deafening

Recent polls show:

* 80 percent of Americans surveyed believe illegal immigrants should have a path to earned citizenship.
* 39 pecent of Americans believe George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached. (This poll showed 41 percent of Independents believe this.)
* 67 percent of Americans want our troops brought home from Iraq.
* Bush’s job approval rating has reached a low of 28 percent in recent polling.

Why then does the U.S. media treat anyone who believes thusly or criticizes Bush’s incompetence as “the lunatic fringe” – when, in three of the four issues cited above, such persons are clearly in the majority?

Because the persons who hold a minority opinion on these same issues are the loudest and most visible.

In a 23 May 2007 New York Times piece, “A New Silent Majority,” blogger Mark Buchanan states, “Something seems a little out of whack between the mainstream media and the American people.”

Buchanan analyzes the differences between what Americans believe, how they perceive themselves and how the media reports their beliefs.

He writes:

“In pluralistic ignorance (a term coined by psychologists in the 1930s), as described by researchers Hubert O’Gorman and Stephen Garry in a 1976 paper published in Public Opinion Quarterly, ‘moral principles with relatively little popular support may exert considerable influence because they are mistakenly thought to represent the views of the majority, while normative imperatives actually favored by the majority may carry less weight because they are erroneously attributed to a minority.’

“What is especially disturbing about the process is that it lends itself to control by the noisiest and most visible.

“Psychologists have noted that students who are the heaviest drinkers, for example, tend to speak out most strongly against proposed measures to curb drinking, and act as ‘subculture custodians’ in support of their own minority views. Their strong vocalization can produce ‘false consensus’ against such measures, as others, who think they’re part of the minority, keep quiet. As a consequence, the extremists gain influence out of all proportion to their numbers, while the views of the silent majority end up being suppressed.”

So, when America’s cable news viewing audience hears such loud and visible pundits as Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs ranting against “amnesty for illegal immigrants” – as they characterize the new Senate “path to citizenship” – and believes themselves to be in the minority, when, in fact, they are “the new silent majority.”

When more than one-third of Americans consider impeachment, the media treat the idea as though it’s unthinkable.

The media do a little name-calling, too. Persons – that 67 percent of Americans – who want our troops brought home from Iraq are labeled “the far-left fringe,” “anti-war activists” or “the MoveOn.org crowd.”

For years now, the media have called any honest and Constitutionally protected criticism of George W. Bush’s policies – foreign and domestic – “Bush bashing.”

And, like Joel Chandler Harris’ ‘the tar baby,’ the new American silent majority “just sits and waits” - a mistake made at other critical times in history.

Isn’t it time to become proactive?

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“A New Silent Majority,” New York Times blog, 23 May 2007: LINK