SEPTEMBER 26, 2012
\nby Maggie Johnson \u201914, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n
Growing strife and division in political debate is more than fodder for talk radio and primetime cable news shows. It\u2019s actually hindering cooperation and progress in our society.<\/p>\n
So says Jeffrey Brown, co-anchor and senior correspondent of PBS NewsHour, who was on campus last night to discuss \u201cThe Public Voice in a Divided America\u201d. His lecture, delivered before a full house at the Younts Conference Center, was sponsored by the Riley Institute.<\/p>\n
Brown illustrated what he sees as a \u201clack of forthright discussions and shared goals\u201d within American politics and gave his thoughts on how this has affected the nation\u2019s political discourse and public cohesion.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur partisanship has gone beyond the usual give and take,\u201d he says. \u201cCompromise seems to be a dirty word in American politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Brown, the division of the American public comes in the wake of new information technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore cable and internet, we were a mass audience sharing a common experience,\u201d he says. \u201cNow, there are few mass events in our lives anymore. We live in a world of niches.\u201d<\/p>\n
These \u201cniches\u201d, according to Brown, have led to a weakened social unity among today\u2019s Americans. \u201cWhile there\u2019s so much more information, there\u2019s also less cohesion.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Brown, this loss of cohesion affects more than just American politics. According to him, \u201cdivisions of education, wealth, and class are worsening\u201d as well.<\/p>\n
These divisions, he said, are making American more irascible and stubborn. He notes that while \u201cit\u2019s incumbent on us all to know about our beliefs and to defend them,\u201d it\u2019s important to do so in a way that promotes unity and social cooperation.<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s words come at a time when politics stand at the forefront of the public\u2019s concerns. With the campaign and upcoming election, debate between politicians and their supporters is a fixture in our public discourse; however, according to Brown, it\u2019s when debate becomes debacle that our social unity suffers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEPTEMBER 26, 2012
\nby Maggie Johnson \u201914, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n
Growing strife and division in political debate is more than fodder for talk radio and primetime cable news shows. It\u2019s actually hindering cooperation and progress in our society.<\/p>\n
So says Jeffrey Brown, co-anchor and senior correspondent of PBS NewsHour, who was on campus last night to discuss \u201cThe Public Voice in a Divided America\u201d. His lecture, delivered before a full house at the Younts Conference Center, was sponsored by the Riley Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":800,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17,32,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-centers-and-institutes","category-politics-and-international-affairs","category-riley-institute"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}