Can Rupert Murdoch Create Two Americas?

COMMENTARY: I'm enticed by the thought of a News Corp.-free existence. I can just imagine never again reading an antigay New York Post piece that describes gay profile subjects as "swishy" or "limp-wristed," or viewing its editorial cartoons equating same-sex marriage with bestiality. I envision never again seeing Web clips of Fox News host Bill O'Reilly ranting about "Harry Potter and the gay agenda" or Adam Lambert's "embarrassing" kiss photos. It's a tantalizing proposition for some left-leaning news junkies, and it's one that might come to pass if Rupert Murdoch gets his way.

Whether he's proved to be a relic or prophet, the danger in Murdoch's move is not that we won't accidentally be confronted with Mike Huckabee waxing 19th-century-like that homosexuality will end civilization. The danger is that Murdoch's move could further drive a wedge into America's already bifurcated media culture.

The danger is in the echo chamber.

In a broadcast of WNYC radio show On the Media in April of this year, Brooke Gladstone described "the echo chamber phenomenon in which likeminded people huddle in bubbles in the blogosphere where they never have to confront a conflicting opinion or unwelcome fact, where in defense of the dogma of the tribe, moderates are sidelined and extremists exalted."

Of course, what constitutes fact in many instances is a matter of debate, but in the echo chamber there is very little debate. Facts are ignored or glossed over. And Fox News producers and hosts are clearly aware of the psychological power of quoting figures in error, knowing that even if those errors are corrected, bad data tends to stick with viewers as gospel truth. Witness Glenn Beck's continued hysteria over Barack Obama's fabled Kenyan birth certificate; he's not saying it's real, he's "just asking the question" -- incessantly. On The Daily Show Jon Stewart deftly portrayed the ways in which some of the most recent anti-Obama "tea parties" gathering a few hundred protesters got hours of coverage on Fox News, where the LGBT National Equality March on Washington, D.C., which had estimates of 150,000 attendees, got a scant few minutes of coverage.

With the prospect of two Americas reading two different versions of the news (to date, there is no sizable liberal challenger to News Corp.'s conservatism), we risk losing the middle, losing objectivity, losing the idea that a vigorous debate of ideas is important to democracy. If we concede that two versions of the news is acceptable, we further divide our country.

We already effectively have red states and blue states, but at least currently we all have the same Internet. We need to do what we can to keep it that way. For this reason, let's hope that Murdoch's plan to divide the Internet is a failure.