Is media responsible for America’s current ‘civil war’?

One of the journalists whose investigative reporting brought a president down recognizes that the U.S. is deeply divided – but Carl Bernstein thinks Fox News is mostly to blame.

Bernstein and fellow Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward broke the Watergate story that took down President Richard Nixon in the 1970s. On CNN over the weekend, Bernstein acknowledged that the media is struggling to document the deep divides in America.

“We are in the midst of a cold civil war in this country – a political and cultural civil war. And all of our reporting is taking place in the context of that cold civil war,” he said, adding that one of CNN’s competitors is to blame.

“… Fox has changed American politics as perhaps no institution has. Since its invention in 1996, our politics has been changed inalterably by this right-wing counterforce, whatever you want to call Fox News.”

Don Irvine of Accuracy in Media says Fox News may indeed have given America a different voice in the newsroom, but he argues that the mainstream media is so upset these days because Trump is going around them.

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“From the get-go with Trump, the way he started with the media relations, he decided that the media is not going to be his filter for his message – and this has just thrown them into upheaval,” Irvine tells OneNewsNow.

“They can’t figure out how they’re going to get back and try to get the control back over the message and become the filter for everyone, because Trump has just turned this whole thing upside down.”

Irvine counters Bernstein’s argument about the country being in a “cold civil war” by suggesting that most Americans have more basic concerns.

“They’re looking at jobs and taxes and how their life is going,” says the AIM chairman. “There’s a lot of stuff that happens here in DC. [But] all this fighting from the media? That’s well beyond anything that really affects them in their daily lives.”

To prove his point, Irvine wonders how many Americans have personally witnessed any of the anti-Trump protests. He says unless they live in a major city, on the East or West Coast, or in a college town, the only thing most Americans probably know about a “cold civil war” is what they see or read in the media.

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