Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
We hate politics and the media because they lower our status
We hate politics and the media because they lower our status
Apr 26, 2025 12:33 AM

“I have a simple hypothesis,” writes economist Tyler Cowen. “No matter what the media tells you their job is, the feature of media that actually draws viewer interest is how media stories either raise or lower particular individuals in status.”

Cowen believes this explains why people “get so teed off” at the media:

The status ranking of individuals implied by a particular media source is never the same as yours, and often not even close. You hold more of a grudge from the status slights than you get a positive and memorable charge from the status agreements.

In essence, (some) media is insulting your own personal status rankings all the time. You might even say the media is insulting you. Indeed that is why other people enjoy those media sources, because they take pleasure in your status, and the status of your allies, being lowered. It’s like they get to throw a media pie in your face.

In return you resent the media.

Cowen’s friend and fellow economist Arnold Kling made a similar claim earlier this summer about politics: “a major role of political ideology is to attempt to adjust the relative status of various groups.” One e of this is that,

… every adherent to an ideology seeks to elevate the status of those who share that ideology and to downgrade the status of those with different ideologies. That is why it matters that journalists and academics are overwhelmingly on the left. This means that the institutions of the mass media and higher education are inevitably and relentlessly going to seek to lower the status of conservatives.

Whose status do I want to see raised? That’s a question I’ve asked myself several times this summer. And as I’ve said before, if I were being perfectly candid I’d probably say my own (as most of us would). But if I were allowed a more idealistic answer I’d say that, as a Christian and in the context of my work for Acton, I want to raise the status of three groups: the poor, the vulnerable, and consumers.

From a biblical perspective, the first two groups seem to be obvious choices. Scripture contains numerous admonitions for us to not only recognize the poor and economically vulnerable but also toadvance their concerns. In a way, the same could be said for consumers, though the biblical case for protecting consumers is less clear and direct.

I believe the nineteenth-century French journalist Frédéric Bastiat was making a biblically defensible point when he said,

consumption is the great end and purpose of political economy; that good and evil, morality and immorality, harmony and discord, everything finds its meaning in the consumer, for he represents mankind.

I’veargued for that claim before, so I won’t rehash that here. Instead I want to return to the original point made by Cowen and Arnold and consider how it can help us understand our current predicament. While it may not explain everything, understanding the role of status lowering/raising explain quite a lot about many of the ongoing debates in American society—and why they tend to be so divisive.

Many conservatives (like me) have been frustrated by the media’s raising the status of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a way that is manufactured and sometimes dishonest. We also perceive the media’s raising the status of these candidates to be raising the status of issues that we we oppose, but that both candidates support, such as artificial restrictions on trade and wages.

Unfortunately, our natural reaction is to decry media bias or the flawed political process. While both claims may be true (I think they largely are) it doesn’t change anything to merely express our outrage. It also makes us appear that we are merely concerned about our own narrow interests.While we canexpect the media and our political opponents to shrug off our concerns, we should be worried that we are making it easier to dismiss the concerns of those who we want to see rise in the status rankings (e.g., the poor, the vulnerable, and consumers).

Making it absolutely clearwhose status we want to raise can help us avoid some of the confusion and misunderstandings that arise because of ideological differences. Of course it won’t be a cure-all. Understanding my status concerns doesn’t mean that populists and progressives will agree with us. And even if they agree it doesn’t even mean they’ll agree about what policies will benefit the groups whose status we want to raise. But by being honest about whose cause we are truly championing we can take a small but important step toward improving policy and political debates.

This understanding can also help us to understand, as Cowen notes in his post, the emotional element that leads us to make mistakes in our own political reasoning. Merely venting our frustration that the media lowers the status of groups we care about isn’t going to change much (or even make us feel better). Neither will shutting ourselves up in a bubble where we listen only to niche media outlets that get paid to tell us what we want to hear (that’s true whether the voice in our bubble is Sean Hannity or John Oliver).

When the media and political groups lower our status rankings we need to find a way to push back—and this is the key part—in a way that is effective. At a minimum, thatrequires making convincing arguments that are both based on evidence (i.e., that align with reality) and that aremorally and emotionally persuasive. We have to aim at both the head and heart of our hearers by making our speech judicious and adding persuasiveness to ourlips (Proverbs 16:23, ESV).

This side of heaven we may not be able to ensure that the “least shall be first” (Matthew 20:16). But by understanding the role of status in our terrestrialdebates we can help to ensure the least aren’t always last.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Let’s Change Hearts and Minds (and Laws, Too)
Few clichés are so widespread within the evangelical subculture, says Matthew Lee Anderson, as the notion that our witness must be one of “changing hearts and minds.” In careful hands, the idea is at best ambiguous. At worst it reinforces the sort of interior-oriented individualism that allows for and perpetuates a blissful naivete about how institutions and structures shape our dispositions and thoughts. In less than careful hands, the phrase drives a wedge between law and culture by attempting to...
Italy’s Tax Man Takes Aim at the Vatican
Kishore Jayabalan, the Acton Institute’s Rome office director, was interviewed by the Zenit news agency in an article titled, “Is Taxing the Church a Real Solution for Italy?” In the article, Jayabalan discusses the history of the Italian state and its imposition of property taxes on the Roman Catholic Church’s land holdings, residences and non-profit businesses. Sometimes in the past, particularly under Napoleonic rule and before the Lateran Pacts, the institution of property tax was often a subject of state...
Obamacare’s Religious Rubes
The White House has a plan to mobilize prayer vigils in front of the Supreme Court in defense of Obamacare. It was reported that the administration met with leaders at non-profit organizations and religious officials who support the new health care law. The court takes up the constitutional test of the health care mandate in a couple of weeks. The mandate has now been challenged in 26 states. Cue the same stale big government religious prophets who confuse statism and...
Integral Human Development
The Journal of Markets & Morality is planning a theme issue for the Spring of 2013: “Integral Human Development,” i.e. the synthesis of human freedom and responsibility necessary for the material and spiritual enrichment of human life. According to Pope Benedict XVI, Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. (Caritas in Veritate 17) There is a delicate balance between the material and the...
Constitutional Cases and the Four Cardinal Virtues
Should virtue be a consideration in judicial decisionmaking? Indiana Law Professor R. George Wright makes an intriguing argument for why the four cardinal virtues could be useful in interpreting constitutional cases: Judges typically decide constitutional cases by referring to one or more legal precedents, rules, tests, principles, doctrines, or policies. This Article mends supplementing this standard approach with fully legitimate and appropriate attention to what many cultures have long recognized as the four basic cardinal virtues of practical wisdom or...
Lord Acton and the Power of the Historian
Looking through my back stacks of periodicals the other day I ran across a review in Books & Culture by David Bebbington, “Macaulay in the Dock,” of a recent biography of Thomas Babington Macaulay. The essay takes its point of departure in Lord Acton’s characterization of Macaulay as “one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious.” As Bebbington writes, “Acton, a towering intellectual of the later 19th century, was at...
How to Steal a Bike in New York City
Edmund Burke didn’t really say it, but it still rings true: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. In a test of this maxim, filmmaker Casey Neistat tries to steal his own bike in several locations around New York City and finds that most people do nothing about it—even when it’s done right in front of a police station. I recently spent a couple of days conducting a bike theft experiment, which...
Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Threat to Freedom
Over at the Liberty Law Blog, there is an excellent post titled “Ronald Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Dialogue of Liberty” by Alan Snyder. Snyder delves into the influence Chambers had on Reagan and how their worldviews differed as well. Many conservatives and scholars felt Chambers’ prediction that the West was on the losing side of history in the battle against Marxism collapsed after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union. For many, the ideas of Chambers...
How to Love Liberty More Than a Libertarian Economist
I have a deep and abiding love for liberty—which is why I find myself so often in disagreement with libertarians. Libertarians love liberty too, of course, but they tend to love liberty a bit differently. I love liberty in an earthy, elemental way. I love liberty because I need it—like I need air and food—for human flourishing. In contrast, the libertarians I’ve encountered tend to love liberty primarily as an abstraction. Indeed, the most ideologically consistent libertarians I know seem...
Is Work a Curse?
Is work a curse, a result of mankind’s fall from grace? Not according to the Book of Genesis. As Hugh Whelchel, Executive Director of the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, explains, what Adam was called to do in the garden is what we are still called to do in our work today: Humanity was created by God to cultivate and keep God’s creation, which included developing it and protecting it. You see, we were created to be stewards of...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved