He’s the darling of the mainstream media that uses his quotes to pound the White House with allegations of colluding with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential election, but that doesn’t make California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff a fan of the press.
In fact, he blames it for the partisan dysfunction in Washington.
“There’s a lot that got us to where we are today in terms of the partisan nature of Congress. Certainly, I think the way campaigns are financed has some contributing role. Redistricting and the gerrymander has a role, but probably the most significant is now just the way people get their information,” Schiff said.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee expressed concerns that Americans are no longer taking in a balanced diet of news. Instead, they are listening only to the press and social media that reinforce their view.
“It is a far different world than it was with the democratization of information that I recall when I was a college student, racing home to my dormitory to watch Walter Cronkite’s last broadcast. We have come a long way since then. It is now much more difficult to even agree on a common set of objective facts,” Schiff fretted.
He even called it the “balkanization” of news and views and said it is dividing Congress and the nation.
“People now getting information, often self-selecting the news that they want to hear. And when it comes to social media, it may be even more balkanizing because the algorithms that produce the news that people get on social media produce the news that they want to see and read, which tends to reinforce the views that they had before they read the news,” Schiff said.
Finally, Liddle’ Adam Schiff, the leakin’ monster of no control, is now blaming the Obama Administration for Russian meddling in the 2016 Election. He is finally right about something. Obama was President, knew of the threat, and did nothing. Thank you Adam!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2018
He has seen it firsthand, offering an example of talking with a constituent who apparently had a different set of news and facts than Schiff on a topic.
“I know when I discuss this with my constituents, we talk about what news appears in their social media feed. There’s an initial sense that we all get the same news in our feed, and [it’s] quite a surprise to many people when they learn, no actually, the stories that I see are different than the stories someone else sees, which is different than the stories their neighbor sees,” he told reporters at a breakfast roundtable sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
Among the results, he added, is that agreement on key issues, such as the Trump-Russia investigation, is impossible.
“I think one of the most dramatic transformations in the 18 years that I’ve been in Congress is that people get their information from such different places. And I think that has contributed to a real balkanization of the public as well as a polarization of people in Congress in terms of the Russia investigation,” Schiff said.
But while he called the news divide one of Washington’s great challenges, he conceded that there isn’t much anybody can do to change it.
“This is you know, I think, among the greatest challenges, because with the First Amendment, there’s little that we can do about it,” he said.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
