Editorial: The polarization of cable news

During the years of Barack Obama's presidency, it was evident that Sean Hannity and most of his friends at Fox News would start each day with an overriding premise: Find a way to skewer the White House that night.

There was a clear agenda and it was simple: Get Obama or if that couldn't be done, get one of his allies.

If anything has become clear from last year's presidential election, it wasn't just alt-right conservatives who were affected by the coverage. Much of middle America was influenced by it too.

There's something to be said for presenting an alternative to the so-called mainstream media, which even we must acknowledge more than occasionally misses and underplays stories and or fails to investigate matters worthy of investigation.

But there's also something to dread in the cynicism the Fox News alternative embodies and spreads.

In a democratic republic, we are a better country if as a populace we are skeptical. But we are far worse if we grow cynical.

Today, Sean Hannity and his ilk have flipped the other way - starting each day with the idea of providing a defense for the president and figuring out a way to light out after his critics.

Meanwhile, on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell and that crowd now start each day with the obvious premise of finding some way to skewer the White House.

Let's be clear: There is a difference between being a watchdog and being an attack dog. There is a difference between setting out to find fault (or to exaggerate it) and setting out to find the day's news, letting the chips fall where they may in the discovery.

What we have these days in cable news is abject negativity, and it's not healthy for the nation. Is this what we want? A country greatly divided, with each divide going off to feed its preconceived viewpoints rather than trying to sort through information in a way that will enlighten and occasionally challenge those viewpoints?

Does the country benefit if we're all conditioned to believe that our leaders are either heroic if we agree with them or evil if we don't? Can we accept the notion that our leaders are, like us, admirable but flawed human beings, people with well-intended aspirations and strengths but afflicted also with natural shortcomings and imperfections?

And that this is largely true no matter whether we voted for or against them?

We've always believed a newspaper's obligation is to strive to reflect the community it serves. That means reporting on what is good as well as exposing what is bad because every community is a mixture. The same is true of our national politics. The cable news media do the nation a disservice when they promote a format of division.

We worry about the ramifications of that disservice. As viewers and patriots, our only recourse is to resist the addiction.