Paramount Skydance CEO has repeatedly cited the statistic when laying out the approach that CBS News and potentially CNN would take
During an early March appearance on CNBC, the Paramount Skydance chief executive, David Ellison, cited a statistic he has come to rely on when laying out his editorial approach for CBS News and, potentially, the cable network he has made a deal to own, CNN. The young media mogul said the networks will prioritize reaching “the 70% of Americans and really around the world that identify as center-left, as center-right”.
The idea of an unaddressed center ground is a powerful talking point. In a world of increasingly partisan politics, Ellison’s promise to address the unheard, silent majority packs a punch – and fits nicely with the approach of one of his most high-profile lieutenants, the heterodox commentator Bari Weiss.
Unfortunately, it appears that Ellison’s 70% figure is not supported by publicly available polling data on the ideological orientation of Americans.
A recent YouGov survey – conducted last fall and published in January – found that only 40% of US adult citizens identify as “center-left”, “center” or “center-right”, not 70%.
Nope, we’re built for us/them thinking.
Loads of people “don’t care about politics” but really care about other shit.
They were born into a family/community that was heavily one or the other, and they’ll stay that way no matter what.
Like, that’s the crux of it.
It’s not an accurate representation of someone’s policy positions. Which is why when we poll that, we get vastly different results.
It’s just the human brain doing what it evolved to do: commit to “us” and ignore “them”.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature, and why there’s no other modern homind close to us.
We can’t stop it from happening, because it’s fighting human nature. So we have to socialize kids when very young so that they don’t set “us” along maladaptive lines.
That’s why the racists leading “the right” are always bitching about “woke culture” in kids shows, because that is hands down the most effective plan to stop bigotry. Without it, bigotry is the human default.
Just like a dog won’t chase cats if it was around them as a puppy. We need to show kids that even if someone doesn’t look/act/sound/whatever exactly like us, they’re still “us”.
Otherwise the kid will think of groups they weren’t exposed to as “them” instinctively, and it’s a lifelong conscious effort to remember “everyone is us”.
Which is why white American boomers get racist when drunk/tired/old, they’ve had to put in effort this whole time, and can’t always do it.
They weren’t socialized as kids to be around other groups, they grew up during segregation