On January 26, 2025, MSNBC host Alex Witt corrected news correspondent Priya Sridhar on-air during a live location report from El Paso, Texas. As Sridhar quoted from a DEA press release announcing the arrest of fifty “illegal aliens”, Witt instantly jumped in to correct her, scolding “we call them undocumented immigrants,” before tossing in a token acknowledgement that the term “illegal” was, in fact, used in the DEA’s own statement.
Politically Divisive Media
This got me thinking about just how politically divisive our media has become when a correspondent cannot quote a source without being “corrected” by her colleague live on air. It is not as though Sridhar espoused hate speech in her report. Unless, of course, you concur with the faction of our population that believes stating an objective fact – that a person who avoided lawful documentation of their entry into the U.S. did so illegally – is somehow dehumanizing. I find this argument hypocritical, because many of the prominent individuals and media outlets who claim the word “illegal” is dehumanizing and cold find it acceptable to call an unborn child a “fetus,” which conservatives view as dehumanizing and cold.
| Word | Interpretation | |
| Republican/Conservative | Democratic/Liberal | |
| Illegal | Authentic | Cold/Dehumanizing/Snarl Word |
| Undocumented | Liberal PC Word | Warm/Purr Word |
| Fetus / Zygotes / Embryos | Cold/Dehumanizing/Snarl Word | Authentic |
| Unborn Child | Warm/Purr Word | Conservative PC Word |
Framing Terminology to Influence Public Opinion
Politicians and the mainstream media of all stripes are very adept at framing issues using terminology aimed at influencing public opinion. Positive or negative spin-doctoring of the same fundamental issue is designed to resonate with one constituency over another, leaving independent, or undecided voters, as a group perceived to be open to swaying. This is where the persuasive techniques of agenda setting, agenda building, and content analysis come into play. Agenda setting refers to the media’s role in swaying public opinion through coverage and word choice. Agenda building denotes the process by which others (special interest groups, activists, etc.) seek to influence public policy, while content analysis refers to the process of discerning which content and communication results in a desired outcome. While these three techniques are by no means the only practices used to manipulate the public into thinking one way or another, they are very commonly used, and frequently combined with sociology, and political and social psychology.
Unapologetically Liberal Mainstream Media
Having a mainstream media (MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc.) and a higher education system that are unapologetically liberal has served the Democratic party well in the last decade or so. Policies related to Immigration, transgender care of minors, transgender athletes, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), and crime seized center stage. The partisan liberal media and its bombastic commentators continued to drink their own Kool-Aid, believing they still possessed preordained influence to persuade the public’s perception toward the left’s political ideology. It mattered little whether the “science” supported their claims (crime, transgender interventions for minors, immigration, etc.). It was the agenda they signed on to, and by damn they would do all they could to make it happen.
The Impact of Social Media
Enter social media. As the internet grew into ubiquity, so too have social media platforms. Social media has revolutionized how news is delivered, in both manner and content. It spans the spectrum from misinformation (unintentional) and disinformation (intentional), bullying (targeted personal attacks) and trolling (generic offensive attacks), to credible news, and has done so more successfully than mainstream media for some time. The ability of social media influencers to monetize their platforms and to engage with audiences is a win-win for users. Audiences no longer desire a unilateral prepackaging of content where networks, political parties and commentators decide what audiences should think and believe. People want options, and the freedom to listen to others who think and believe as they do. Yes, this has the potential to create echo chambers that lack open discourse, but the 2024 presidential election was proof that the mainstream media was one big liberal echo chamber that a majority of the American public disagreed with.
Diminishing Influence of Traditional Media
Therefore, it is unsurprising that the use of liberal rhetoric in political discourse has not been as successful as in the past, nor as much as some desire. The growth in the use of gaslighting and virtue signaling is case in point. The problem for traditional media is, there are now an unprecedented multitude of influencers and podcasters (both famous and not) who have a seat at the table alongside high-paid network commentators. They are free to ignore directives to call illegal immigrants undocumented, and unborn children, fetuses. After all, we don’t call criminals who commit breaking and entering “undocumented entrants,” nor do we call squatters “undocumented tenants.” These offenses are illegal acts regardless of the circumstances which led to the crime, even if one is impoverished and in need of food, lodging or money, etc. The attempt to frame illegal immigrants in a more humanizing content by calling them undocumented is an attempt to reconstruct society’s view of illegality through semantic manipulation, with the end-goal of changing the public’s perception of what is fact. Whether one supports or opposes such tactics very likely depends on one’s political ideology and the topic under consideration. Ironically, a similar approach was taken by progressive district attorneys in liberal cities under the guise of correcting ethnic-based inequalities. And we all know how that turned out – just look at Cook County, Illinois, New York City, and the entire state of California,
A Century of Pseudo-Environments
The aforementioned concepts were explored a century ago in Walter Lippman’s 1922 book Public Opinion. Lippman discussed the concept of a “counterfeit reality or ‘pseudo-environment.’” In his book, Lippman attempted to dissect the complexities of “representative and democratic government.” While he appreciated that facts could be distorted, and that people as a whole are prone to stereotypes, he believed that a “specialized class” defined as “those specially trained, aided by intelligence bureaus” were the best suited to “provide appropriate information for decision makers in the executive and legislature.” However, as Michael Curtis poignantly noted, “Lippman never commented on the problem that those same specialists also have pictures in their heads.” Curtis implies that they too are subject to their own stereotypes, prejudices and biases which are interjected into the “pseudo-environment” they create and present to the public. Therefore, although television technology was scarcely in its infancy and the Internet was not even fathomable, Lippman’s assessment of the influence that print media had as a “specialized class” was profound. Even more extraordinary is how pertinent his observations are today. The ability of the global media to create “pseudo-environments” (formulating pictures in people’s heads) often without the public’s conscious awareness of what is happening, is still done today in an attempt to shift the public’s perception on a given topic.
Mainstream Media’s Credibility Issue
Consequently, a media that is so entwined with one political party, as the liberal mainstream media is with the American Democratic party (especially the far-left leaning faction of the party), makes it implausible that even the less politically engaged public will view their messaging as a non-partisan presentation of the facts. The left’s preoccupation with what they believe to be politically correct language often results in divisive discord as it is in conflict with the average person’s everyday language. To make matters worse, not only are average Janes and Joes pressured into accepting the decidedly politically correct terminology of some ivory tower liberal elites and the mainstream media, they are also shamed and branded xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, transphobic or some such label if they dare not toe the line. But as we have seen, shaming the American public into compliance doesn’t have a successful track record. Neither Democratic presidential candidate won after Republican voters were repeatedly chided with various -ism and phobia labels. Neither won after a Democratic presidential candidate (Hillary Clinton) or an acting president proxy (Joe Biden) referred to half of all Americans, respectively, as deplorables and garbage. I maintain that the use of ad hominem attacks on entire sections of the American populace rarely results in a desired outcome. More often than not, people become defensive, double down on their beliefs, and seek comfort from those with a similar point of view – none of which equates to a good formula for those purportedly seeking open discourse.
When PC is BS in Everyday Vernacular
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley performed multiple experiments to study the impact of using politically correct and incorrect language. They defined political correctness as “using language or behavior to seem sensitive to others’ feelings, especially those others who seem socially disadvantaged.” Investigators selected words targeting various groups: immigrants (illegal, undocumented), whites (white trash, hillbillies, rednecks), LGBTQ (trannys, dykes, queers), pro-choice/pro-life (anti-fetus, anti-life, anti-choice, anti-women, misogynistic fascists), and religious (Bible thumpers, Jesus freaks, religious nutjobs) to ascertain whether “perceiver political ideology moderates evaluations of political correctness.” They discovered that communicators that used politically incorrect language were viewed as colder, but more authentic. Unsurprisingly, they further noted that these views were moderated by the recipient’s political ideology. Most interestingly however, was that they reported that politically incorrect language was viewed as “less susceptible to external influence” than politically correct language, despite being less warm.
Forcing a Prefabricated Construct onto the Public
The left’s desire to humanize criminals by changing both formal (language used in media, academia and formal settings) and vernacular (everyday) language to bring out the multidimensional aspect of perpetrators, and the potential confounding variables (poverty, drug addition, past trauma, etc.) that may have led them to commit a crime, appears to be best suited for guilt-plagued leftist elites and the ivory towers they were educated in. Forcing a prefabricated construct of illegality/undocumented onto the general public appears not only to do little to influence change, but achieves the opposite effect – again, those using politically incorrect language are viewed as more authentic and “less susceptible to external influence.” This concept was supported in 2021 study, “Politics and Prejudice: Using the Term ‘Undocumented Immigrant’ over ‘Illegal Immigrant.’” The study’s authors report that despite the term “illegal” being viewed more negatively than “undocumented,” “using one term over the other had little to no effect on how our study participants viewed immigration policy and immigrants themselves.”
Unsuccessful Strategic Manipulation
Therefore, it would appear the left’s formula for strategically manipulating the language of political discourse in an attempt to change public perception has proven to be ill-advised — once again, a fact that was laid bare in the 2024 Presidential election. The irony is, of course, that post-election night, the very same leftist-elite pundits whose mission is purportedly to humanize language, turned around and slammed Trump voters as “uneducated.” Possibly a great deal more self-reflection, and less self-righteousness, is warranted by the eminent thought leaders, pundits and elites of the Left. After all, the numbers are in, and “science has spoken.”
Inside Out Odyssey 