Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism.

Well, this is fascinating. Spiro Agnew was before my time. He has rarely cropped up in my readings of history, politics, and policy. Kind of a cipher. My one very muddied impression has been of him as a political bruiser with somewhat extreme views. I knew he had been Governor of Maryland and that he had resigned the Vice Presidency related to financial corruption. I also have to have a sneaking admiration for someone who can credibly deliver the put down of the press as "nattering nabobs of negativism."

I came across a speech he made November 13th, 1969. Time Magazine and the Manipulation and Abuse of Truth by Jeffrey Lord mention the Agnew speech which is here.

Nearly fifty years ago and it is evidence of the polarization already in place back then. But it also discusses the problems with a mainstream media oligopoly as well as the issue of media isolation and deviance from the great American middle.

This section could easily be discussing the mainstream media's revulsion of a President who goes around them and speaks to Americans directly via Twitter.

Now every American has a right to disagree with the President of the United States and to express publicly that disagreement. But the President of the United States has a right to communicate directly with the people who elected him, and the -- and the people of this country have the right to make up their own minds and form their own opinions about a Presidential address without having the President's words and thoughts characterized through the prejudices of hostile critics before they can even be digested.

Agnew acknowledges the good that has been done by a monopoly news sector.

It must be recognized that the networks have made important contributions to the national knowledge -- through news, documentaries, and specials. They have often used their power constructively and creatively to awaken the public conscience to critical problems. The networks made hunger and black lung disease national issues overnight. The TV networks have done what no other medium could have done in terms of dramatizing the horrors of war. The networks have tackled our most difficult social problems with a directness and an immediacy that's the gift of their medium. They focus the nation's attention on its environmental abuses -- on pollution in the Great Lakes and the threatened ecology of the Everglades. But it was also the networks that elevated Stokely Carmichael and George Lincoln Rockwell from obscurity to national prominence.

Nor is their power confined to the substantive. A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a Government policy. One Federal Communications Commissioner considers the powers of the networks equal to that of local, state, and Federal Governments all combined. Certainly it represents a concentration of -- of power over American public opinion unknown in history.

Now what do Americans know of the men who wield this power? Of the men who produce and direct the network news, the nation knows practically nothing. Of the commentators, most Americans know little other than that they reflect an urbane and assured presence, seemingly well-informed on every important matter. We do know that to a man these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City, the latter of which James Reston terms "the most unrepresentative community in the entire United States."

Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism. We can deduce that these men read the same newspapers. They draw their political and social views from the same sources. Worse, they talk constantly to one another, thereby providing artificial reinforcement to their shared viewpoints.

The latter is an argument I make frequently - that mainstream media participants are isolated from America, living primarily in half a dozen major cities, with degrees from prestigious universities, subject to the same postmodernist fact-free education, seeing all of America as having the same problems as exist in New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago, Boston and San Francisco - cities which are suffering the worst problems arising from the policies possible in cities with 50-75 years without political competition and a starkly left-leaning policy portfolio.

Agnew even works in Gresham's Law.

Gresham's Law seems to be operating in the network news. Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational. Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent. One minute of Eldridge Cleaver is worth 10 minutes of Roy Wilkins. The labor crisis settled at the negotiating table is nothing compared to the confrontation that results in a strike -- or better yet, violence along the picket lines. Normality has become the nemesis of the network news.

The next passages seem written for today.

Now the upshot of all this controversy is that a narrow and distorted picture of America often emerges from the televised news. A single, dramatic piece of the mosaic becomes in the minds of millions the entire picture. The -- The American who relies upon television for his news might conclude that the majority of American students are embittered radicals; that the majority of black Americans feel no regard for their country; that violence and lawlessness are the rule rather than the exception on the American campus. We know that none of these conclusions is true.

Perhaps the place to start looking for a credibility gap is not in the offices of the Government in Washington but in the studios of the networks in New York. Television may have destroyed the old stereotypes, but has it not created new ones in their places? What has this "passionate" pursuit of controversy done to the politics of progress through local compromise essential to the functioning of a democratic society?

The members of Congress or the Senate who follow their principles and philosophy quietly in a spirit of compromise are unknown to many Americans, while the loudest and most extreme dissenters on every issue are known to every man in the street. How many marches and demonstrations would we have if the marchers did not know that the ever-faithful TV cameras would be there to record their antics for the next news show?

There's a lot of knowledge, insight and wisdom here, inconsistent with my general impression. Turns out that Agnew had been a student at Johns Hopkins in chemistry before switching to the University of Baltimore Law School for a JD. He served in World War II as a lieutenant and was in the Battle of the Bulge. He received the Bronze Star and was recalled to service in the Korean War.

OK, my thumbnail sketch was true as far as it went, but it did not go very far. A lot more substance to the man than I would have guessed.

Anyway, the speech is a striking counterbalance to many of the wild claims today about polarization and unprecedented attacks on the press, etc. Things are much as they ever were and while the news media still have an oligopoly, it is one under increasing financial strain and threat from better competitors. No wonder the world is so threatening to them.