- Welcome to Ear To the Common Ground.

Here we celebrate the power of music and food to bring Americans together.

Filmed from an historic barn on Cash lane in Music City.

Each episode of Ear to the Common Ground features one musical artist and a diverse gathering of eight of their fans.

Everyone brings a dish to the table and they talk about one of the issues of the day, face-to-face, with compassion replacing contempt, as they keep their hearts, ears, and minds attuned to the common ground.

I am Sam Lewis, and these are eight of my fans.

Luis, Michael, Claire, Justin, Lila, Juan Carlos, Brian, and Amelia.

Tonight we are focusing on media polarization.

Let's celebrate America's greatest diversity, diversity of thought, and shine a light on some common ground.

♪ All around thing and all I wanna do ♪ ♪ is talk about it ♪ - The word media is used so, so widely to cover so many things, and they're not the same.

So to your point, the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC News, CNN, any one of these, even Fox News, you know, at last the non-opinion part of it, are professional news gathering entities.

- With fact checkers.

- With fact checkers, with editors.

- And whole teams.

- Those of you are editors know that editing has a role, an important role, but they're lumped into this thing called the media with Mike's blog about the news, and you know, Mike wants to talk today about whatever, and that's called the media, but that's not the same thing.

But so we, we lump all these things together called the media.

And every day in the media you see the media talking about the media and what the media is talking about or not talking about, which I find to be such a, you know, chasing its own tail thing.

And I wish we would start to actually differentiate and maybe even professionalize more so what is truly news media from just all the other voices.

So for me for example, social media is not the media.

What I or Mike or anybody else says on, sorry to pick on you, on Twitter, is not the same thing as the news article that's in the Washington Post.

- Right.

- But right now those are all conflated and I think that is one of the many problems, but it's certainly one of them.

- And it's destructive too 'cause people, you know, you read Mike's blog and you're like well I know that's not true.

- Poor Mike.

- Not Mike.

Let's just say it's Bob's blog, like someone else's blog.

And you, you read something and you think well, objectively this is just some guy talking.

And then you read an article on the Washington Post, and you're already in this predisposed position of distrustfulness of what you're reading online.

And you don't see behind that article on the Washington Post, the huge amount of work and fact checking and editing and the teams and the weeks or months that it took to make that feature happen.

- My whole thing with the whole media is who are these fact checkers?

- You know, because the, the opinion is very subjective.

It's like, I can be a fact, a fact checker for CNN, and I can say everything that that narrative is, is pushing out.

I can say this is a fact, this is a fact.

Or I can say it's, it's disinformation or misinformation.

And I think that that's just my issue with that is the algorithms and then who is controlling the narrative on the, on the back.

- You know when the pandemic started, I completely got off social media.

I just knew that I didn't want to be involved right now because I, there was so much information.

So it was, it was taking responsibility for myself during this time to, you know, move forward and just understand like what's really going on.

Because sometimes you just have so much information.

How can you truly decipher?

- Information overload.

- And you think about.

- It's coming at us from literally every direction.

- And then think about a thousand years, 2000 years ago, like how much information were you were getting?

Like, so how much, and what is the capacity of the human mind?

If you know, a thousand years ago you may just get a letter, you know, if that, you know.

And so now it's just, oh you know this, oh excuse me.

It's new information.

So it's even like in positions and things like that.

It's like, oh, you gotta know this new information.

And so things continue to evolve, but how much, or what is the capacity of the mind?

- And now everybody's an expert.

- True.

(laughing) - I have a Facebook which I check about once a month to see what my friends and family are doing scattered all over the world.

I'm not on Twitter, I'm not on MySpace, I'm not on any of those other things because at the end of the day I think there's nothing that I have to say that's that important to put out there to the world.

And frankly there's nothing you all have to say that's that important I need to read it.

So I just, for me, it's not that important, you know?

And I take the attitude of if you're going to Facebook to get your news, well that's probably why, you know, you're believing some of the things you're believing.

That's not where you go to get your news.

That's not what it's for.

It's to see the picture of, you know, your cousin at the, you know, they were Acapulco and here they are on the beach.

That's what it's for.

That's what, you know, at least that's how I see it.

- Well I may be the exception here about the social media because I will say that I'm still on it.

- I'm on some.

Don't worry.

- I work on a lot of, I look work on a lot of local and state issues.

I do a lot of advocacy work is what I do.

And I need social, I think I do anyway, need social media to keep up with what other people that are working on similar issues are doing, or what a politician's saying about it or whatever.

And I do get my news somewhat through social media because like I said I've chosen to put Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, Al Jazeera, I've chosen my sources that go in there.

I love, I'm sorry, I use that chart, that's the media bias chart.

And I pick the ones from the middle and that's who, and then I sort of have some of the, you know, on the, to be honest on the side that I don't maybe support as much.

I try to have some of that feed coming in as well into my feed.

So I do use social media still as a filtering mechanism and as a connective mechanism.

I actually said to my husband at one point, I really wanna just get off of here, but I feel like I can't because as soon as I do, I'm gonna be disconnected from the work I do.

- No, I definitely have a similar problem as you, as far as working for a digital blog.

And so yeah, I'm on Facebook and Twitter like eight, nine hours a day because yeah, not like, not consistently the whole time but, 'cause when we, because when we write articles, that's how we disseminate it.

We're posting things every hour online and that's, you know, - It's the truth.

- That's right.

- That's where I feel like I see a lot of just the worst things of people.

Just, my editor put a great way of just like, so much of Facebook is just like yucking people's yums, of people are just like yum, I love this.

And other people are like, yuck, that stinks.

And I see it the worst and just like, fan, fan pages.

- Yucking people's yums.

- I just saw it.

I dunno if you, you know, 'cause I'm a news junkie, so going into your question before, I go to all the hard news sites.

Like every morning when I get up in the morning, I'm channel surfing all of the major networks, all the news shows.

From the network shows to the cable ones, all the news shows.

And then throughout the course of the day I'm on the internet going to the actual websites because I like to see the different perspectives on the same stories.

And also, one is that, is that, you know the different ways that they're treating the story, but then also is what stories are leading for that station for that network as opposed to the other network.

And that's such an interesting thing to see what their priorities are.

'Cause that speaks so much to exactly that.

- Do you think a lot of people do that, Jason?

- No, of course, of course not.

- Some of my friends look at me and I tell 'em about it and they're like, well, why are you doing that?

I'm like well, just to be curious.

- Yeah, exactly.

I love to go from MSNBC to Fox News to see what the difference is.

Are they, are they talking about the same thing?

If so, how are they talking about it?

Or they're talking about this, but they're talking about this.

Well that's interesting.

- And isn't it interesting how it can be such a 180 degrees.

- Polarized.

- So different.

- Polarized, everything.

- The language on the same story.

- Oh, absolutely.

- A hundred percent.

I, so see for me, I, I was raised to just, my parents immigrated here from Mexico.

We all did.

And they grew up with this narrative of like, we have to watch CNN.

That's, that's, that's, you know, I hate to get in.

That's what we're here for right?

- Get into it, get into it.

- So my parents said, you know, we, this is what we're supposed to think.

We we're supposed to think and we're supposed to side with the Democrats because they're the ones that are for us.

They're the ones that like the people that have your skin color.

I remember as a young boy they literally used to say that to me.

These are the people that, that care about you.

And so you know you grow up and you're like, oh yeah.

Like, you know I have to, you know, think this way, vote this way.

And then you start getting curious and you start seeing Fox News and you're like, oh man, I would never, you know, like forget those people.

Who watches this channel?

But as I started forming my own personality and my own opinion, you know, curiosity gets the best of you.

So I started turning onto Fox News and I'm like, wait a minute.

Doesn't sound the same.

They're talking about the same thing, but this person is blaming this person and this person is defending this person.

So then my mind started to shift there, and I'm very firm believer in the subconscious mind.

And just thinking, thinking for yourself.

And there's two different, two different narratives in everything.

Whether it's the news, whether it's world conflicts, whether it's, you know, the information that's being fed, it all has a bigger purpose.

And I think it's bigger than us because you said it, it's Facebook of the world, Twitter.

At the end of the day they're saying how do we keep our shareholders happy?

The share, our, our duty is to the shareholder.

And you'll hear a lot of these, these media companies say, our duty to our shareholders is, and then viewership.

How do we attract more and more people to interact with Twitter?

How do we, you know, Facebook for example, their job is to literally tell the shareholders that they have X amount of users active on the website every, every quarter.

And it's like well, of course they're gonna tell me what I, what I think I should, I should know.

And so anyways, all that to say that I do watch CNN.

To your point JC, I watch, I'll watch what they have to say in CNN, but then I'll go on Fox News and I'm like hmm.

I'm like, there's a disconnect here.

There's, there's two different narratives going on.

But then you say who's right and who's wrong?

- What do you guys think about, like is the media inherently trying to, to divide us, trying to polarize us?

- Which media?

- Or, well, well I mean in general.

- Mike's blog you know is.

- In general, like what troubles me, back to your point earlier you were saying it's really hard for you to find facts, to find the current events and be informed with television media.

It's just hard for you to find that on TV, sit in front of a television.

I totally agree with you.

Because I'm more of a CNN guy.

I'm a registered Democrat.

You know, my voting pattern would, would kind of fall somewhere in the center.

But I definitely don't like Fox at all.

But CNN gets on my nerves because it's, it's, it's they're going past the story.

They're going.

- And I'm a CNN watcher too.

- They're going beyond.

And it's like, that's not what I want.

- I couldn't take it anymore.

- You know, I don't want the sensationalism, the opinion.

- The opinion.

- I have.

- I mean it's the news and opinion.

- Come up with my own opinion.

- And I feel like that's why it's important once again, to refine what we're talking about when you say media and you're saying, well Fox, CNN, NBC, MSNBC.

And basically saying, it's kind of just like arguing well, who has the best hamburger?

Like McDonald's or Burger King?

When I feel like right now in a lot of ways people are pushing to more local things.

Artisan, I'm talking about food, I'm talking about media.

And looking beyond just those big shareholder companies to more localized news coverage.

Like, I mean, even local affiliates, the ones that aren't being bought up by large media corporations, but looking local, looking for small, basically small batch news.

Instead of just.

- Not hamburger news.

- Exactly, instead of just turning on the TV and just being like well these are the options.

And it takes, it takes a lot of work.

- It does, it's hard to find.

- You look at other countries where people actually have to really work hard money to find like, real news where it's being actively suppressed.

And so just kind of taking that kind of hunt for news.

- One of the things I read talked about the, the demise of local newspapers and the loss of it, which we're familiar with I'm sure.

But that what we lost then was that a local newspaper had to sell ads to everybody in town.

And so they were not, you know, going one direction or the other maybe.

Georgia has, has several more regional and local news organizations that have started up recently, one down in Savannah and another one that's says statewide one.

And I, I turn to them a lot.

I still worry about their bias, but I think that's along the lines of what you're saying is that it's just, it's well then, you know, closer to home.

- When you think about it we, we are so divided in, in the politics around the nation.

- And when you think about the feedback loop on the local newspaper, like what you were talking about compared to the interwebs, like you had to, you had to take in the article, you had to decide I have an issue with this.

I'm going to pen an editor, like a letter to the editor.

- Yeah.

- And I'm going to put it in the mail and then time's gonna pass.

And maybe they'll publish it in the next local newspaper, and then someone will take issue with what I said.

- It's just so much, it's such a different pace than the, you know the keyboard warriors just all night just being like tearing people down from the, the anonymity.

- And that's one thing too, like about some of the things on the media, it's now we want to tear down a person's character versus just you know, what is the underlying meaning that connects us all out of the story.

And so that's what kind of turns me off sometimes because it becomes oh, on this network this person's bad, this network, that person's bad.

And then it just kind of confirmation biased, whoever's watching.

- It's so unnecessarily personal.

- Do you all think that, is the media reporting the polarization, or is the media driving the polarization?

What role does the media, and again, we're using the word media when we acknowledge that the media means many things.

- Social media is driving the polarization because of the algorithm.

- 100%.

- When we're fighting with each other, when we're divided and arguing back and forth, it's almost like it's distracting from.

- You're spending more time on Facebook when you're arguing.

- But they're really pushing and you asked is it social or is it, you know, more print media or television media?

I think they're all, whether it's deliberate or not, it's all just kind of, it's the general experience that I have when I go looking for news.

It's, it's, it's Democrat or Republican.

It's right , it's left, it's blue, it's red, it's white, it's black.

It stirs something in me and, and, and, and I wanna react to it.

And I've gotta be careful like what you were saying, Justin, not to be personal with my attack.

- Well and I think it goes beyond social media too, because I've noticed and I'm like you, you know, I might be more right leaning, however, if I'm trying to really figure something out for myself and of course I go to Google.

Algorithm.

- Yes.

- Maybe I need to go to a different search engine, but you know, I've gotta go through at least four pages of what they're feeding me from what I'm searching to get to a difference of opinion.

And I hate that.

Because the whole reason why I'm trying to look something up is so that I can hear different sides of it right?

But when you punch it in it's already filling it out for you 'cause it knows already what you're gonna ask.

And that's, I find that to be super frustrating when you think you're trying to find some semblance of truth.

- How many people go beyond the first page of a Google search?

- Most people don't.

- That's it.

They just go to those first.

That's it.

Back in the day you used to like, you remember, was it Leidos?

And there was Infoseek and there was Yahoo, there was all these different ones.

You would go 20 pages looking to try to find the things you wanted to find.

- We go on, on Facebook and you made a point Brian, it's like sometimes, and I did this the last, the last election, I'm guilty.

I saw something that, you know that some of my friends would post and I didn't agree with it.

So then I saw an article and then I would re-share the article that aligned with my, with my ideas, and then I'd keep seeing the likes.

And that just kept, kept, you know, firing me up.

I kept like getting bolder and bolder and.

- Oh gosh.

- And then you have friends and family commenting on there and, and you start saying, you know, you start having your friends and family literally online start calling you names, turning against you.

And you're like, wait a minute.

I didn't think it was that serious.

I think that, that the media does get a kick out of that, honestly.

I mean it's in their best interest for us to be divided.

- There must be, there must be something they're getting out of it or wouldn't continue the way, the way it is.

I mean, for me it's just I look at the business side of it and it's like the breaking news and all this, these marketing techniques, 24/7 news today requires repeat stories and continuing to feed us the cycle.

Not everybody watches news 20, you know, all day long.

So I get it that it's gonna repeat.

But 20 years ago we didn't have all those choices.

Today it's, it's just like 24/7 our phones, the digital media, it's just to me, it's a product of, of the business.

- One of the fascinating things you can do when you're talking about especially television news, is kind of take a look through the other end of the glass and look who is advertising like on these networks or who is advertising like on these mediums.

And you can actually kind of find out a bit like that.

- There's individuals and there's entities as far as medias and businesses that want to, you know, maximize shareholder wealth, but at what cost?

And then as they unleash certain mediums and algorithms into this, to the system, what will happen to us, you know, eventually?

- Here's my question.

When do we the people realize that the power is in our hands?

When do we all come together and say you know what?

We actually control the narrative.

And if we all left Facebook or Twitter, then, but it takes 360 million people to say we're gonna do that, in one country.

And a lot of us can't live without our phones.

We can't live without the information that's being, being fed to us.

- All people of this ideology are this way, or all media are like that.

It's just about breaking that down and be, and being more specific, which in turn is just harder to do.

It's just, it's easier to cast wide nets and say these people are just bad because they don't think this way.

But then to actually sit down like right now and talk for, with people for like an hour about things that aren't always comfortable is the way to do that, instead of just retreating further into just your comfort zone.

- It's a lot easier just to make some comments or do something on Facebook about a national election.

When you start working on a local issue or you start trying to connect with getting a bill passed in your state house or whatever, that's a lot of legwork.

It's a lot of things that nobody sees and people don't want to do that.

If you start working more on the issues that you care about and what you want done, then suddenly you're working with both Republicans and Democrats and you're finding the common ground to work on.

- Well and I think we'd all be surprised to find that so many of us, whether we sit on the same party side or not, or maybe somewhere else completely, a lot of the issues like tend to align.

And there's a lot of agreement there.

where people wanna do better and people wanna do good.

And I think we've lost focus of that entirely with all of this.

- If you think about the pole, you know, we AB, democratic republic, but it's actually just one pole, if you're really thinking about it.

And so we're all here together, you know?

And so as long as we, you know can see that as far as the spectrum, you know, there's parts of a business that, that there are things that we have to know about.

And so when we have dialogue about certain things, we have to know about certain components of the business.

And so it's not a democratic or republican way, it's oh, well you talk about money, so you must be a, you must be a Republican.

You know, and it's like, what, what?

But it's many things that people start to make assumption and then try to drive you into one side of the pole when you just try to say hey look, I don't agree with this part, but I get what he's saying over here.

I can, I can go with that.

But it's just now it's like, no, you are either over here or you're over there.

- So is that, is that a media-driven definition then you think?

That people are so like, you know this is what a Republican is or, you know, if you like this that's because you're this.

- Somewhat, somewhat because people, not everybody's going for information, you know.

Not, you know, you're not gonna go to the let's say, Black's law dictionary and find out like what, what did this Westminster say about it?

But they're just, but somebody's gonna just peek or, or, or get the information from the TV or YouTube or hey, let me see what so-and-so said what a Republican is.

Oh that looks like me, you know?

So it's not as much depth that goes into the research of who am I?

- Hey, how you doing?

- How are you?

- What did you bring us?

- Ooh.

- A three layered pistachio cake.

- Oh gosh.

- That, that my lovely wife made me help her make.

- Lucky for her.

- Wow.

- This is an adaptation.

My grandmother was famous for her three layer pistachio cake.

And we have modified it a bit for modern terms and, and the times and probably a lot healthier than the way my grandmother made it.

I think it was a lot less butter.

- No lard anymore?

- Hers was like the classic like, the jello pistachio color.

- Oh.

- Which I don't know if it's even got a color, but you know, the real lime green.

- Got the picture.

- But yeah, I crushed the pecans in this and then I walked away.

- Well I wanna crush your cake.

- So how's everybody been doing?

How's it going?

- Good, thank you.

- Great, we had good discussion.

- We're all quitting Facebook.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, we're all walking away from Facebook.

- We're all just starting our news outlets so you can know what you're getting.

- We solved the problems.

- Some of my favorite interviews over the past few years are with any of the, the Silicon Valley CEOs and whatnot.

And every time they get to the question is, do your kids have a smartphone or, or on social media?

They're all like no.

- They're like never.

- Nope.

- Would never do that to them.

- Very good.

- They know what's best.

- This is delicious.

- It's so good.

- Thank you so much.

- Gina nailed it.

♪ Let me tell you about the shape I'm in ♪ ♪ I don't know if I can sink or swim ♪ ♪ See I'm the type that tends to hesitate ♪ ♪ Always need someone to deal a straight ♪ ♪ Looking high and low ♪ ♪ I wanna know what you know ♪ ♪ Somebody tell me what does any of it mean ♪ ♪ How are there so many busy bees ♪ ♪ But you can't find any honey tree ♪ ♪ If I knew there would be days like this, ♪ ♪ I never would've learned to hug and kiss ♪ ♪ Looking high and low ♪ ♪ I wanna know what you know ♪ ♪ Yeah well somebody tell me ♪ ♪ what does any of it mean?

♪ ♪ What does any of it mean yeah ♪ ♪ Oh well, somebody tell me what does any of it mean?

♪ ♪ So make a wish and cast it out ♪ ♪ There's no need to scream and shout ♪ ♪ Some things in life are worth waiting for ♪ ♪ Maybe someone should make a way to store ♪ ♪ I'm looking high and low yeah, ♪ ♪ I wanna know what you know ♪ ♪ Yeah well somebody tell me what does any of it mean?

♪ ♪ What does any of it mean yeah ♪ ♪ Oh well somebody tell me what does any of it mean?

♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪ (applause) - Thank you, thank you very much.

(applause) ♪ Because where I come from it's a little out of view ♪ ♪ There's a Sunday matinee on Virginia Avenue, ♪ ♪ Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Beam, ♪ ♪ They're talking in their front yard ♪ ♪ Will that father son auto shop ♪ ♪ ever get that car to start?

♪ (gentle music)