In her excellent 2021 book High Conflict, Amanda Ripley coined (or at least popularized) the expression “conflict entrepreneur.” Conflict entrepreneurs, according to Ripley, are “people who exploit high conflict for their own ends.”
Though Ripley’s book is not primarily about journalism, she notes that journalism has its fair share of conflict entrepreneurs. She says you can identify a conflict entrepreneur – in journalism and elsewhere – by certain behaviors, beliefs, and assumptions. One of them she calls “the power of the binary.” Conflict entrepreneurs tend to think of the world in binary terms. This or that. Us or them. Republicans or Democrats. My way or the highway. You are either for me or against me.
It is not hard to find conflict entrepreneurs in the media. Ripley spends some time explicating the interesting story of radio and TV celebrity Glenn Beck. She said he was a “quintessential conflict entrepreneur.” But she writes, “Beck started acting strangely, beginning in about 2014. In interviews, he began voicing regret, revealing an ambiguity and nuance that he’d rarely shown before.” Beck made several startling confessions on national television. He said, “I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart.” In 2016, he called then candidate Donald Trump “dangerously unhinged.” He went to the U.S. border with Mexico and handed out $2 million in toys and food to immigrants, “enraging many of his longtime followers.”
Beck’s media empire came close to collapsing because of his criticism of Trump. Ripley notes that he had to “lay off about 20 percent of his employees at Mercury Radio Arts and The Blaze.” Beck learned his lesson. In 2018, Ripley notes, “he donned a Make America Great Again hat on TV. He’d changed his mind and would vote for Trump in 2020…. But it was too late for the new Beck to go back to being the old Beck. In November 2019, Beck’s cable TV channel went off the air. His radio show continued on, and so did he, stuck in a kind of limbo.”
Love Beck or hate him, his story is instructive because it makes plain how difficult it is in the current media environment to have a nuanced position on the issues of the day. When Beck started doubting his own rhetoric, his audience banished him to economic purgatory, forcing him to retreat, tail between his legs, back to his original position.
The current media ecosystem – especially since 2007, with social media added to the mix – forces us into binary positions. Jennifer Brandel, writing for the Kettering Foundation, notes that:
media itself can act as a conflict entrepreneur. The business models of many commercial newsrooms and the attention economy depend on sharing information that puts people into highly charged emotional states: anger, shock, disgust, fear, righteousness, or contempt. In addition, the expansion of news from in-house platforms (e.g., their own websites, broadcast signals, printed materials) to proprietary social media platforms like Meta (Facebook), Twitter, Instagram, Snap, TikTok, etc., further encourages the production and sharing of content that drives emotion — and often division.
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I am arrested by Brandel’s use of the term “attention economy.” It succinctly captures the raison d’etre of many media outlets today. It is not to provide information, but to capture your attention – and once captured, to hold it hostage.
These matters are not mere intellectual exercises for us at MinistryWatch. Every story we cover forces us to ask and answer hard questions about the kind of organization we want to be, especially in the context of other “watchdog” and “discernment” outlets that are obviously conflict entrepreneurs.
But these issues should be important to any citizen, and especially any Christian, engaged in either news production or news consumption. So, what are some principles we can follow – as journalists and readers/listeners/viewers – to feed responsible journalism and starve conflict entrepreneurs?
Complicate the narrative. Conflict entrepreneurs present only two sides to a story or issue, and it is clear which side is the “right” side and which side is the “wrong” side. Most stories are rarely so black and white. And even when they are, journalists should engage in reporting that goes against their biases to understand deeply the issues involved. Journalists seek the counter argument. Conflict entrepreneurs either hide the counter argument, or they demonize it. (To read more on this topic, see Ripley’s 2018 essay, aimed specifically at journalists.)
Look for sensational facts, understated prose. One of my mentors, Marvin Olasky, relentlessly stresses, “sensational facts, understated prose.” What he means by that – at least in part – is that what distinguishes journalists from conflict entrepreneurs is boots-on-the-ground (or ear-to-the-phone) reporting. Real journalism is dense with hard-won facts, and avoids opinion, predictions, punditry, and purple prose.
Beware of extreme comparisons. When I was at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, we held regular editorial meetings to plan the daily “Breakpoint” commentaries. These were fun and interesting meetings to which the writers would bring (and sometimes defend) their ideas. A running joke in these meetings was, “The first person to use Hitler as an example automatically loses the argument.” It was a joke, but it was also a sound principle to follow. Amanda Ripley asserts that the use of such extreme comparisons is almost always the sign of a conflict entrepreneur. Dana Milbank’s book Tears of a Clown, about the aforementioned Glenn Beck, notes that “in his first 14 months on Fox News, Beck and his guests alluded to Hitler 115 times, Nazis 134 times, fascism 172 times, the Holocaust 58 times, and Joseph Goebbels 8 times.”
Edna Friedberg at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum wrote, “Careless Holocaust analogies…demonize, demean, and intimidate their targets. But there is a cost for all of us because they distract from the real issues challenging our society. They shut down productive, thoughtful discourse.”
Always ask: “What’s missing here?” When you read a story, ask yourself if there is another point of view. If so, what is it? And why did this story leave it out? What is the question no one is asking? Sometimes, a second (or third, or fourth) point of view is left out of a story because of the demand for speed that the always-on, 24/7/365 media demand. Sometimes a point of view is left out because the content producer does not want you to know or consider it. Both are bad reasons. Both are the default behaviors of conflict entrepreneurs. Do not reward such outlets with your time, attention, or money.
Avoid confirmation bias by exercising humility. Ripley defines confirmation bias as “the human tendency to interpret new information as confirmation of one’s preexisting beliefs.” Both journalists and readers should approach a news story with the hope of learning something new. If our beliefs are true, new information won’t topple them. If they are not true, they should be challenged and modified. Learning something new is impossible without humility, without acknowledging that you do not know it all. This biblical virtue is one both journalists and readers should cultivate.
Finally, never forget you are the product. In the attention economy of the conflict entrepreneur, the product may appear to be a news story or podcast, but it is not. Neither is it information, and it is certainly not wisdom. No, the product is you (and me). The news story is the bait they use to capture us. Then, our eyeballs and our time and our attention are sold to others who will profit from our captivity.
Guard your mind, your eyes, and your heart carefully. Do not give it away to just anyone.