To You, Lovers of Liberty

There is a new genre of political opinion media called outrage media because it uses tactics to provoke emotional responses from “the rhetoric that defines it, with its hallmark venom, vilification of opponents, and hyperbolic reinterpretations of current events,” (Berry and Sobieraj, Chpt 1). Outrage media has risen to be extremely popular since the 1970’s through new technology, which created new platforms, like commercial television and blogs, and it also increased the speed of circulation of information. Outrage media has a “unique discursive style… [as well as] as other recognizable attributes”, such as being personality centered, engaging, and ideologically selective, (Berry and Sobieraj, Chpt. 1). Outrage media “produce[s] content aimed at smaller, more homogenous audiences”, which increases popularity and profitability. In fact, the change in political content has not been fueled by polarization, but profitability. Rather, the Outrage Industry has influenced polarization through the change in the gathering and sharing of information, the increased participation of the people through “Monitoring”, and party recruitment, in which the “more politically extreme candidates who lack years of party networking” use the Outrage Industries to gain support, (Berry and Sobeiraj, Chpt. 7). Although these factors have affected public opinion by using the reframing strategy to cause an effect on the debate of issues, “the Outrage Industry comments on issues; it doesn’t create them”, (Berry and Sobeiraj, Chpt. 7). Even though outrage media includes misinformation on political stories, it encourages people to be involved and helps to increase the popularity of politicians, meanwhile it is sustainable because of its profitability and resemblance to a business model.

In typical Hollywood fashion, the political, ABC show Scandal, “naturally” has its own outrage commercial television show, known has The Liberty Report. I mean, can a political drama survive these days without some type of outrage media? The former vice president of the Grant Administration during President Grant’s first term, Sally Langston, hosts The Liberty Report. Scandal uses The Liberty Repot has the only “other” source of news, aside from press conferences held within the White House. She addresses the people as “lovers of liberty” in which she “sees” the truth in all of Washington’s power hungry representatives and makes a promise to report an “unbiased” truth of the happenings in DC.

In the previous clip, Sally Langston is the centered personality in which she is responding to the rumors of the alleged president’s affair. She talks about how the administration is “Godless” and immoral”, hitting on conservative ideologies (other clips reveal a stronger sense of her conservative ideologies). Her terminology and even body language is engaging, revealing fervor and adding drama; furthermore, we can see how The Liberty Report is outrage media by the way it aligns with the known attributes of this genre.