Award-winning journalist talks with UNCW students about political polarization

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Dan Boylan is an award-winning journalist who travels the country encouraging groups to sort through divisive rhetoric in the media and seek understanding with those with an opposing view.

He was invited to guest lecture Tuesday morning to students enrolled in the Communication Studies Department at UNCW and appeared earlier that morning on WWAY’s Good Morning Carolina.

Boylan’s background includes public policy and journalism. He has served as a communications consultant to the Department of Defense and White House on the 9/11 wars, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I was crazy enough to try to be a journalist when I was young and I covered state politics and went overseas for a while and worked with the U.S. government actually doing counter-terrorism within media,” Boylan said. “I came back to the U.S. and got back involved in local politics and now I am on Capitol Hill covering the House and Senate.”

His lecture is entitled “Chaos, What Chaos?” and focuses on the growing polarization caused by social media, traditional media and politics.

“Moderate voices in the middle have a hard time being heard,” Boylan said. “A lot of the debate and discourse is run by the sides — the extreme Republican and Democratic voices — and the center doesn’t seem to be heard as much as people want to be heard.”

While rants and divisive comments made by politicians and elected leaders tend to drive people away, Boylan says its even more important for them to be engaged in the political process.

“The public square here in the United States which is this electronic media space where people talk, there’s a lot of language that’s used these days that’s always really trying to get people on the edge,” Boylan said. “Not everything is a crisis in this country.”

He says the media plays a critical role in deciphering fact from fiction.

“TV and radio grew up regulated because we were fearing potentially Nazism or Communism getting into the media,” Boylan said. “The internet came about at the end of the Cold War and its been totally unregulated and I think that’s contributed to a pretty chaotic space in our media.”

He goes on to say there used to be standards about obscenity and sex which self regulated the language in the public square where people debated things.

“These days, you go on the internet and you have a porn channel next to the New York Times and it makes news a little confusing,” Boylan said.

Whether its aspiring journalists at UNCW or other groups who hear him speak, Boylan hopes people walk away with a greater understanding about the importance of engaging in thoughtful dialogue with others who have opposing points of view.

“If you’re a Democrat or a Republican, why don’t you get together, have a beer together or coffee together and have a laugh, exchange ideas, debate and argue, and make up in the end,” he said.