The Media is Biased Against Us!
Journalists openly root for a good story.
For about as long as I’ve been paying attention to American politics—going back more than four decades now—Republicans have claimed that the mainstream media is biased against them. While the charge was always overblown, there was at least some basis for this. Journalists at elite newspapers and broadcast outlets overwhelmingly lean Democratic in their political views. At the same time, they tend to have a corporatist, status-quo bias.
Regardless, at least since the 2016 election, I’ve seen a growing frustration from Democratic-leaning folks, including many in the commentariat here, that the press is somehow biased against their party.
At first, it was a perfectly reasonable argument: the “objective” style that has been taught in journalism schools for the last century-plus can be exploited if one side plays by different rules. While I think this is overplayed, I understand why they think Trump was treated as a “normal” candidate and then President despite being anything but. On the other hand, as one who consumed those same sources and came easily to the conclusion that Trump was unfit for the office and therefore voted for my least favorite Democratic Party nominee ever, it seems rather obvious that his misdeeds were reported.
In the last few days, though, I’m seeing something else: assertions that the press is actively working to sabotage Democratic candidates and boost the fortunes of the GOP, including wackadoodle candidates like Mehmet Oz. That strikes me as simply absurd but, rather clearly, otherwise rational folks seem to believe that.
While admittedly imperfect, efforts like the AllSides Media Bias Chart (just updated in August) attempt to educated news consumers by assessing outlets on their degree of party bias:
Interestingly sites like the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and the Associated Press are listed as Lean Left. That’s probably right, especially as they have updated their editorial guidelines in recent years to more aggressively call out Republican lies. It’s hard to read coverage in those sources—which, incidentally, have long been my primary sources for content here—and read other than disdain for the GOP. Yet, it’s these very sites that are being attacked by commenters as biased against Democrats.
(While I don’t see politics-focused sites like Axios and POLITICO as partisan outlets,* their extreme horserace focus is subject to different critiques, I think, than the more traditional news outlets.)
Regardless, my strong sense is that the overwhelming body of reporters and editors at the elite outlets are more progressive than the American public writ large. They almost certainly prefer the Democratic agenda over the Republican agenda.
At the same time, they rather openly root for a good story. That absolutely contributed to the coverage of Trump in 2016: he was a walking train wreck and made for good television and story fodder. The same is almost certainly true for some of the crazier and dumber Republican figures, whether it’s Oz, Herschel Walker, or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Do I think the press is trying to help get them elected? No. They’re rather aggressively reporting on their craziness. That’s how we know about it! But they may well be enjoying the spectacle a little too much.
____________
*I’m aware that their ownership has changed of late. I have not yet detected any change in editorial style but am open to persuasion on that front.
Can’t help myself: The headline should be, “The Media Are Biased.”
@Kingdaddy: It should probably be “‘The Media’ is Biased Against Us.” These discussions always treat “the media” as though it were a single entity when it’s anything but.
So The Hill (owned by Sinclair Broadcasting), Realclearpolitics (partnered with The Federalist), ad Newsweek (owned by the Christian Fundamentalist Olivet University) are “centrist”?
This is a case where the scale runs from -1 to 10 and we’re being told that this means that 4.5 qualifies as moderate.
And the fact this argument is being presented as serious analysis pretty much demonstrates my complaint that phony “balance” is being used to whitewash extremist right wing rhetoric.
Not to be picky but Axios and POLITICO are both included on the chart. Axios is center and POLITICO lean left.
Now the limitation to this chart is that it is just national organizations that are discussed. Doesn’t include national local networks such as what Salem and Sinclair run. Or newspaper chains. Or syndicated shows. To include those would be a bigger picture but a much tougher nut to crack.
When I look at Memeorandum and see all the linkages, I wonder at the financials of all those sites. Who is funding them? Do they make money? Or are they subsidized by the large billionaire class this country has built up? How does the media in this country actually work, anyway?
And is the term Main Stream Media now a fiction?
I know. More questions.
@James Joyner: I stand with Kingdaddy on this, because I believe “media” is the plural form of “medium”, so in American English we’d use the plural form of the verb.
PS – AllSides Media is an organization founded by Republican activist Scott McDonald and has ties to numerous Republican orgs like the Mercatus Center, the Koch Foundation, etc.
So this is literally “if you think the news media is biased toward the Republicans, the Republicans say that’s a ridiculous claim”.
@Scott: I’m not sure how I missed them when I first looked! Post updated accordingly.
@Tony W: I’m aware of the grammatical conventions, although that’s not how the language has been practiced in my memory. Indeed, both Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com use “the media.” Regardless, the headline refers to the convention of lumping all the outlets together as though they were a single thing.
Pointing out a lie is a lie is “leaning left”?
@Stormy Dragon: There are lots of these charts out there and they’re all fairly similar. I used this one because it was highlighted by Poytner and is easy to read.The Ad Fontes one rates the sites similarly but is really hard to read because it includes a lot more sources.
@James Joyner:
Yes, and they all suffer from the same flaw: any analysis that starts from the premise that, say, an LGBT person asserting they’re a human being with rights and a Christian nationalist asserting LGBT people deserve to be violent repressed by the state are two equivalent viewpoints and that “moderation” lies somewhere in the middle is a garbage analysis.
The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the Christian Scientist Monitor are Centrist?
GTFO. That’s just insane.
@Stormy Dragon: @Stormy Dragon: The question is one of partisan lean and, alas, we’re highly polarized on all manner of issues right now. To one on the other side of the fence, yes, asserting as fact that a transwoman is fully a woman or that there is no legitimate dispute as to the outcome of the 2020 election is evidence of biased reporting.
Hmmm, so a cohort of people on the right strongly believes the MSM are agents of the Democratic party. And a cohort of people on the left strongly believes the MSM are trying to get Republicans elected.
In both cases, neither side provides an objective standard for what neutral coverage would look like, much less any evidence or assessment of how well any media source meets that standard. They just make assertions.
The reality is that they are simply pissed and whining that their side is getting any criticism at all. They want media outlets to be reliable mouthpieces in service of their partisan tribe. The only “fair” coverage is coverage that only talks about how bad their political enemy is.
SSDD
@EddieInCA:
The NYT opinion pages are equidistant (from Center) to the Left as OAN and Newsmax to the Right.
@EddieInCA: Their methodology strictly assesses their political news reporting, not their editorial pages.
@Andy:
Do you have any evidence of this symmetry in lack of objectivity? I’m just asking for data that would indicate that both sides are equally guilty of asserting positions without evidence or claiming truths based on faith or gut feelings.
One of the problems with the matrix shown is that it conflates real news operations with propaganda outlets.
I have real problems with the media, but perceived bias is way down on the list.
1). They are lazy. E.g., Gas prices…first hint of increases and they run right to the station with the highest prices. Yet when fossil fuel companies announce astronomic profits, as Shell did today, nary a peep. I challenge you to find me one single story about how Shell’s corporate profits and stock buybacks are affecting kitchen table issues.
2). They are concerned about access and their own self-interest. How many blockbuster revelations have we found out about in books that, had they been reported in real time, may have had real impact? Woodward is the perfect example. We find out after a book release that Trump knew exactly how bad Covid was, even as he was downplaying it’s severity to the public. Imagine had Woodward simply reported on that as soon as he knew it? Instead we sat thru countless news conferences where Trump gaslighted the American people. 1,000,000 Americans dead. How many could have been saved if the world was told Trump was lying about the seriousness of it?
3). They are little more than stenographers. They almost never dig into the truth beyond the talking points they are fed.
There are a lot of problems with the media. Their perceived bias is the least of it, and easily recognized.
@EddieInCA: For some reason, the NYT, WSJ, and NY Post have their news and opinion sections differentiated. Are we to assume for the others that the news and editorial sections of all the others are biased in the same way?
James,
There’s another type of analysis that you may be interested in that also considers editorial decisions about what to cover, which also is useful in evaluating media outlets.
Here’s one example, but there are others. Note that there are some stories that are exclusively covered by either right or left-wing outlets.
As Dave Schuler noted when I brought this up over at his blog, it’s becoming the case that each side really does have its own “facts.”
This is a big reason I read outlets considered to be both right, left, and center.
@James Joyner: Both the New York Times Opinion and WSJ Opinion have their own logo, distinct from the news version of both papers.
@Scott F.:
Perhaps they exist, but I have yet to see these claims accompanied by reasoning based on an objective standard. If you think they exist and know of some, then I would greatly appreciate you sharing them. The comments in recent OTB posts that prompted this post were assertions not accompanied by any evidence.
And it’s really the responsibility of those making assertions that a media source is biased in a specific way to advantage one side or another to prove their assertions.
@James Joyner:
Is there a definition of “fully a woman” that can’t be undermined by a bigot? What’s the evidentiary threshold where the results of the 2020 election can be held as fact and not the assertion of an opinion?
Here’s the rub – we’re trying to talk about bias without factoring in facts. The NYT, WaPo, AP and NPR accurately reporting Republican lies as lies doesn’t represent a shift to the Left by these news organizations. It simply doesn’t. It does indicate a shift away from objective fact-based reporting on the Right.
As @Stormy Dragon notes: neutral news reporting doesn’t equal accurate, factual reporting in today’s US.
@Andy: On the “different axis” sort of thing… Some months back I quit reading the New York Times and Washington Post. Where I eventually landed as an alternative was USA Today, which seems to give me as good — for my purposes at least — coverage but with a lot less stress. (Part of the reason I considered USA Today is because my subscription to my local Gannett newspaper now provides me access to the “For Subscribers” articles in all of the Gannett papers.) All three show up in the leans-left column of the graphic. My initial perception was that USA Today was actually a bit farther left than the Times or Post. What I’ve more recently concluded is that what USA Today lacks is the Times’ and Post’s NE urban corridor arrogance and the “Dems in Disarray” button both seem to feel obligated to punch so often.
@Andy:
Or they’re mad that that the media helping Bush Inc. justify the Iraq war led to still-consequential destruction and destabilization and that But Her Emails fiasco contributed to the elevation of destructive bigotry and fascism.
What “objective standard” is reflexive and reductive BoThSiDeSism that insists Democrats upset about failed Iraq and Hillary’s emails coverage have no valid poimt end are just “pissed and whining?” Where’s the evidence for that statement? Or do people think just the fact of fence sitting and bothsidesing automatically makes the things they say objective?
Or is it evidence and proof for me but not for thee?
The reality is that Democratic critics of media coverage of Iraq and of Hillary’s emails — among other right wing propaganda failures — actually do have valid, serious objection. Those using bothsidesism to lazily dismiss those critiques are just whining that Democrats will no longer buy into right wing attempts to work the refs, without pushback.
@James Joyner:
I’m sorry, is this a typo, or did Dr. Joyner just come out as an election denier?
There is no legitimate dispute as to the outcome of the 2020 election. Asserting that as fact is not evidence of biased reporting.
@Stormy Dragon:
No, I think Prof. Joyner is saying that reporting that there was no election fraud doesn’t constitute biased reporting.
There’s nothing progressive about helping a Republican president sell an ill-advised war to the public or about deeming Trump’s empty podiums more newsworthy than Hillary’s Cassandra-like warnings about rising right wing extremism.
There was nothing progressive about helping Cory Gardner win a narrow election by ridiculing Mark “Uterus” Udall for (correctly) warning of the threat Republican senators posed to abortion rights.
There’s nothing progressive about potentially depressing Democratic turnout by focusing horserace coverage on Republican gains while barely mentioning the struggles of Republican senators Chuck Grassley and Ted Budd against their Democratic challengers, or that of Republican Oklahoma governor Ted Budd.
The overwhelming body of editors and decision-makers at elite outlets are wealthy white people and wealthy white men, demographics that are more conservative than the overall electore. I see no reason why their supposed progressivism should be taken for granted.
I think one of the hardest things for me to understand is what the environment of someone who isn’t me, or like me, is like.
I mean, there are literally millions of voters who are doing things that don’t make any sense to me. They seem to value low gas prices more than democracy, for instance. This is deeply frustrating. This is difficult to understand.
I can see the impulse to blame media reporting for it, but I don’t endorse that impulse. I think someone needs to make a better effort to actually understand those voters and figure out how to motivate them.
I doubt that “media” in the sense of the OP has much to do with it. I think that social media has become the new vector for whispering campaigns and rumors that are just as outrageous as anything Alex Jones has ever said. Some of it is just for profit, others are for maintaining privilege (which results in profit, just not directly).
I expect that we will as a culture develop some antibodies for this stuff, but wow, it’s never going away. We gotta figure this out.
That chart is nuts. If lean left equals New York Times and lean right equals NY Post, you are talking about an alternate media reality where people need to believe crazy stuff in order to maintain the status quo in their heads.
I actually think that the media has been fairly normal regarding this election. It’s just very hard to do it if you have an audience which includes people who think that the Post (or Deseret News) is the equivalent of the NY Times, and it’s also hard because Democrats believe in this overall power of the media to focus attention on ‘real’ issues. The problem is that if you have an endless daily cycle 24/7 of stuff there is no real. That’s why vibes about crime are more potent than the actual crime of trying to overthrow the election.
@Andy:
Why is there no responsibility for the person making the “pox on both their houses” assertion to prove that both sides have their own facts? Do you have evidence of this?
If I provide access to ample research indicating election fraud doesn’t exist at a scale that could alter results (or point to post-election audits in AZ and WI that were highly incentivized to find any evidence at all of election result inaccuracy, yet failed to do so), while someone else says the election had to be rigged because Trump’s rallies were so much bigger than Biden’s and besides the Democrats always cheat, do both sides have their own facts? Or does one side facts, while the other side has “facts.”
I read multiple news sources as well. I also seek a holistic unbiased view. What I’ve noticed is that what were once center-right platforms (like OTB or The Bulwark) would now be considered center left by the taxonomy above. But, I see no evidence that these blogs’ primary authors have changed their political ideologies in any meaningful way. They simply remained tethered to their long held positions while the Right has become untethered. To call that a shift in bias versus a shift in basis misses what is actually going on, IMHO.
If you sincerely want to understand work being done around objective standards in media, I would recommend you check out fair.org. There’s a nice introduction to their work here.
Since some of us love appeals to credentials here and some of love to gaslight, pretending that which is happening right in front of our eyes isn’t happening:
A quantitative study from from Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy: “Clinton’s controversies got more attention than Trump’s (19 percent versus 15 percent) and were more focused.”
A study from the Columbia Journalism Review: “In just six days, the New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all the policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.”
From Gallup: “Americans’ reports of what they have read, seen or heard about Hillary Clinton over the past two months are dominated by references to her handling of emails while she was secretary of state…By contrast, Americans’ reports of what they have read, seen or heard about Donald Trump over this same period have been more varied and related to his campaign activities and statements.”
Is counting and coding news stories objective enough, or is the data just whining?
@Andy:
I’ve provided numerous examples of right wing groups buying up formerly left or center news organizations and then shifting their editorial policy to propagate right wing propaganda under their aegis of the trust that organization had previously built up. The worst is example is Newsweek which is basically a cult trading on the reputation of a magazine that hasn’t actually existed for close to 20 years now and people STILL treat it like a legit news source.
@JustAGirl:
From the fact that Trump is a traitor who colluded with Putin’s Russia to undermine America and its allies and is still doing so.
JJ: “Regardless, my strong sense is that the overwhelming body of reporters and editors at the elite outlets are more progressive than the American public writ large. They almost certainly prefer the Democratic agenda over the Republican agenda.”
Oh, my God. This again? I thought this hoary cliche had finally been put to bed once it was pointed out for the ten thousandth time that it matters much less that the reporters and editors are more progressive when the outlets’ owners are all far more Republica.
n. Republican.
Also – this matrix completely ignores the recent violent swerve to the right by both CNN and the NY Times.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
I post these NOT to argue the point, but merely because I like challenges.
Guardian.
Bloomberg.
NYT.
Caveat: These may not address the “kitchen table issues” you alluded to but didn’t define.
Definition of media (Entry 1 of 3)
1 a) singular or plural in construction : MASS MEDIA
b) medias plural : members of the mass media
Mirriam-Webster
@Tony W: @James Joyner: In my grammar and linguistics classes, I always made the argument that “the media” are a collective in the manner of “the army” and thus take the singular verb. This argument was countered by the assertion that unlike the army, the media do not act as a single unit, and therefore, require a plural verb. (A valid argument, I will add, though I didn’t during discussions. 😉 )
It seems as though practice is inevitably leading us to a world wherein most people talking about media are talking either about “their media” or “our media” with each group being exclusive and despite the best efforts of grammarians like my former professor and my ex-wife my side will win out in the great verb debate. It’s likely to take long enough that I won’t be here to see it–perhaps even Dr. Joyner won’t be, but his children and stepchildren will.
Several people have referred to an objective standard. I dont think we can have one anymore. Maybe on individual facts but not overall.
I will say my perception is that the right is more guilty in this area. I am willing to use what were commonly accepted data sites up until recently like BLS or FRED. I see the right citing numbers from these kinds of sites when it helps them and then denouncing them as arms of the Dem party (deep state dont you know) when they disagree with the numbers.
Steve
@Mimai:
Well, yeah, and that’s the point.
Story after story is being written about gas prices and how Biden is being hurt by kitchen table issues like gas pries and inflation. The implication being that Biden has had anything to do with it.
The media is too friggin’ lazy to report on what is actually happening; that oil companies are making record profits and THAT is a lot of what is driving the so-called kitchen table issues.
I’m sorry, but that is just a bizarre, borderline useless, chart. I 100% agree that the media is biased in favor of conflict, chaos, horse races, and both-siderism. But as a left/right media balance, that chart is skewed to a ludicrous decree. Nor do I think all such charts are “fairly similar.” The Ad Fontes chart (since it was mentioned) is both superior and has some significant differences. Most importantly that chart rates accuracy as well as bias, which is kind of important (and digs into the “reporting a fact one side doesn’t like doesn’t mean a site is biased” complaints in these comments.
Finding out who founded the organization providing this chart (thanks Stormy) explains why it’s such garbage.
I don’t care if it is harder to read, if you want the main part of your article to be the focus, change out the chart above.
@JustAGirl:
From Trump’s lawyer getting 3 years for a crime that Trump was a co-conspirator in.
From the Mueller Report.
From the Senate Bi-partisan Report on Russian Interference.
From the White House self-released “transcript” of Trump’s call trying to bribe Zelensky into fabricating dirt on Biden.
None of this information is media-dependent.
And then there is Trump’s months-long conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, effectively overthrowing the Government and installing himself as King. My guess is that the media you follow hasn’t told you about any of that.
@Jay L Gischer: “I mean, there are literally millions of voters who are doing things that don’t make any sense to me. They seem to value low gas prices more than democracy, for instance. This is deeply frustrating. This is difficult to understand.”
I don’t see this a particularly mystifying. There is some number X% of the population for whom mere survival in the physical sense is demanding enough that it crowds out concerns for philosophical (as in is democratic or non-democratic government better) ones. There is also some number Y people who see themselves as not being dependent on the qualities of the government in which the live–they will raise crops, work in factories, teach, crunch numbers/whatever, and on the other side, buy food, pay rent, try to keep their children safe and healthy/whatever no matter what regime is in power. I assume those groups intersect on Venn diagrams quite closely.
Add to that the matter that in a society where the difference is choosing between Democrats and Republicans on the question of which group will do better at sustaining current situations, prosperity, ability to keep on living/whatever, Groups X and Y expand significantly. Even with polarization being what it is, most citizens are not deciding between choosing George Washington and Pol Pot when they go to the polls in a week. Most of us are not even deciding between Warnock and Walker or Fetterman and Oz (and thank goodness for that). Most of the people we are electing will not have a popcorn fart’s worth of impact once they get there–especially ones named Walker and Oz as they’re not running to serve/lead in the first place; they’re running to provide the majority their party needs.
Yes, which party wins does have an impact, but even that is relatively small because each party now works at thwarting the other at every step and Republiqans deliberately work at not managing anything while they are in power other than promoting their current agenda of the well-regarded conservative principle of legislation through the court system. Beyond these issues is that ~100% of voters believe that the choices they make ARE THE CHOICES THAT BEST SECURE DEMOCRACY. (Pardon my shouting. But the caps lock key was closer and easier than typing in HTML codes.)
And as far as your specific example goes, gas prices are probably more important to a lot of people at the lower end of the economic continuum than they are for you and me. There are still people who are deciding what they will buy at the grocery store (perhaps both items and quantities) depending on whether a tank of gas costs $30 or $50. We just don’t happen to be those people (at least I don’t, I shouldn’t speak for you). I dare say some of them would be willing to trade democracy for a $10 tank of gas. Or not having to live in a tent pitched in the greensward of a freeway.
Watched the Peyton and Eli version of Monday Night Football this week, they had Obama (of all people!) on as a guest. He made a very cogent remark, paraphrased from memory:
“Athletes have to be careful. The sports press is just like our political press, they are financially driven to seek click hits so it’s their job to generate controversy whenever possible.”
@Jay L Gischer:
It’s difficult to worry about abstracts when you’re wondering how to feed your children.
“Washington” is way over there. The price on the pump is staring you in the face every day.
The choice of what is covered also helps one party more than another. Look at shootings in NYC. Essentially flat over the last 2 years. Yet mentions of shootings went from 100/month to 800/month. That’s clearly adding to the crime narrative the right likes. (H/T LGM)
Steve
@Mu Yixiao:
Sure – but so much of that is media driven hype…poverty levels are at near historic lows.
Gas…$3.50 here in CT is high but not devastating.
Inflation and gas prices ebb and flow. Democracy, once it is gone, will be gone for good.
BTW – check out inflation and gas prices in fascist nations.
Not getting that into the minds of Americans is another media failure.
I give up, where’s the center? Is there some historical inertia in defining the center or is it where the median, or perhaps the mean voter is today, or the mode voter, updated daily? The left has moved slightly left, the right has gone of the rails to the right. If the left is at -1 on some scale and the right at +1 today and next year they’re at -1.5 and +10.5 is the center now at the old 0 or the old +5. (Not a hypothetical.) Or is it where the median pol, or the median publication is?
As others have questioned, the Allsides chart shows ABC, AP, the Atlantic, etc. as lean left. The linked Poynter article also shows an Ad Fontes chart which shows those same sources as center. Which is correct?
Skimming the Poynter article both Allsides and Ad Fontes rely on reviewers rating articles. Allsides apparently uses members of the public who rate themselves L-R. Ad Fontes recruits people with some “professional” experience, not necessarily journalism, trains them, uses a questionnaire to rate them L-R, and uses what looks like a tighter methodology. And they rate most of the above as center.
One thing we know for sure is that the general public have no idea what lib/con, L/R mean and at least on a surface gloss Allsides methodology appears to de facto define center as where these self-rated reviewers think it is.
Both sources rate articles as they appear. Much of FOX’ bias is not in the writing of the stories, but in the selection of stories. Look at their website tomorrow morning and ask, “Are theses stories at the top because they’re important news or because they offer a chance to drive fear and resentment?” FOX doesn’t often do obvious lies, they lie more by omission than commission. How do raters rate the bias of information not present? And rate for stories not present?
And remember argumentum ad temperantiam is a named fallacy.
@Stormy Dragon: @CSK: I don’t know what James was trying to say. I do know two things. One, for a MAGAt calling the 202 election legit is evidence of bias. Two. The MAGAt is wrong.
@Jay L Gischer & @Mu Yixiao:
I can understand why someone would choose significant relief from inflation over something abstract like democracy. Stability/Security versus Freedom/Agency has been a political trade-off since tribal chieftains offered protection from predators and other tribes in exchange for fealty and tributes.
What I can’t understand is someone choosing to give up democracy in exchange for empty promises from a political faction that is offering no plausible solutions for the cost of gas or milk.
@DK:
Well, you prove my point, your objection is about outcomes.
@Jay L Gischer:
Well said.
@Scott F.:
I’m not making a “pox on both houses” argument. The thesis is rather simple – if you want to claim that X media outlet is biased in Y way, then show your work. What is the standard? How is the media outlet not meeting that standard?
At the most basic and simple level, if we must look at right-left bias, then we have to define the center. Has anyone here done that? Center according to what standard? There are several possibilities:
– Center as an average or median of media outlets/journalists
– Center as the average or median of the American public
– Center as the average or median of the American elite who follows politics
– Center in the “both sides” way where partisans are given equal time
Instead, we get a bunch of people giving opinions and asserting that X outlet can’t possibly be left or whatever because – reasons. Or because of some cherry-picked reporting mistakes that happened two decades ago. Is it surprising we see a lot of far left people claim that the NYT is right-wing? Seems maybe they are centering themselves. Without a common and agreed definition of what a center or neutral reporting is, this entire debate is pretty useless.
I honestly believe that much of the so-called major ‘Mainstream Media’ outlets and shows – NYT, WaPO, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR – is cowed by the constant and incessant right wing attacks and allegations that the MSM is biased. So much so that they engage in very questionable ‘both sides do it’ reporting and questioning in interview formats.
The mainstream right wing media does not feel any such pressure to ‘balance things out’ in their reporting. It’s long past time for the traditional MSM to stop their de-facto apologizing for their reporting and op-ed pieces.
@Andy:
First is the recognition that one some issues where there is no center. If the Democrats are arguing 2+2=4 and the Republicans are arguing that 2+2=5, arguing that 2+2=4.5 is not the center, it’s siding with the Republicans.
Any outlet that repeats right wing delusions and presents them as a reasonable position is right wing outlet engaged in propaganda. It doesn’t matter the degree to which they do so.
@Mu Yixiao:
Abstracts lol
‘Should my daughter have body autonomy or should she be forced to carry a rapists’ baby to term? Hmm, I don’t know, but I do know gas prices rise and fall, so what can you do?’
‘I’m worried about crime in a city and state I don’t live in, so I guess I have no choice but to support the overthrow of democracy.’
‘I’m paying more for milk right now, I don’t have time to protect my kids from rampant school shootings and destruction of the planet!’
h/t Bree Newsom
@Andy:
If you want to claim critique of media coverage is just pissed off whining, then show your work. Where is the objective evidence for this claim?
Strawman arguments are fun, but those making paens to objective evidence should probably make a rudimentary attempt to portray alternative positions with a minimum level of honesty.
The so-called liberal elite media’s Emailghazigatepalooza debacle was in 2016. Their ridicule of Sen. Mark Udall’s abortion warning was in 2014. Their attempt to goad Democrats into jettisoning Nancy Pelosi by portraying her as an electoral liability was in 2018. Their punditry that failed to foresee Democratic victory in the Georgia senate runoff was Dec 2020-Jan 2021. I’m no mathematician, but I can read dates. None of this occurred “two decades ago.”
Mainstream media watchers are are currently bombarded horsersce coverage predicting doom for Democrats based on Republican polling gains in various contests — which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, breeding hopelessness and depressing Democratic turnout. The media is choosing to put decidedly less weight on Republican struggles and Democratic polling gains in certain North Carolina, Iowa, Oklahoma races and elsewhere. This narrative choice is happening right now, not two decades ago.
It might be difficult for those who put a premium on reflexive bothsidesim, but one should not criticize “cherry-picking” while literally cherry-picking to cling to a dismissive, intellectually lazy “they’re just whining” strawman rather than engage honestly with the points actually being made.
@Scott F.: I even get that conundrum. There actually are people who are too dull witted to be trusted to make decisions about the direction of the country. Sadly, Americans have always used that truth as a weapon rather than a tool, and the net effect of what we used it for has brought us to where we are.
@Andy:
Says the person just giving their opinion without evidence. You’re not even considering information that doesn’t fit your narrative and you refuse to back up your assertions with even cursory examples. C’mon man, do you not see this?
BTW, I’ve been consistent here that considerations of right-left bias in news reporting isn’t something we “must look at” if we aren’t going to include assessments for accuracy. I note that none of your bulleted options even hints whether it matters if the reporting is based on facts & evidence. Why should I care where the center is on a spectrum of opinions if objective fact is of no concern?
@al Ameda: “The mainstream right wing media does not feel any such pressure to ‘balance things out’ in their reporting.”
Heh. I remember one of Rush Limbaugh’s signature lines:
“I don’t need to be giving people equal time; I AM equal time.“
It is ludicrous to call RealClearPolitics “centrist”:
@Scott F.:
My point is that whether a media outlet is biased or not depends entirely upon the standard by which you measure that bias.
If you’ve been keeping track here, I’m not the one making confident assertions about where specific media outlets are on some arbitrary left-right axis or on the basis of accuracy. And I’m not cherry-picking specific stories, out of the millions of stories written, to try to prove my point. Indeed, I’ve been saying that media bias is entirely subjective and depends on your standards and how you frame the problem which – I know this will come as a shock – depends on your political ideology.
Is it, therefore, really any surprise that people on the far left think the NYT is right-wing and people on the far right think it’s left-wing, as I pointed out in my first comment? Where you stand is where you sit unless you define your terms, which no one is doing.
And I’m not excepting myself here. I look at media outlets through my own biased lens. I think the difference is that I can recognize that my opinion is just my opinion and not some greater objective truth. I’m not claiming objectivity and trying to shove my viewpoint down anyone’s throat.
And here you provide a great example of subjectivity:
What is a “right wing delusion” and who gets to define that – do you get to define that, or do I get to define that? Or does someone else get to define that? Or is there a dictionary somewhere that has a definition we all agree on?
“Right wing delusion” could mean everything or nothing. It’s a meaningless term to everyone except you and perhaps your ideological brethren. If you want to try to make a definition by which a neutral observer could take a piece of reporting, evaluate it against your definition, and definitively conclude one way or another, then be my guest. But I think the whole thing is folly and I seriously doubt you can do that. “Right wing delusions,” like so many of the other characterizations in this thread, will be an amorphous cloud that descends according to Justice Potter’s standard: “I know it when I see it.”
@Andy: “What is a “right wing delusion” and who gets to define that ”
How about: Massive voting fraud stole the election from Trump and gave it to Biden?
Or: Covid vaccines killed far more people than they saved?
Who is saying these are delusions? The real world. Facts.
One the one hand you have these beliefs, on the other hand you have objective proof. And before we have to both-sides the notion of “truth,” remember that multiple well-funded Republican outfits have attempted to prove that voting fraud was real and instead proved that there was no measurable voting fraud.
Your entire stand only makes sense if you throw up your hands and declare that there is no actual truth anywhere in the world, and that everything is opinions, and thus bias is what matters. But if I say the world is round and you say it’s flat and the NY Times takes my side, that doesn’t mean it’s biased in favor of my opinion.
@wr:
I agree those examples can reasonably be called delusions and that the evidence overwhelming shows that those assertions aren’t true. And fact and evidence-based analysis is exactly what I advocate for, and it’s exactly what’s missing when people claim the NYT is a right-wing-rag or arm of the Democratic party. It’s always easy to cherry-pick examples of supposed biased coverage one way or another, it’s quite a bit harder to measure the outlet as whole against a standard that can be verified. Simply asserting that the NYT is this or that isn’t even trying.
Far from it. But I think that is clearly the case with many of the assertions in this thread that express extreme confidence in a judgment that some outlet is biased without showing their work. You have to have some standard before you declare a conclusion, you don’t start with the conclusion and then retcon the evidence to support your position.