Monday, January 6th, 2020
Stephan: Criminal Trump and the Republican Party supported by the rightwing propaganda media -- FOX, Breitbart, Infowars, Limbaugh, Daily Caller, Life Explained, etc. -- take it as an article of faith that mainstream media is strongly biased against christofascists or, as they put it, strongly biased in favor of liberals. Putting aside for the moment that being against christofascism in a democratic country sounds like a good idea, is this charge true?
Well, now we have an answer and, unsurprisingly, like everything else in the Republican world the claim is a lie, carefully nurtured and repeated endlessly by the christofascists. They have been very effective, Americans no longer trust real journalists.
I have a number of complaints about the mainstream media, most notably that they only poorly cover non-American stories, and television news and commentary programs only have two main blocks of coverage, and a few quick passes over a couple of additional stories. I have to watch BBC, Chinese media, and read a wide selection of English language non-U.S. publications to find out what is going on in the world because mainstream media doesn't cover it.
But that is a very different issue than the rightwing charge about bias. Here are the facts.
Complaints about press bias are as old as the press itself, but in recent decades, conservatives have pushed one complaint above all other: The media is biased against them because it is overwhelmingly staffed by liberal journalists. A new study, forthcoming in Science Advances, provides the strongest evidence ever that they’re half-right — but only the least important half: Yes, reporters overall are significantly more liberal than the general population. In fact, almost one in six are more liberal than Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, based on who they follow on Twitter. But no, that doesn’t matter — even for the most liberal cohort of them. The title of the study says it all: “There is No Liberal Media Bias in the News Political Journalists Choose to Cover.”
Even though “journalists are dominantly liberal and often fall far to the left of Americans,” the paper itself was emphatically clear in its conclusion:
In short, despite being dominantly liberals/Democrats, journalists do not seem to be exhibiting liberal media bias (or conservative media bias) in what they choose to cover. This null is vitally important — showing […]
Hi, Stephan-
You say, “But that is a very different issue than the right wing charge about bias.” I would have to disagree.
From my perspective, the liberal media, AKA not Fox do lie occasionally when a false narrative forwards the interests of our government (note that I said “our government”, not “the people of the USA”). But most of the damage done by the MSM is through lies of omission, not ones of commission. Your dependence on sources outside the US for news in fact confirms this aspect of the fakery. And all major news sources in the US are complicit in this type of lying. It is not limited to right or left wing.
best regards,
Bob Hiller