“For every Republican in newsrooms, there are 10 Democrats,” famed investigative journalist John Stossel recently pointed out. That this imbalance exists isn’t new — nor is it a groundbreaking revelation that it results in profound media bias. Nonetheless, the consequent propaganda is still effective; so much so that, related Professor Tim Groseclose in 2011, “media bias aids Democratic candidates by about 8 to 10 percentage points in a typical election.” But how is this sausage made?
Stossel examined this last Tuesday. Opening a news report with the obvious difference in how mainstream media treat Republican and Democrat politicians, he showed CNN’s Laura Coates admiringly telling interviewee Kamala Harris, “I’m struck, just in your presence.” Yes, it’s exactly like meeting Aristotle, Aquinas, or Confucius! (Except for the being alive part.) In contrast, Republicans get struck, as Stossel illustrated with clips of leftists being aggressive with GOP ex-presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy and Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.).
But other types of bias are more subtle. While media normally cover Iowa Caucus victory speeches, Stossel showed how CNN cut away from President Trump’s, with Jake Tapper contemptuously saying, “You hear him repeating his anti-immigrant rhetoric.” Mostly unnoticed, however, is that this is bias within bias. That is, the term “immigrant” has a connotation relating to someone who has arrived on our shores legally; in reality, Trump talks about people more properly known as illegal migrants (or aliens).
While hard to imagine, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was even worse, saying that it wouldn’t be responsible to air Trump’s victory speech live because he lies so much. Never mind that lying is not exactly unknown among politicians and that the media regularly give air time to professional prevaricators such as Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The reality is that no one was more invested in the Trump/Russia-collusion lie than Maddow, though a defender could argue that she wasn’t lying — she was just profoundly ignorant.
(Most likely is that she lied to herself, glomming onto what she desperately wanted to believe and not showing due diligence.)
Other examples of media bias Stossel gave are:
- The new head of government-funded NPR, Katherine Maher, had tweeted “Trump is a racist” and had justified BLM looting.
- The media became very upset and suddenly quite rule-of-law oriented when Governor Greg Abbott (R-Tex.) “refused” to obey federal government demands to remove his border barrier. In contrast, the media treat illegal-alien-invasion enabling “sanctuary” cities kindly, saying they merely “choose” not to “follow” federal law. You see, they don’t “refuse” — they’re just pro-choice!
- Media call politicians such as Argentina’s new libertarian president Javier Milei “far right” even when this description strains credulity.
Of course, it appears almost impossible to earn the label “far left.” Why, even avowedly socialist figures such as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — and, for that matter, Marxist Kim Jong-un of North Korea(!) — aren’t thus characterized.
So “libertarians get trashed, Republicans get interrupted and their speeches cut off, but Democrats largely get a pass even if you can’t tell what they say,” Stossel summed up (video below), as he segued into a clip of Joe Biden babbling incoherently about beer.
As good as Stossel’s segment is, commenters below his video could still provide worthwhile additions. For instance, wrote a highly-rated poster, “And let’s not forget they [media] lie by omission; they simply don’t tell you anything that doesn’t fit their narrative.”
As an example, remember that grown man who shot the 17-year-old to death, was put on trial, and then was acquitted for the act? No, I don’t mean the 2012 Trayvon Martin/ George Zimmerman affair in Florida.
I refer to the 2009 case in which 42-year-old martial artist Roderick Scott killed teen Chris Cervini in Greece, N.Y. The two cases parallel each other almost perfectly, both involving men who, it was determined, shot criminally inclined youths in self-defense. But then there’s a difference:
While Zimmerman was white (labeled a “white Hispanic” by media) and Martin black, the races were reversed in the Greece incident, with Scott black and Cervini white. This ensured that the latter case would get memory-holed by media.
But what the media choose to cover is always a factor. Do they focus on the firearm aspect to murder (yes) or the racial aspect to murder (no); on the intersex wage gap, where women earn less (yes), or the intersex workplace death gap, where men die more (no); on mythical “white supremacy” (yes) or BLM thuggery (no); on past Catholic Church sex scandals (yes) or present government-school ones (no); on “global warming” (yes) or the destruction of forest in its name (no); or on how Trump is an alleged “threat to democracy” (yes) or how Biden actually is threatening the Republic (no)? And to an extent, persistent coverage breeds public concern.
This has an insidious vicious-circle effect, too. As the aforementioned Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, pointed out in his 2011 book Left Turn, the continual left-wing media bias “makes us more liberal, which makes us less able to detect the bias, which allows the media to get away with more bias, which makes us even more liberal.”
The good news is, as Stossel mentions, that the mainstream media are dying as increasing numbers of Americans now get their information from alternative sources such as The New American and popular podcasts. And their death is welcome, too — in the same way that cancer cells’ demise is cheered by anyone who’s not suicidal.
