In the wake of the horrific and historic assassination of the brilliant young conservative Charlie Kirk, there has understandably been increased focus on the rhetoric that preceded and followed the event. The overwhelming majority of Americans (86%) express concern over political violence, with 78% believing it has escalated in recent years, and 57% saying it is a major problem — the highest response to that question in the last two years. 

When it comes to assessing blame, Americans are unsurprisingly split along partisan lines on culpability, with the plurality of respondents believing the Left and Right bear equal responsibility. However, they find agreement in blaming politicians on both sides as being the key instigators.

Republicans point to examples of Hillary Clinton calling Trump supporters “deplorables;” Biden telling us that it’s time to “put a bulls-eye on Trump;” Maxine Waters telling supporters to “create a crowd and … push back” and during the 2021 unrest in Minneapolis “to get more confrontational;” Schumer telling Supreme Court Justices “… you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you;” Dan Goldman telling an MSNBC interviewer that Trump “has to be eliminated;” Vice President Harris telling everyone that Trump and MAGA supporters were “a threat to democracy;” and of course, the countless references to Trump and MAGA supporters being Hitler, Nazis, fascists, and Gestapo.

Democrats counter with references to Steve Bannon referring to the political opposition as “criminals, vermin,” and “enemies of the republic;” Trump telling supporters to “fight like hell” and claiming he called white supremacists “very fine people;” Marjorie Taylor Greene suggesting a “peaceful national divorce” between red and blue states; Trump calling Democrats “scum, garbage” and “enemies of the people;” and Musk posting that “The Left is the party of murder.”

It is much more emotionally engaging to discuss the implications and injustices of rhetorical content, but regardless of which side has been more vitriolic, there is a far larger, more influential factor that supersedes all of it: Who controls the dominant media platforms — and specifically, the digital platforms. And that dominance overwhelmingly belongs to the Left. The result is that the Left’s messages and hyperbole are broadcast to dramatically more people, dramatically more frequently, and on dramatically more channels. Further, competing or contradictory messaging is far more likely to be absent or censored on the Left’s channels, so their audience is fed a much more homogenous diet of narratives.

Consider three important media domains: 

• The Legacy Media, with centralized and professionally produced content, including television, radio, and newspapers (CNN, Reuters, Fox News, The New York Times, NPR, BBC, etc.)
• Social media — with user-generated content, no editorial oversight, and algorithm-generated visibility (Facebook, X—formerly Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, etc.)
• Search (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc.)

The waning, but still significant, mainstream media are dominantly Left-leaning and becoming more so. Research has shown that members of the media are overwhelmingly liberal, with the vast majority of them supporting Democratic candidates. In 2016, 96% of journalists’ donations went to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Media Research Center found that 92% of Trump coverage during the 2020 presidential campaign was negative – even more so than the relentless, hostile coverage he received in 2017. When examining bias in mainstream/traditional media, studies have concluded that upwards of 60% of these outlets are left-leaning. But that doesn’t tell the whole story because that percentage is based on the number of outlets, regardless of the audience size for that outlet. When considering the total audience size and the percentage of it that receives information with a left-leaning bias, the bias number climbs closer to 75%. The percentage of Americans viewing a liberal bias in the mainstream media has doubled since 1985.

However, traditional media are quickly being pushed aside by social media, where the leftist bias is even more pronounced. The top social media companies are all Left-leaning (See here, here, here, and here). Meta, the undisputed king of social media, owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, reaching approximately 4 billion users and controlling 75-80% of the social media market worldwide. Alphabet Inc., a smaller behemoth that owns Google and YouTube, has just surpassed $3 trillion in market cap and reaches some 2.2 billion users. A collection of companies, including those owning TikTok, Douyin, WeChat, QQ, and Snapchat, reaches an additional 3.5 billion users combined. Musk’s little X is much further down the list with a mere 500 million users.

I previously described social media as the 800-pound gorilla in a rapidly shrinking cage, noting that usage has skyrocketed from 5% in 2005 to over 70% today. Some estimates indicate that as much as 38% of all internet time today is spent on social media. Considering Facebook alone, the vast majority (nearly 70%) of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users visit the site daily, and more than half of them visit it several times per day.

The younger generations are particularly fond of social media, with a strong plurality — some 44% of Americans aged 18 to 24 and 34% of those aged 25 to 34 — reporting that they now obtain their news and information from social media and video formats, rather than traditional media. This trend is accelerating worldwide, raising concerns about misinformation, algorithmic bias, and the blurring of entertainment and news.

What about when audiences go searching for information on their own? Most commonly today, this means using a computer, and in this world, Google controls a whopping 90% of the search market, processing some 8.9 billion search requests per day, amounting to over 5 trillion annually. Over 70% of all clicks go to the top 5 search results (hence the industry joke that the best place to bury a dead body is on the second page of results for a Google search — because nobody ever looks there). They control a significantly larger share (95%) of the global mobile search market.

Just prior to the 2022 midterm elections, researchers found that the plurality of articles returned for a Google search under the term “election” were from the New York Times and CNN (44%), with 0% from center or Right-leaning outlets. In 2023, the same research firm found that 61% of the articles posted on the Google News homepage came from Left-rated sources, with only 3% coming from Right-rated sources. Repeated samplings produced very similar results.

Another research firm used 50 politically charged search terms with Google and found that the results were demonstrably left-leaning. Consider their results for the following:

• “Black Lives Matter” — 9 out of 10 results from Left-leaning outlets.
• “Border wall” – 7 of 10 results Left-leaning.
• “Dreamers” – 6 of 10 results Left-leaning.

Conversely, searches for “immigration policy” or “gun control facts” would surface snippets from CNN, NYT, or Vox, while conservative sources were buried or absent. Notably, the researchers attribute some of the results to the dominance of left-leaning outlets in Search Engine Optimization, rather than to algorithmic intent. Regardless, the result in the output is the same.

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In his 2019 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, Dr. Robert Epstein, a self-proclaimed lifelong Democrat, argued that Google posed a threat not only to democracy but also to human autonomy. He has focused particularly on ephemeral search results — the auto-complete function that Google and others provide, which offers suggestions for alternative or additional phrasing. As but one example, he found that typing “Hillary Clinton is…” yielded suggestions like “winning,” “awesome,” and “qualified,” while “Donald Trump is…” produced “dangerous,” “racist,” and “a liar.” He concludes: 

We are all aware that Google deletes or blocks access to videos on YouTube, which it owns, but few people are aware that Google blocks access to millions of websites. By the way, it is not just conservative content that gets censored . . . The problem with Google is not that it censors conservatives; the problem is that it has the power to determine what content billions of people worldwide will or will not see. No single entity – especially a private company that is not accountable to the public – should have such power.

It is clear that all three domains — the legacy media, social media, and search — are all heavily Left-leaning. Consider what this dominance means for the sheer volume of leftist information and rhetoric being broadcast and received. Put aside for the moment the questions of whether Democrats are using more pernicious or violent language than republicans. That issue pales in comparison to the question of how frequently their message is being broadcast — how many videos, shorts, stories, op-eds, posts — the sheer volume of minutes that will be devoted to the Left’s position versus the Right’s and whether any counter to it will be available.

The Left has a massive, pervasive, powerful, and sophisticated digital network, which I previously analogized to a stealth fighter. Comparatively, conservatives have a Sopwith Camel. It is why on any number of issues, from Russiagate to Charlottesville misquotes, to Trump’s comments about COVID and bleach, to Charlie Kirk’s killer being right-wing, a shockingly high percentage of Americans still believe the lies that were broadcast ad nauseam despite their thorough debunking. Until conservatives can deal with the massive differential in scale, reach, and volume, “turning down the rhetoric” will remain a far lower priority issue.

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Greg Salsbury, Ph.D. is former president of Western Colorado University and Board of Advisors member for STARRS.US. He earned his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Southern California and an M.A. from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.