Long before the disease of wokeness swept America, filling our airwaves and newspapers with communistic propaganda, there were journalists like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite whom many of us could and did trust to give us their unadorned version of the truth each night. That said, Murrow was cautionary when he implored his fellow journalists that, “We cannot make good news out of bad practice.” Indeed it can’t.
That was a distant time, now sadly gone. In 2020 the McKnight Foundation reported that there was “a great deal” (46%) or “a fair amount” (37%) of political bias in news coverage. Today, 60 percent of those surveyed think journalism in the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction; job satisfaction has dropped from a peak in 2002 to just 23.3 percent of journalists saying they are “very satisfied” in their jobs. Politico, itself a left-leaning news source reported in 2014 during the Obama presidency that only 7 percent of reporters identify as Republican.
Bias can only have worsened in the subsequent nine years, especially with their ham-handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. We may now be stuck in an era of media sophistry about disinformation. As Matthew Booze concludes, “The irony is that no institution spreads disinformation more capably or casually than our own media…”
Looking Back to Look Forward
Presciently, ninety some years ago, George Orwell foretold today’s state of journalism in the United States’ brave new world of today: “Anyone who has lived long…will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. As daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing…in the popular press or in the highbrow periodical.”
Fast forward to the journalistic meltdown before the Trump presidency in 2016. Lead political columnist for the New York Post, Michael Goodwin gave a speech to Hillsdale College in the summer of 2017, arguing, “The evidence [for journalistic bias] was on the front page, the back page, the culture pages, even the sports pages….Day in, day out, in every media market in America, Trump was savaged like no other candidate in memory. We were watching the total collapse of [journalistic] standards, with fairness and balance tossed overboard. Every story was an opinion masquerading as news, and every opinion ran in the same direction—toward Clinton and away from Trump. For the most part, I blame The New York Times and The Washington Post for causing this breakdown. The two leading liberal newspapers were trying to top each other in their demonization of Trump and his supporters. They set the tone, and most of the rest of the media followed like lemmings.”
The Mis/Disinformation Scourge
Journalists now accuse any information inconsonant with their view as misinformation. Pew Research reports that most journalists are “highly concerned about misinformation, amid efforts to fight false and made-up information, anti-media campaigns, increased lawsuits and global news crackdowns, journalists in the United States express great concern about the future of press freedoms.” Having done my research training at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, I can attest to Pew being one of the most unbiased public opinion research institutions in America. Still, the misinformation label is most often given to conservative content.
As far back as 2013, Politico detailed an Indiana University national poll of journalists finding that only 7.1% identified themselves as Republican, a drop from 18% in 2002. A more contemporary Pew Research poll said about six-in-ten U.S. journalists ages 18 to 29 (63%) say every side does not always deserve equal coverage. Contrast this with 76% of ordinary citizens saying journalists should strive to give every side equal coverage.
Trump is the quintessential example of the relative importance of tenor versus amount of coverage received. Trump was vilified in 24-7 coverage during the 2022 presidential election while Biden received scant attention from his basement sequestration.
The “Don’t Say Gay” Journalistic Corruption
An archetypal example of journalism’s corruption is the false labeling they have given to Florida’s CD/HB 7. Journalists have and continue to falsely label this legislation the “Don’t Say Gay Bill”. A Google search (itself a leftist source) of this term yields over two hundred and fifty-nine million hits.
In essence, Florida’s CD/HB 7 gives the state the right to examine what is being taught in Florida’s K-12 school system to ensure students aren’t being indoctrinated by woke concepts and ideals. Hardly anti-gay legislation. Surprisingly, the New York Times ran an explanatory story about the bill by Amelia Nierenberg explaining: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards (emphasis mine).” To prove my point, Ms. Nierenberg then opines that “The impact is clear enough: Instruction on gender and sexuality would be constrained in all grades” [emphasis mine] without any data other than her opinion.
Also relevant are deceitful stories about the bill from the Poynter Institute’s Tampa Bay Times (aka Pravda on the Bay). NBC News equally mischaracterized the bill citing “an impassioned speech on the House floor Thursday, Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat who is gay, told lawmakers that he purposefully wore a rainbow Pride ribbon upside down on his lapel ‘as a symbol that LGBTQ community in Florida is in distress’… echoing [President] Biden’s sentiment…’I want to make sure that for those LGBTQ youth in Florida and around the country and in the world who are watching…that they know…You are loved. You are supported. And we will wake up every single day to fight for you, because you are worth fighting for’.”
Tim O’Brien in American Mind reports on high school students cutting down a Pride flag that covered a Puerto Rican flag, “The news media and critics framed this incident [at a Utah public school event] as one of hate, disrespect, and intolerance. The Left contends that such incidents are proof that animosity against minorities is everywhere. But perhaps this student’s action was not borne of hate but rebellion… The majority of Americans who don’t identify with the Pride flag have been forced to shut up, embrace it, and celebrate it. They’ve been forced to adopt bizarre language forms and behaviors that go against their personal beliefs, value systems, and reality itself. Don’t want to get fired? Keep your mouth shut during Pride Week, and clap when you’re told to.”
Fact-Checker Media Bias
Our left-leaning media have tried to conceal their political bent by creating the fact-checker industry coinciding with Trump’s presidency. The fact-checker contingent is dominated by left-leaning media apologists. Despite the unbiased label, fact checks and fact checkers display a left-leaning media bias. AllSides alleges its dedication to documenting media bias. Ironically, their chart of such bias only includes one conservative media source—National Review. Worse, the Poynter Institute, BBC and Real Clear Politics are ranked in the middle and New York Times, Washington Post, AP, Snopes and NPR are labeled “left-leaning.” Only CNN is given a “left” bias rating by AllSides. This wreaks of their internal progressive bias. As the Harvard Kennedy School’s| Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy Bias reports, “The increasing amount of information online makes it challenging to judge what to believe or discredit. Fact-checking unverified claims shared on platforms, like social media, can play a critical role in correcting misbeliefs.” A credibility problem comes when the political bias of the MSM’s political bias and their fact-checkers are so unalloyed as to be unveracious
So yes, the idea of a free press in 2023 America is an anachronism. It hasn’t been truly free for many, many decades. As Aldous Huxley wrote in his Brave New World Revisited: ““In the field of mass communications as in almost every other field of enterprise, technological progress has hurt the Little Man and helped the Big Man. In the democratic West there is economic censorship, and the media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power Elite. Censorship by rising costs and the concentration of communication power in the hands of a few big concerns is less objectionable than State ownership and government propaganda; but certainly it is not something of which a Jeffersonian democrat could possibly approve.”