There’s no “liberal media.”
OK, there is, but you have to go out of your way to find it. Daily Kos, for example. And Mother Jones. And Charlie Pierce in Esquire. And maybe some of the prime-time hosts on MSNBC (when they’re not platforming the Michael Steeles and Charlie Sykeses and Rick Wilsons and Nicole Wallaces and Steve Schmidts and Joe Walshes of the world). The so-called “mainstream” “news” media may have been “liberal” in 1974, but not since. In 21st century America the “mainstream” media is basically divided into two categories: conservative (Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Sinclair, &c.), and Both Sides® (CNN, The New York Times, ABC News, &c.).
There’s a terrific diary up by Hunter called “All horse race, no substance: The nation’s major papers continue to endanger democracy.” Hunter’s piece in turn refers to a study by the Columbia Journalism Review of the Times and The Washington Post’s coverage of the 2016 and 2022 elections, whose findings Hunter sums up thusly:
Political coverage at even the largest and most consequential newspapers consists almost exclusively of horse race reporting and campaign gossip. Actual issue and policy examinations were nearly nonexistent.
The reason why is obvious: if these “consequential newspapers” and television news engaged in “[a]ctual issue and policy examinations” then Biden and Democrats would win in a walk; it would be no contest. The reader/viewer would find no reason to vote Republican, because inter alia Republicans don’t do “policy” and to the extent they do, it’s unpopular and horrifying. But more to the point, people would find no reason to keep buying newspapers and keep tuning in to the TV news to find out who’s “winning,” or to help them make up their minds because they just can’t decide, because, you know, Both Sides®. The last time that happened, arguably, was in 1996 when Bill Clinton won re-election easily despite GOP politicians tarring him with fake scandal after fake scandal — and despite the relentlessly negative coverage of his first two years in office by the so-called “liberal” media that helped Republicans take Congress in 1994. Then, Fox News came along and the rest is … split between history and Republican fan fiction.
There’s been a lot of hand-wringing around here and on Twitter lately over the fact that despite his myriad accomplishments rivaling FDR and LBJ in terms of legislative effectiveness and a deluge of positive economic news, inter alia, the American public seems poised to take the presidency away from one of the office’s best exemplars and a congenial, compassionate statesman, because he’s old and gasoline costs $3 a gallon, and hand it back to a demented racist gangster who accomplished literally nothing as president the first time around, knows nothing, hates everybody, is an adjudicated sexual assaulter, faces 91 criminal charges in multiple courts, and has promised to use government to persecute his enemies rather than improve Americans’ lives in any meaningful or genuine way.
Of course, the most obvious explanation for how or why Americans can look at President Biden’s accomplishments on the legislative, administrative, economic, and diplomatic fronts and think “let’s go full Nazi instead” is that they’re not looking at those accomplishments, because they’re not seeing them, because the so-called “news” media is not showing them or talking about them. Just like people have to go out of their way to find the “liberal” media, they have to go out of their way to find “news” about what Biden has actually done and what the results of those actions have been. As I wrote two years ago:
[A]nyone who is interested in what Democrats have to say can easily find it, on the Internet or on social media[.] … And anyone who wants to can sign up for newsletters and notifications from House members, Senators, the Democratic National Committee, or anyone else. The “messaging” is out there, for anyone who wants to receive it.
… [T]he Democratic Party and Democratic politicians have control over their newsletters, websites, and social-media feeds, but they don’t have control over TV networks, radio stations, newspapers, &c., i.e., ways of getting “messaging” to people’s eyes and ears whether they seek it out or not. The Democratic Party’s ability to commandeer the public airwaves is limited. They have no say over who Chuck Todd invites on Meet the Press.
They also can’t control how the so-called “news” media operates.
(emphasis added). And how the so-called “news” media operates is exactly what Hunter and the CJR describe, although I like to think of it more like a football game than a horse race. The job of the media — the officiating crew, in this metaphor — is not to call the game fairly or by the rules, but to keep the “score” as close as possible, for as long as possible. Which is kind of stupid if you think about it, because in elections there is no “score” until election day, so we use polling in order to “keep score” for a ridiculously long time before election day, viz., practically every day starting the day after the last election. The usefulness or appropriateness of constant polling as electoral “scorekeeping” for years before an election is, however, a subject for another day.
So, how does the media keep the “score” close? How does the media do that when the two “teams” are so grossly mismatched? How does the media look at the GOP’s cruel, ruinous, retrograde “policy” agenda and abysmal governing record over its last four presidencies (at least), and keep the poll numbers close to even?
I’ve been writing often and in many different places recently that there are three simple, basic rules that the Both Sides® media follows, which (to me, at least) explains the cognitive dissonance of the voting public and the apparent disconnect between polling results/perceptions and reality:
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Rule #1: Both Sides® must be equally blameworthy, and equally praiseworthy.
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Rule #2: If one Side is objectively more (or less) blameworthy or praiseworthy than the other, see Rule #1.
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Rule #3: If individual conduct on one Side has no 1:1 analogue on the other, see Rule #1.
And, that’s it. That’s the formula. That’s how two sides whose objective praiseworthiness and blameworthiness are not remotely comparable, and haven’t been for decades, can be so close in the polls. If you’re the “news” media, if Both Sides® aren’t equivalent, simply pretend that they are, either by ignoring or downplaying praiseworthy/blameworthy conduct that occurs only on one Side or by pretending that equally praiseworthy/blameworthy conduct must necessarily occur on the other Side even if it actually doesn’t. Anything else is evidence of “bias” and we can’t have that, now, can we? Indeed, the media seems more afraid of being accused of “bias” than of having to operate under a military dictatorship, facing imprisonment if der Orangeführer doesn’t like their reporting.
If there’s a way out of the authoritarian death spiral we’re all in, then the Both Sides® media has to play a part, first by abandoning Both Sides® as its central mission. Otherwise, they’re going to Both Sides® our democracy into oblivion.
