4 Comments
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
Jim Fuquay's avatar

Ah, but this is where it gets tricky. Matt a few months back did a long interview with Noam Chomsky. They talked about his 1988 book “Manufacturing Consent.” I asked for a copy for Christmas, which I haven’t read yet, because I’m a retired business journalist who remembered a time in the late 1980s when folks would ask me why I wasn’t writing about “the other side.” Based on Matt’s interview, Chomsky argued that American media had swung to the right, and that’s when my questioners were asserting. At the time, the Soviet Union was imploding, China was scrapping its economic model of backyard steel mills for state capitalism, so my reaction was, “ I think the other side just died. Why keep arguing for it?” I realize the book goes into a lot more that economics, but my point is that your view on the bias of media is usually pretty biased itself. You see it sliding left, Chomsky saw it sliding right. And to me, that argues for the humility of a traditional “objective” media model of suspending partisanship in favor of multiple viewpoints.

Expand full comment
Jayhawk's avatar

I don’t want to get into a back and forth down the rabbit hole with you, which from your first reply seems would be likely. It is to me a provable fact that conservatism has been pushed out of our finest liberal arts colleges and universities over the past few decades. I can site statistics on the political affiliations and donations of the professors at our most prestigious schools if you like. Those schools have produced the journalists that occupy most of our national media and leaders of our social media companies. If you believe that the journalists at the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, (NBC, CBS, ABC) and the primary social media sites are balanced in their political ideology and reporting, then we just live on different planets. If you believe that Facebook and Twitter censor inflammatory and/or false information equally, then we just live on different planets. I don’t want to insult you or deny you your right to your own opinion, but unless there is some basic agreement on our current situation, there is no point in discussing solutions.

Expand full comment
Jim Fuquay's avatar

There is what I think is an inescapable bias, but it’s less institutional than you argue. Here’s how I see it play out. Journalists-to-be consider the profession and see that it doesn’t pay tons and requires a lot of preparation if you want a good position, but do it anyway for the personal satisfaction of making a difference. See an early trend? Then one decides they want to cover government and politics, and they do this because ... they think government is the problem, not the solution? Not likely. They pick business coverage (as I did) because ... they think it’s evil, or because they find it interesting, get to meet smart people and dig into the why and how of the matter? Cover sports because it’s a hoot, or because they find it mindless and barbaric? There’s a lot of self-selection going on. But we all get run through the objectivity grinder, so sports guys never want to be “homers,” political reporters know they need to remain non-partisan, and business reporters interview labor and management, regulators and entrepreneurs. The Business Desk thinks Metro are economic ignoramuses, and Metro wonders if business reporters are really fascists. ( I should be talking in past tense, since most papers don’t have enough reporters to make up separate departments anymore. ) My point is that it’s not a monolith, although I will say the NYT seems hellbent on getting there.

Expand full comment
Jayhawk's avatar

I think your analysis is more appropriate for a local newspaper reporter than the national media. As Matt has pointed out, the local newspaper is quickly dying and has been irrelevant to younger people for some time. This, along with the rise of people increasingly getting their news via feeds on their social media accounts, has further elevated the national media. If you want to make an argument for the balance of reporting coming from the national media, we can stop our discussion now.

Expand full comment