To All Right Wingers Complaining About Fake News, Witch Hunts, Swamps, and “the Liberal Media”

Spare us.

Trump (like another Republican before him — — hmmm…see a pattern?) is destroying the country you live in by being corrupt and abusing his power. The fact that you blame the mainstream media for holding him accountable is the same old Right wing whine about the “liberal media“ and straw man arguments we’ve heard before. I would direct you to numerous rigorously sound, quantitatively-based scholarly studies that overwhelmingly find no appreciable left wing bias in mainstream media organizations, but I dare venture your retort will be the usual conservative dismissal of academia as fatally liberally biased pointy headed elites. Hence, the straw man…

Neutrality is a Fallacy

Most people believe that the major broadcast networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC) are neutral. However, no single news venue can ever be completely objective. News operations are comprised of individuals who make decisions every day that are based upon an array of factors they deem important, less important, and non-consequential. These decisions emerge from a range of considerations like profit, sensationalism, entertainment value, newsworthiness (itself very subjective), etc. What to cover, how much, and how to cover it are subjective decisions that, along with the aforementioned criteria, are based upon our individual experiences in the world. For example, remember when Fox News Channel used to go by the slogan, “We report, you decide” and “Fair and Balanced?” There are many conservatives who would still argue that Fox News is unbiased or, at the very least, a corrective or counter-balance to, what you allege is, the “liberal media establishment.” I don’t agree and I would argue FNC has gone beyond being ideologically conservative or biased to actively engaging in partisanship and conflicts of interest with the Trump administration. I do think it’s important to point out the difference between a network being ideologically to the left, to the right, or moderate and one who is engaging in journalistic malpractice. With the expanded definition of who is a journalist, what is considered journalism, and what comprises a news organizations, this phenomenon is definitely getting out of hand.