Illiberal Bias and the 2024 Campaign
I’ve stopped reading the New York Times, as it has turned to clickbait garbage, but I still crack the Washington Post every day to scan the news and gauge the state of the “liberal-biased media.” While far better than the Grey Old Lady, it can be nearly as frustrating a process. Check out the headlines and framing for four of the five above-the-fold stories today in America’s last half-decent broadsheet.
1. Biden faces pressure to deliver a strong message to DISSATISFIED VOTERS.
2. Bernie Sanders made private WARNING to Biden about 2024 campaign.
3. Biden has canceled $138 billion in student loans. Some say it’s NOT ENOUGH.
4. Of Biden’s proposals in his address last year, here’s what FLOPPED and what succeeded.
These choices represent a lot of editorial intention, but they sure as hell aren’t guided by a “liberal bias.”
Yesterday, while puttering around in the kitchen, I thought about what a great exercise it would be to aggregate all economic stories in the major media over the past year to compare the framings. By the numbers, it’s been an extraordinarily great year by nearly every metric of growth. Inflation is down, employment is up, GDP growth is strong, manufacturing jobs are soaring, unions had a great year, and so did the stock market. Building projects are engaged across the country through the Inflation Reduction Act, the crush of debt from student loans for young earners is being addressed through forgiveness and remediation, and pharmaceutical companies are being forced to rationalize the prices of at least some lifesaving medicine. All that is empirically true, but what I’d like to know is the percentage breakdown between stories that SIMPLY REPORTED THOSE NUMBERS vs. stories that reported the numbers inside articles leading with the message “economy strong, BUT NO ONE BELIEVES IT.”
Then, of course, there are the follow-up stories about why economic confidence is low despite the growth, seemingly without the media ever having the moment of self-realization that THEY ARE THE ONES CAUSING THE DISTORTION FIELD IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Here are four alternate headlines that a neutral press could have used.
1. Biden to Deliver State of the Union As General Election Begins.
2. Bernie Sanders Meets with Biden Campaign to Discuss Strategy.
3. Biden Has Cancelled $138 Billion in Student Debt, Here’s Who Saved.
4. In the 2023 SOTU, Biden Made Big Proposals — Some Succeeded, Some Failed — Read Our Review.
Here’s what you might see from a genuinely liberal-biased outfit.
1. Biden Faces Nation as Trump Faces Justice.
2. Democratic Party Unites as Sanders Teams Up With Biden.
3. Biden Cancelled $138 Billion in 2023. More to Find Relief in 2024.
4. Biden’s Successes in 2023, Despite a Dysfunctional Republican Congress.
But, no. We get what we get — and it’s bullshit.
— — -
None of this is really much of a surprise. The Washington Post and the New York Times are businesses, after all, and they’ve got metrics on what moves sales. I’m sure what they’ve discovered is what we all know in our guts, anyway: Both Republicans and Democrats find stories about Democrats in Disarray impossible to resist. The Republicans love those stories because it fills them to the brim with fantasies of crushing their disheartened enemies. Democrats love them because we liberals tend to dither and worry and fret. Republicans LOVE the battle, while we prefer the anxiety of hunkering down in the shelter, fearing the worst possible outcome until the moment of battle finally descends.
Well, it’s here — and the “liberal-biased media” is again proving to be an insubstantial mirage. In fact, the derisive sobriquet “liberal-biased media” works in reverse as the liberals running the editorial boards of places like the Times and the WaPo are so conditioned away from LOOKING like they have a liberal bias that they frame their stories — and their headlines — in ways that must make Rupert Murdoch smile from his mountain lair.
Oh, FFS, I just looked at the lead opinion piece in the WaPo today, and the headline reads: “Biden Is Failing The Most Important Task of His Presidency.” It’s a story about CONVINCING PEOPLE OF THE GREAT JOB HE’S DOING, offered with zero self-awareness on the part of the newspaper or the author that they’re the ones poisoning the well.
Ugh.
It’s maddening — but it’s what we’ve got. Tonight, President Biden will make his case to the American people, and tomorrow, if the past is prologue, the media will tell us how he failed. I’m sure their headline writers are already sharpening their shade.
End of the day, we’re on our own. SCOTUS has decided that politics are more important than justice, and the media is looking for anything that will sell. The truth matters little to either institution, so this is going to be a ground war against an opponent with air cover, allies, and rabid shock troops willing to die for their cause. That might worry some of you, but I am raring to go. We’re so much stronger than the forces arrayed before us; we just need to start swinging the metaphorical axe. If we do so vigorously and brutally enough, we might even get the broadsheets to cover it.
Nahhhh… Probably not.
In any case: Love and Glorious Battle to you All.
