An Anatomy of Media Bias

I've seen a lot of media bias over the years, but something has changed, or intensified.

The Chris Wallace interview of President Trump recently is an example.  A Presidential interviewer in the past would never directly contradict a sitting president and tell him his facts are wrong to his face, but Wallace feels free to do so.  He would not do this if it were a Democrat.  Just contrast the media's behavior to Trump's COVID pressers with their behavior toward Cuomo's pressers, to get the idea.

In the same way, news articles today are routinely doing things that just a few years ago would have been called journalistic malpractice.

Here are some examples, all from my local paper in the last couple of days.


1. Misleading implications

This is a local mid-sized manufacturing business.  Notice how the sub-head implies wrong-doing on the part of the company in telling employees to continue to work.  The article itself details, though, that they did everything right: sending people home they were in the same room with, contact tracing, etc.

But that's not enough for the paper.  The Left's agenda is to reduce and disrupt the economy as much as possible ahead of the election, to give Trump the maximum disadvantage.  So the paper wanted the company featured to shut down completely, or some similar drastic measure, "out of an abundance of caution."

They won't come out and say that, of course.  But their agenda is revealed when they imply wrongdoing where there was none.  Why would the paper throw shade that way?  Because Thai Summit isn't acting as the paper thinks it should, to fit the editors' political agenda.  This is libelous journalistic malpractice.



2. Comments of support or negation within news reporting pieces

This whopper from today is a prime example on injecting opinion into news.  The first sentence is both a reporting of what Trump has said he may do, and an immediate argument against it!

In case it's too hard to read: "President Donald Trump said Monday he is considering sending federal officers into several American cities, including Detroit, despite mostly peaceful protests there in recent weeks."

3. Visual cues in the pictures
Body language, posture, and facial expression in pictures say a lot.
Trump above is in an apologetic and defensive position with his hands.  It's like the question from the first sentence has been asked ("but Detroit is mostly peaceful"), and this is his non-response.

Contrast that with this very positive feature on my Democratic Congresswoman, where her hands and face show fervency and poise, making an important point we should hear.  (And she's holding a mask.)  This feature took up most of the front page today.

4.  Omissions, technicalities, and contradictions "In other News"
The Trump piece was page three.  Remember the article saying in the first sentence that Trump's action would be irrational because Detroit's protests have been "mostly peaceful"?

Here's page 5, bottom right, less than a quarter of the page, no picture:

Detroit's police chief, three-fourths of the way through this article, "reiterated his concerns Monday that there has been an increase in violent crime in Detroit.... During the weekend, he said, there were 33 shooting incidents, in which 26 people were injured and 7 killed."

But Detroit is "mostly peaceful" one page back, with the Trump pic!  Maybe the protests have been, technically.  During the day.

Why was this uptick in violent crime not mentioned in the article on Trump considering sending Federal agents to Detroit?  (It's from the same USA Today news network, on the same day.)  Because they are asserting their own argument while they are reporting "news."

It should be said that conservative news sources use these same tactics too often, sadly.  I hate the uncomplimentary pictures of Democrats they constantly put up.  It's a cheap shot meant to induce us to ridicule people, instead of rationally oppose policies.

But newspapers like the one I've featured above do not identify as a liberal news source when they clearly are.  The conservative ones mostly tell you who they are.  The latter is more transparent.  The former hides its agenda.  Articles like these are thinly veiled arguments against our President.  We have publications that claim to be giving us straight news, when in actuality they are advocating (usually subtly to keep up the pretense) for liberal/progressive policies and candidates, and against conservative ones.