Rupert Murdoch, as but one example, is the driving force behind Fox News. Is that part of some grand left-wing conspiracy?
The number of left-leaning publications is pretty thin. The Huffington Post, parts of MSNBC, The Daily Show, and a case could be made for The Economist and The Guardian. For every one of those there's a dozen like The Daily Mail or USA Today.
> I'm not sure the SJWs have anything in common with the vast majority of the country...
"SJW" is a strawman pretty much by definition, but those who get slammed as being one are typically in the under 30 crowd which are generally more accepting and understanding of social justice issues. The so-called SJW group has more in common with their generation than "the majority of the country", but that's how things always are.
There is wide-spread consensus that BBC, NPR and NYT are left leaning.
But this is not about right/left anymore - the scary fact (and becoming patently obvious to more and more people) is the fact that all "mainstream" media is pro-establishment (whether it is left or right is less important). That's why outlets like Breitbart, warts and all, have been gaining so much popularity.
I think US "mainstream media" does have a left bias, although not necessarily very strong. (Disclosure: I consider myself probably a slightly right of center, but definitely left of Fox) Personally, I consider "mainstream media" to be the following: NYT, WaPo, USA Today, WSJ, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, Fox. (You could argue Time, Newsweek, Reuters, but I haven't heard of anyone reading Time/Newsweek in years, and Reuters is more news for news orgs and not directly accessed by consumers). I think when people say "mainstream media is left" they mean politically. According to [1], all of that list is left except for WSJ (center) and Fox (right), so 80% of "mainstream media" is left.
If you want to argue that people mean that more broadly, [2] gives mainly the same result, except that few become center-left.
I would certainly not call anything on the right side of middle in either of those graphics mainstream besides WSJ and Fox. (And frankly, I think it's arguable whether those two are mainstream) So for the US, anyway, it does seem credible that "mainstream media" leans left.
The left actually has the same criticisms of the mainstream media as the right does, though usually on other subjects. The media in the US has an extreme centrist position on most issues, leaning to the right on foreign policy and immigration (with no exceptions), but to the left on social issues (with notable exceptions such as Fox News).
I stand by my characterization of Breitbart though - they absolutely knowingly lie about facts. I would also add that you know that your political view is extreme far right when you start calling The Economist "left-leaning".
And I don't think that journalism, especially in the mainstream, has ever been more than an opinion & public relations (propaganda) piece. News organizations are usually owned by rich owners and financed by rich corporations through ads, and so can't stray too far from the mainstream capitalist right-wing/centrist view on most issues of consequence for their sponsors. It happens that lately, corporate America and the rich have generally become much more open on social issues, so you see that reflected in the press.
But you'll be hard pressed to find a mainstream journal or news organization that shares the left's more extreme beliefs on economic issues (e.g. pro unionization, shorter work week), and extremely hard pressed to find any news organization that is against armed support for Israel, that is against the coup attempt in Venezuela, that is against US support for Saudi Arabia, that is for US nuclear disarmament, that is against escalation of the conflict with Russia etc.
In their defense the vast majority of mainstream media in the United States is left wing biased. Fox news is pretty much the only major right wing counter balance.
I know that a lot of conservative news outlets have been repeating this over and over, but the facts just simply don't support this statement.
The largest TV news organization by viewership is Fox News, and has been for a long time. Fox News was founded to give conservative voices a bigger platform. So it was founded to be a right-leaning (biased) platform.
But that does not make everything to the political left of Fox News left-leaning. And if you start to look at talk-radio listenership then the numbers lean hugely to the right, and often far to the right. The left-wing equivalents are tiny. People who lean to the left tend to gravitate towards centrist media like NPR News, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Again, I know that those are often painted as being left-leaning in the conservative media, but they are starting to paint Fox News the same way, and their politics have been tending right for a decade now.
the other thing is, in the us, people say “left” a lot which they really mean is “liberal” (which itself is a very blunt word to be sure)
if put in that context, then saying the media is slanted liberal (market oriented, individualistic, capitalist etc) is probably true (at least from a layman’s eyes)
when reframed in that way, there are very few “left” media in the us; it’s either conservative (socially, right-wing) and liberal corporate media
You have conveniently neglected to mention all the news outlets with obvious left wing leanings, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, The Atlantic, Vice, Vox, etc. The media landscape is actually pretty well balanced, which isn’t surprising, given that the population’s political orientation is also pretty well balanced.
I hear stuff like this, but FoxNews is the most popular news network on cable, WSJ is a popular news paper, Murdoch's media empire is deep and entrenched. Surely there is some bias in the non-right media ecosystem, but it is nowhere near as crazy as the right wing, its like comparing criminal justice in the USA (not perfect) to China (not perfect on a very different scale).
I always laugh when I see someone bring up Fox News in this context. You realize your just proving his point, right? I can name dozens or hundreds of major media outlets that that lean left (MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo, HuffPo, BuzzFeed, etc.), but you can only name one or two that lean right.
Sigh.. Should we forget about the Sinclair Broadcast Group which is the second largest TV station owner in the country and does crap like: https://youtu.be/UOaayej-130?t=34 ?
Saying 'all media is left leaning' is factually false.
Myth? If so, what do you consider most of mainstream media to be? It is easy to highlight Fox News as right-wing, but how would you classify MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, etc.? I have a feeling most people would respond that journalists are largely on the left ideologically and sympathetically, if not wholeheartedly progressive.
That you can think these networks have left-leaning narratives just goes to show how much right-wing politics have become the norm.
As another commenter pointed out, the only thing that can be tought of as "left-wing" with them is that they are to the left of Fox News.
To go back to basics, left means distributing profits more equally, having built-in methods of solidarity, and giving power to the people (all of them).
Another possibility here is that you're own perspective may be biased more than you appreciate. 99% of media content is left leaning? Really? You would really have to do some work redefining the left/right spectrum for that to be anything close to true. What about financial institutions, police forces, energy companies and other mega corporations. Where do they list in your rankings? Are you worried about ideological uniformity there and advocate that they work to be more representative of leftist ideals in the same way you want tv networks to do for conservative principles? When employees at starbucks or amazon get harrassed or fired by their employers for engaging in constitutionally protected activities like organizing a union, where was the right in saying that although they may not agree with them that they will defend their rights and that they don't support cancelling people for expressing their ideals. Was the right there on the side of railway workers who keep the economy running supporting their rights to strike or did they try and cancel them by forcefully taking those rights away? Which side was the media on? The gender and race thing gets a lot of air time on Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiros shows, but there is a hell of lot more to the world than that.
Your argument rests on the fault assumption that in a 'wide range of media', the median publication is unbiased and things that are more left-wing than it are biased and things more right-wing than it are biased in the other direction.
That's just not based in reality. In reality, almost all mainstream media is incredibly biased towards the status quo.
Most newspapers, television and radio stations, along with the big new sites are controlled by a handful of companies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh...) that are far from left-leaning.
Rupert Murdoch, as but one example, is the driving force behind Fox News. Is that part of some grand left-wing conspiracy?
The number of left-leaning publications is pretty thin. The Huffington Post, parts of MSNBC, The Daily Show, and a case could be made for The Economist and The Guardian. For every one of those there's a dozen like The Daily Mail or USA Today.
> I'm not sure the SJWs have anything in common with the vast majority of the country...
"SJW" is a strawman pretty much by definition, but those who get slammed as being one are typically in the under 30 crowd which are generally more accepting and understanding of social justice issues. The so-called SJW group has more in common with their generation than "the majority of the country", but that's how things always are.
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