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.
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.
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.
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.
The media outlet that a person finds unbiased completely gives away their politics. FOX news = Trump base, MSNBC, CNN = Trump opposition base. NYT = moderate liberal, WSJ = moderate conservative.
That is because every media outlet is biased. I have yet to find a news source that doesn't seem to lean in one direction or the other.
CNN, MSNBC and NYT are definitely not left-wing news sources. At best, if we're being extremely charitable, they are centrist. There is no left wing media in the US.
I’m not convinced that the majority of “the media” skews to the left (although some subsets, like say, the NYT opinion page probably do). CNN however is definitely left leaning, at least in the era of Trump. I don’t remember them always being this left leaning, I feel like they saw the success of Fox News and decided they needed a foil on the left.
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.
Again, a significant majority of journalists polled by Pew (annually) openly consider themselves to be liberal. It can be argued that this bias doesn't come across in their work product but are you claiming that Chris Matthews is either neutral in that he ingratiates himself to whatever power that happens to be or even tilts right?
Personally I'm not entirely convinced that NPR necessarily tilts left as there was a study conducted a number of years ago that suggested they were actually fairly close to center based on the sources they used in their reporting. Fox apparently only tilts slightly right, and WSJ's news pages actually tilted slightly left.
For Fox News, their rise has only been relatively recent. CNN's massive fall has only been in the last couple years. Further, I would also suggest that the reason WSJ has been so successful is that markets depend on accurate information - and in this, removing bias in favor of details and content is important given their audience makes money on both sides of a trade. Whereas you might say New York Times' aims to influence decision makers, WSJ would attempt to inform them. Of course their editorials tend libertarian/conservative and quite openly so. I completely disagree that most newspaper op-eds tend conservative - particularly given it's the editors themselves who declare themselves as liberal.
However, getting away from bias from a moment, whatever you may think, unabashedly conservative talk radio has found success specifically because it found a rather large underserviced niche. If to you, this means that these people are extremist right wingers is irrelevant. Both the quickly growing audience base of Fox and conservative talk radio (and the failure of Air America) reflect the reality that there was a market that was largely underserviced - and that Air America did not meet that need - despite their medium. It was their underlying message/content that did not resonate.
Well, media in the USA is often being accused of being left-leaning, when in fact it is almost universally right-of-center on almost every topic, except culture issues.
The claim is not necessarily that they ignore essential topics, so much as that they present a biased narrative of the world, even in the facts that they chose to cover at all - one biased against workers and against America's (perceived) enemies.
The people who accuse the NY Times of being biased towards liberals or progressives often forget how pro-war they were for example, how friendly they are to the military and security apparatus in general etc.
I’ve always found it interesting how they let some obvious left AND right leaning bias creep into some stories. Maybe they have a writing staff with pretty diverse political views?
But agreed, they are much better than consuming other media news.
In a world where 50% of primary voters in Miss and Bama last week believed Obama's a muslim, yeah, I guess journalism leans to the left.
I mean, what would consist of "balanced" in your view? The science leads towards a global warming hypothesis, and what's what they report. Most non-foxnews viewers agree that no WMD were found in Iraq. How are they supposed to split the difference on stuff like that?
NPR does not have ranting opinion shows that are political first. They have programs that are intended to inform. To the extent that liberals are more attracted to outlets like NPR than they are to outlets like currentTV, that's a statement about liberals, not about NPR.
Al Jazeera and BBC are both solidly on the left. I'm not disputing the quality of their reporting or the value of exposing oneself to their reporting, but you're fooling yourself if you think they're neutral.
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.
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