While there is no question in my mind that, generally speaking, national news outlets lean to the left, I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy that many want to believe. Hence I was heartened to read the opening paragraph in an essay we published on this page last week by one of our national columnists, Megan McCardle, who writes for the Washington Post:
“In my 20 years of writing right-leaning columns at mainstream publications, I’ve made two arguments over and over. First, I’ve tried to convince my fellow journalists that liberal media bias is real. And second, I’ve tried to convince conservatives that, though it’s real, it’s not the conspiracy they imagine.”
Unfortunately, I found her explanation less than convincing — or perhaps “unclear” might be a better word. The Reader’s Digest version of my explanation would be:
1) All media is biased. Because it is run by humans.
2) Reporters and editors are trained — at least they were when I was in school — that it is incumbent upon them to report the news as accurately and fairly as possible. And, I like to believe, the reporters involved in my definition of the mainstream media (the three network news organizations) actually try to do that. Some just do a better job than others. I think CBS falls woefully short, ABC seems more interested in entertaining us than informing us, which leaves NBC, which I feel does the best of the three. But you have to watch and listen carefully; they’re not perfect but neither am I.
3) Practically all national journalists, from my observations, grew up in large metropolitan areas. At the very least, that’s where they live now. Most, if not all, reflect that. It’s who they are. They don’t conspire to twist stories or emphasize different aspects. It’s their humanness on display. We country bumpkins see things differently than them.
Hence, I get the bulk of my national news from NBC — but always with a skeptical ear, which my wife will confirm whenever I moan or talk back to the TV — and the Wall Street Journal, which is certainly a conservative-leaning publication, but whose reporters have often clashed with their editors. Makes it interesting.
4) Cable news is a different animal. With a few exceptions, cable-news channels make no pretense of being unbiased, although they purport to tell “the truth.” If you want conservative-leaning news or left-leaning news, you know where to go. This was no more obvious and on no better display than Saturday evening’s coverage of the events in Butler, Pa.
We (my wife and I) heard the sketchy news while at a grand-nephew’s birthday party — only that shots had been fired at a Trump rally but he was OK. When we got home, I did not turn on the television right away, having no reason to be particularly concerned, and instead enjoyed a quiet twilight on the patio reading a book. Only when I turned the TV on after dark did I realize the gravity of the situation and how close our country came to unimaginable chaotic possibilities. After NBC began repeating themselves with the limited information that was available, I wondered how CNN and Fox News was covering this.
CNN was focused on praising President Biden’s response — his initial television appearance, his calls for toning down the rhetoric and his return to the White House to demonstrate his command of the situation.
Fox News had Mike Huckabee opining that God had stepped in to protect Mr. Trump because God obviously wants him to be president. The show’s hosts nodded their heads in agreement.
I feel a need to personally digress. Having survived a close call, via a nasty car accident nearly 24 years ago now, I have personal experience in saying I am here “by the Grace of God,” as Trump said Thursday evening.
First, I believe it is one leap to assume that He intervened at all; I may have just been plain lucky. There are certainly more important things in overseeing a universe that He had been attending to that day, but for those of us who call ourselves believers, we accept and often seek the possibility of divine intervention.
Even if that were the case, it is another leap to assume we know why. I spent a healthy amount of time in discerning and listening. I believe I eventually found that answer, but part of that discernment is feeling strongly that to declare to the world that “God is on my side” due to such an experience is risky business. We can all cite other examples of people — including some world leaders in history whom we cannot imagine had any relationship with the Almighty — that survived close calls as well. Was that divine intervention?
And there’s plenty of meat on the other side of that bone. What of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s campaign for peaceful change that erupted into lethal violence after his assassination? Why did my wife’s cousin, one of the finest men I’ve known, get a fatal brain tumor at such a young age?
Let’s leave God’s plans to Himself for now.
(Speaking of divine intervention, we could use a bit here at the N-B right now. Please pray for our problematic platemaker, if you feel so inclined. But I digress within a digression.)
Back to my original point which, if I correctly recall, is about media bias. If you’re watching cable news, you are absorbing a conspiracy. The “mainline national news outlets” are not perfect, but at least they’re trying. Sorta. For the most part.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
miller@news-banner.com
