A new low: 3.4% of journalists are Republican
It explains a lot.
In the real world, there are as many Republicans as Democrats. By contrast, in America’s newsrooms we’ve seen an ideological genocide.
A newly released study by Syracuse University’s journalism school found that just 3.4% of American journalists are Republicans. This isn't just an imbalance; it's a comedic farce of epic proportions, except nobody's laughing.
Conservatives in journalism are like a Sasquatch sighting – rumored, but rarely confirmed. So it’s no shocker to see that when the self-styled gatekeepers of information share the same view, we get propaganda instead of news.
The Harvard drama was a great example. The media first explained how Claudine Gay was correct in thinking actual genocide was maybe, perhaps a problem on campus, but not as clear cut as misgendering a trans. Saturday Night Live dutifully mocked not Gay, but the questioning members of Congress. And did you know that Claudine is a black woman? And that plagiarism should be viewed in context?
Even after the fight was over, the Associated Press still couldn’t stop swinging at conservatives, giving us this classic:
Play the “opposite” game and imagine this headline instead: “Rep. George Santos' resignation highlights new liberal weapon against colleges: compulsive lying.” Even NewsMax couldn’t pull that one off with a straight face.
Yet, in the entire AP editorial chain there wasn’t one person who pointed out its ridiculousness.
On most days, of course, it’s easier to have everyone agree with you. Surround yourself with yes-men, and the workdays just breeze by. In the long run, however, it’s a losing strategy. After seeing a few hundred instances like the example above, readers stop believing you. Smartly.
America’s news managers see the same polls we do, that well over half of the country has lost all faith in them. Their problem is that they are too obtuse to understand why.
I once interviewed a New York Times reporter and asked him why most people don’t trust the media. His theory was that with the closure of local newspapers, people don’t interact directly with reporters anymore and, therefore, trust them less. That’s a bizarre response on a few levels, but he believed it to be true.
Only when today’s declining media gets a more clear-headed view of their industry can they start to understand their shortcomings, and actually fix them. They’re far, far from that.
So, to the struggling media moguls out there, maybe it's time to dig out those dusty “Diversity is Our Strength” plaques – but consider diversity of thought instead of just seeing the world through color.
— Ken
Bonus: How does such a popular, albeit awful, website such as BuzzFeed burn through $274 million in cash and have its stock price drop by 98% at the same time? Click here if you’d like some schadenfreude with your morning coffee.
A big problem with the survey is only having one classification of "Republican", given that there are 2 Republican categories: Establishment and MAGA, GOPe and GOPm. I'd be willing to bet that any "Republican" journalist who espouses our founding principles, which is a good way to categorize GOPm, would be ashamed to call themselves "Republican", because RINOs like Bill Crystal, Stephen F. Hayes, Lindsay Graham, G.W. Bush, and Nikki Haley call themselves "Republican" when, in fact, they are nothing more than the GOPe wing of the Uniparty. And I wonder how many journalists who make up the alternate media that has exploded in recent years participated in the poll? People like The Gateway Pundit, Jordan Sather, BioClandestine, and James O'Keefe who are the real investigative journalists these days with the self-destruction of the Drive Bye Propaganda Marxist Media the likes of the New York Slimes, Washington Compost, MSDNC, and the other "legacy" outlets.
Republican, Democrat or Independent, the main thing that irks me about the media is the lack of basic skills in investigative journalism. In the few topic areas I have some deep knowledge there is usually a gorilla in the room that is completely ignored. In climate change reporting for example, the amount of surface area required by wind turbines and solar panels, and the huge push back on those by local communities goes unreported. For example, a federal judge recently ordered the removal of an 84-turbine wind farm covering 8,400 acres in Osage County, Oklahoma. The issue was the illegal mining of aggregate on the Osage Reservation during the construction phase of the project, which continued on after a court order to cease. The cost to remove those wind turbines will be $300 million. At about the same time Michigan joined California and New York in overruling county and city governments in siting wind turbine and solar farms because local opposition is too intense. Yet the media only reported on Michigan’s green energy package of the Bills incentives to “move away from fossil fuels.” It’s frustrating to see this kind of bias.The Osage story should be front page news in major media. But it doesn’t fit the climate change and renewable energy narrative, so it’s crickets. Another topic I am less knowledgeable about is when Biden son’s lap top was discovered to have damaging information on it related to his father’s run for president. That story was massively suppressed. So for stories I am interested in, and those I know something about, I suspect there are not enough good journalist out there like Ted Tice. If your colleagues would just report facts, all of them, and let the chips fall where they will, I think readership would start to recover.