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.
(Full disclosure: I participated in this survey. I was one of the independents.)
1. It's no surprise that Democrats are overrepresented and Republicans are underrepresented in the media, but notice that independents are overrepresented even more than Democrats are. That's a healthy sign that a lot of journalists still want to keep their distance from partisan politics.
2. Journalists are far more likely than the general population to hold college degrees, and college graduates have been leaving the Republican Party in droves. That reflects polarization and a growing tendency among Republicans to devalue the idea of objective truth and denigrate college grads as indoctrinated, elitist loons. At its best, college gives you a broader perspective on the world, opens your mind to ideas you weren't raised with, and teaches you to think independently. Those are not values that are prized in today's Republican Party.
3. Journalists reflect their communities, and the number of newspapers in rural red communities (and the number of journalists employed at the remaining papers) has plummeted due to market forces and the pernicious influence of vampire hedge funds like Alden. A lot of Republican reporters in those areas have moved on to other careers and dropped out of the survey. This is an alarming trend that's hurting small communities and opening the door to public corruption and social deterioration.
4. The study found that 61% of journalists have been subject to some kind of abuse or threat. (I have not, fortunately, unless you count the typical "I'm going to sue you if you print that" nonsense.) Imagine what that does to morale. And if you're trying to cover an individual or a group fairly, is that going to become easier or harder when that individual or group constantly demeans, insults and even threatens you?
5. Just because journalists lean left doesn't mean they can't cover the news fairly. I'm more conservative than the community I cover, but there are a few folks in the community who are more conservative than me. I try to cover everybody fairly, and I think most journalists share that same goal, even if we sometimes fall short. So judge journalists by their coverage, not their party affiliation.
I’m betting a lot of those independent people in the media are Democrat and are choosing independent to appear less biased, whether it’s an acknowledged thought or not.
A shared sense of purpose bonds journalists together in their everyday conversations and relationships. Woodward and Bernstein were the role models, speaking truth to power. As the print era declined, cable news, talk radio, and the internet defined new media playing fields for our political conflicts. Talk radio, doable with minimal manpower, attracted the right. Thousands on the Left networked into positions of influence with like-minded entrants. Were the doors barred to conservatives? Were there not enough people like WFB and Irving Kristol to recruit, socialize, and promote talent? Or is it possibly a top-down problem, the sheer paucity of conservative moguls, investors, and leaders in the field? How did conservatism become low status, and liberalism an article of faith among the journalistic majority?
When print began sinking, the right abandoned ship but the left launched the life boats. When the conservative NY Herald-Tribune went bust it's most entertaining asset, the New York magazine supplement, went on to thrive as a liberal (now very left) weekly. When the Washington Post, a crucial political journal of influence, was endangered, up stepped Mr. Bezos. Most top national news brands are now left-owned. American conservatives seem to prefer the outsider/startup approach, probably for a lack of available -- or interested -- billionaires. Not only is the failure rate high and internal fracture more the rule than the exception, there's no effort to aim for objective, seemingly authoritative positioning with the audience. Only true believers on the right need apply.
The billionaires on the left are just more media savvy. On the right, a sense of purpose is often tied to faith-based DNA. The skeptical cultural mindset which powers dedicated journalists is absent. Liberal/left journalism has a natural affinity for combining news, culture, and features in the secular world. On the right, the publications, stations, book publishers, and other outlets are often owned by religious organizations, or committed to serving that audience. Every week the lead-in to Fox News' best journalist (Maria Bartiromo), commands viewers to "Go to Church!" The core TV concept of the audience lead-in takes a lower priority. From the billionaires down to the media students deciding on where to do internships, conservatives' inner sense of purpose stands inimical to the secular value of being the primary voice of truth in our society.
I don't think a journalist's personal political preference *has* to influence how he writes, it's just that writing propaganda seems to be encouraged. If they stuck to the basic tenets of journalism, in theory we would get a relatively balanced view regardless. We need to take the activism out of the media and return to the days when you could trust they were telling you something close to the unvarnished truth regardless of their personal political preference.
Balance is great in theory, and it works in practice if two sides are arguing in good faith about a matter of opinion. But when one side is telling the truth and the other side is spouting hooey, reporters can't say, "Tom says the Earth is round and Frank says it's triangular. You decide." That's the situation a lot of journalists are in right now. You have to be faithful to the facts, even if that makes one side look bad.
Example: Last night Jesse Watters on Fox News aired a ridiculous conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift being a psyop. He admitted he had "no evidence," but he played a video clip from 2019 claiming to show "the Pentagon psychological operations unit" floating the idea. In fact, the speaker was a researcher with no ties to the Pentagon, and the meeting didn't involve any U.S. officials.
So if you're a reporter assigned a story on whether Taylor Swift is a psyop, on one side you'd have Jesse and some fringe loonies and on the other side you'd have reality. If you present a balanced mix of BS and truth without favoring truth over BS, you're deceiving your readers.
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.
(Full disclosure: I participated in this survey. I was one of the independents.)
1. It's no surprise that Democrats are overrepresented and Republicans are underrepresented in the media, but notice that independents are overrepresented even more than Democrats are. That's a healthy sign that a lot of journalists still want to keep their distance from partisan politics.
2. Journalists are far more likely than the general population to hold college degrees, and college graduates have been leaving the Republican Party in droves. That reflects polarization and a growing tendency among Republicans to devalue the idea of objective truth and denigrate college grads as indoctrinated, elitist loons. At its best, college gives you a broader perspective on the world, opens your mind to ideas you weren't raised with, and teaches you to think independently. Those are not values that are prized in today's Republican Party.
3. Journalists reflect their communities, and the number of newspapers in rural red communities (and the number of journalists employed at the remaining papers) has plummeted due to market forces and the pernicious influence of vampire hedge funds like Alden. A lot of Republican reporters in those areas have moved on to other careers and dropped out of the survey. This is an alarming trend that's hurting small communities and opening the door to public corruption and social deterioration.
4. The study found that 61% of journalists have been subject to some kind of abuse or threat. (I have not, fortunately, unless you count the typical "I'm going to sue you if you print that" nonsense.) Imagine what that does to morale. And if you're trying to cover an individual or a group fairly, is that going to become easier or harder when that individual or group constantly demeans, insults and even threatens you?
5. Just because journalists lean left doesn't mean they can't cover the news fairly. I'm more conservative than the community I cover, but there are a few folks in the community who are more conservative than me. I try to cover everybody fairly, and I think most journalists share that same goal, even if we sometimes fall short. So judge journalists by their coverage, not their party affiliation.
I’m betting a lot of those independent people in the media are Democrat and are choosing independent to appear less biased, whether it’s an acknowledged thought or not.
Maybe, although lying on an anonymous poll is pretty silly.
A shared sense of purpose bonds journalists together in their everyday conversations and relationships. Woodward and Bernstein were the role models, speaking truth to power. As the print era declined, cable news, talk radio, and the internet defined new media playing fields for our political conflicts. Talk radio, doable with minimal manpower, attracted the right. Thousands on the Left networked into positions of influence with like-minded entrants. Were the doors barred to conservatives? Were there not enough people like WFB and Irving Kristol to recruit, socialize, and promote talent? Or is it possibly a top-down problem, the sheer paucity of conservative moguls, investors, and leaders in the field? How did conservatism become low status, and liberalism an article of faith among the journalistic majority?
When print began sinking, the right abandoned ship but the left launched the life boats. When the conservative NY Herald-Tribune went bust it's most entertaining asset, the New York magazine supplement, went on to thrive as a liberal (now very left) weekly. When the Washington Post, a crucial political journal of influence, was endangered, up stepped Mr. Bezos. Most top national news brands are now left-owned. American conservatives seem to prefer the outsider/startup approach, probably for a lack of available -- or interested -- billionaires. Not only is the failure rate high and internal fracture more the rule than the exception, there's no effort to aim for objective, seemingly authoritative positioning with the audience. Only true believers on the right need apply.
The billionaires on the left are just more media savvy. On the right, a sense of purpose is often tied to faith-based DNA. The skeptical cultural mindset which powers dedicated journalists is absent. Liberal/left journalism has a natural affinity for combining news, culture, and features in the secular world. On the right, the publications, stations, book publishers, and other outlets are often owned by religious organizations, or committed to serving that audience. Every week the lead-in to Fox News' best journalist (Maria Bartiromo), commands viewers to "Go to Church!" The core TV concept of the audience lead-in takes a lower priority. From the billionaires down to the media students deciding on where to do internships, conservatives' inner sense of purpose stands inimical to the secular value of being the primary voice of truth in our society.
That is probably why no one trusts journalist any more!!
I don't think a journalist's personal political preference *has* to influence how he writes, it's just that writing propaganda seems to be encouraged. If they stuck to the basic tenets of journalism, in theory we would get a relatively balanced view regardless. We need to take the activism out of the media and return to the days when you could trust they were telling you something close to the unvarnished truth regardless of their personal political preference.
Balance is great in theory, and it works in practice if two sides are arguing in good faith about a matter of opinion. But when one side is telling the truth and the other side is spouting hooey, reporters can't say, "Tom says the Earth is round and Frank says it's triangular. You decide." That's the situation a lot of journalists are in right now. You have to be faithful to the facts, even if that makes one side look bad.
Example: Last night Jesse Watters on Fox News aired a ridiculous conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift being a psyop. He admitted he had "no evidence," but he played a video clip from 2019 claiming to show "the Pentagon psychological operations unit" floating the idea. In fact, the speaker was a researcher with no ties to the Pentagon, and the meeting didn't involve any U.S. officials.
So if you're a reporter assigned a story on whether Taylor Swift is a psyop, on one side you'd have Jesse and some fringe loonies and on the other side you'd have reality. If you present a balanced mix of BS and truth without favoring truth over BS, you're deceiving your readers.
Why media is so skewed to the Left were 3.4% of nothing to impact Media
Need our Own Media system alone