Some Americans wistfully yearn for a return to the journalism of last century. They point to longtime news anchor Walter Cronkite as a bastion of fairness, and wonder if we’ll ever be able to retreat from the highly partisan style of today’s journalism.
While it seems noble, it’s not based in reality. For example, the media was biased way back in the 1960s and 1970s against the Vietnam War, demoralizing Americans and their support for the war. Bias has always been there, it was just more subtle. And it was almost always against conservatives.
The left dominated the media back then, and gradually became more emboldened about its bias. Books like Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals influenced the leftists in the media, convincing them that they needed to take more drastic action through journalism in order to influence the political sphere.
One of the biggest ways this political activism crept into journalism was through the AP Stylebook. Each year, the Associated Press puts out updated stylistic guidelines for journalists. The book used to cover mainly non-substantive aspects, such as which words most accurately describe a certain situation or when words need capitalization. But now the guide has become Orwellian, instructing journalists to use certain woke buzzwords and avoiding words that have fallen out of favor with progressives.
Most journalists are required by their publications to adhere to the AP Stylebook. The exceptions are conservative journalists and a few publications like The New York Times that have their own style guides, but those guides aren’t substantively different.
An MSM friend of mine told me that he doesn’t like the label MSM. I asked him why not; the MSM has Pulitzer Prizes, dominates the leading papers like The Times, etc. He said it’s because “half the country doesn’t like the MSM and won’t talk to me.”
I asked him why he bothers being MSM anymore, and he said it was because of their “vetting and standards.” Now, I would argue that whatever credibility they had in this area has been thoroughly refuted at this point; the Orwellian bias of the AP Stylebook is a classic example. It is no longer establishing standards, but establishing propaganda.
The MSM complains about the activism of right-wing journalism — but they did it to themselves; right-wing journalism arose as a reaction to the MSM’s increasing bias. Maricopa County tried to ban right-wing journalist Jordan Conradson of The Gateway Pundit from attending election news conferences, but the publication sued and won on First Amendment grounds, resulting in a $175,000 settlement against the county.
The county’s argument against allowing the prolific journalist to attend? "Conradson participates in political party events and associates with people and groups that demonstrate an inability to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest,” the county said in pleadings.
The irony is that the MSM now ignores conflicts of interest. In Arizona, the president of the Phoenix Society of Professionals — the MSM’s main organization — is also the editor of the State Bar of Arizona’s magazine for attorneys. The collusion is offensive, and makes it unfair for conservative attorneys in Arizona to get fair treatment in the MSM. The group meets in Changing Hands bookstore, which brags about how it has no conservative books inside the store.
A study that came out seven months ago found that only 3.4% of American journalists are Republicans. In contrast, more than 96% of journalists who contributed money in the 2016 presidential race contributed to Hillary Clinton, The Center for Public Integrity found.
The ways the MSM has expanded into dictating politics instead of just reporting it is always expanding. One of those recent ways is by taking over much of polling. For years, everyone looked to the political polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight as a somewhat fair source for polls. But the MSM — ABC — bought it out and it’s never been the same, with even its former owner Nate Silver denouncing the site for bias against pollster Rasmussen Reports, a favorite of conservatives. The new ownership threatened to drop Rasmussen from its site unless it answered questions about the pollster’s political views.
The use of anonymous sources by the MSM, which used to be frowned upon under most circumstances, continues to expand, as many of the rumors cited never prove ultimately to be accurate. But since the MSM almost completely ignores its own flaws, people never learn about how bad these likely made-up quotes are.
There is a revolving door between the MSM and official government positions now; it’s accepted that the MSM is now composed of activists. An article in 1997 warned about the phenomenon under the Clinton administration. Now, no one bats an eye when presidents tap MSM reporters for official jobs, then those officials return to the MSM afterwards. Any outrage now is usually directed towards the small minority of conservatives engaging in it.
A poll from Axios — a left-leaning site — found that 92% of Republicans believe the MSM intentionally reports false stories. Who wants to read any further in an article after seeing pronouns like “they,” phrases like “insurrection at the Capitol” (not a single J6 protester has ever even been charged with insurrection) or “birthing person?”
As a result, we’re now left in our own echo chambers, reading only news from our preferred partisan sources. I don’t believe we’re ever going back to the so-called heyday of journalism last century. I think the radicalization of journalism is here to stay and it’s only going to get worse. The type of people attracted to journalism in today’s era are mostly left-wing activists, who were further radicalized by the monolithically leftist universities, who believe “by any means necessary.”
Elon Musk helped break down some of these separate echo chambers by turning one of big tech’s monolithically anti-conservative corporations into a fair platform. X the only place where conservatives and leftists regularly spar and free speech flows. While it’s not changing the partisan aspect of journalism, we get some exposure to journalism outside of our echo chambers — and it increases awareness of how crazy the left has become.
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