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I used to spend a lot of time complaining that liberal media bias hurt Republican politicians and conservative causes. I no longer make that argument.
Oh, I still agree with conservatives that the mainstream media is biased toward the left. It could hardly be otherwise, given the political leanings of journalists: A 2022 survey showed that fewer than 4 percent identified as Republicans. In the worst cases, this leads to reporting that treats “Republicans like a crime beat and Democrats like friends in need.” More commonly, it subtly affects what stories journalists choose to cover, what angle they take, whose experts they give more credence and whose feelings they are careful not to hurt.
This effect has grown pronounced over the past decade, in part thanks to pressure from progressive staffers at media organizations. But along the way, something ironic happened: I started to believe that media bias had stopped helping Democrats. Instead, it started to hurt them, along with the institutions themselves.
During this election cycle, I watched in astonishment as left-wing critics complained that the mainstream media was botching this election by “sanewashing” Trump, failing in our duty to cover “not the odds, but the stakes” and trading in false equivalence. I was not astonished that progressives wanted us to spend more time criticizing Trump and less time pointing out the flaws of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. I was amazed because they were talking as if this might affect the election’s outcome.
This conversation seemed to be taking place in an alternate reality — or perhaps in 1976, when 72 percent of Americans reported in a Gallup poll that they had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in mass media. But that trust was purchased by precisely the “view from nowhere” coverage that progressives now decry, because that’s what convinces audiences you’ll give their own views a fair shake.
As the news media moved left, we lost that trust. By 2024, less than one-third of the country had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust; another third said they had “not very much” trust, and the remainder said they had “none at all.” The fact that there’s a clear partisan skew suggests this is connected to our politics. In the latest Gallup survey, 54 percent of Democrats said they had high trust in the media, while only 27 percent of independents and 12 percent of Republicans did.
Given the lack of trust among people who don’t already agree with us, there’s little we could do to persuade them that Trump was a danger. Had we spent this past year standing with arms linked, chanting “Trump is a fascist and an enemy of democracy,” Trump’s vote share would have looked much the same. Trying to correct this problem by amping up the political outrage would have been like trying to cure your lung cancer by smoking an extra pack of cigarettes.
This was damaging for the news media that had already spent down the very reputational capital that progressive critics were begging us to use. But it was also bad for Democrats. By letting them win so many news cycles, we handed them a series of pyrrhic victories.
In fact, the stories that mattered the most during this year’s campaign were the ones where we had given Democrats the most “help.” In the 2020 election cycle, Democratic primary contenders counted on us to give them room to move well to the left, especially on social issues, which is how Harris created the fodder for this year’s negative ads against her. This cycle, Democrats counted on us to downplay Biden’s shocking and obvious decline. The issue was handled with kid gloves, under threat of blowback from campaign operatives, readers and even fellow journalists.
Even as the video evidence became clearer, anonymous Democrats airing concerns were often juxtaposed with quotes from his staff insisting he was still as sharp as a tack. Meanwhile, many of the same outlets repeated the Democratic spin that accurate videos of his concerning behavior were “cheap fakes.” This comforted liberal readers, who could dismiss the stories as nasty rumors swallowed by gullible voters. Judging by the catastrophic reaction to Biden’s debate, much of the mainstream media’s audience availed themselves of that comfort. The result was a disaster for their party.
Democrats got good at working friendly media refs in the era when most voters got their political news from three networks, one or two local papers and a handful of political magazines. But the old gatekeepers no longer have those monopolies; now they control access to a much smaller walled garden, full of nice liberals talking to each other. Outside, the messages they don’t want to hear are racing through the untamed jungle of new media: podcasts, YouTube streams and social media sites.
The gatekeepers know this, hence all the complaints about “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Unfortunately, the only people who can hear their denunciations are the folks at the garden party.
I can’t guarantee that Democrats would have won this year if they’d gotten the message sooner and cut Biden loose in time to find a better candidate than Harris, or at least let her stand up a full campaign. But they certainly would have had a better shot than they gave themselves by trying to use the media as campaign surrogates. Until both Democrats and the media realize their mistake, this will keep happening.
In the age of the internet, it’s no longer possible to win elections by working the refs, because the only decisions that matter are made by the folks in the stands. The refs can keep your coalition in line, but they can’t help you expand it — indeed, they’re likely to shrink it, as more people conclude that the game is rigged. Which means the more often your party wins the calls, the more frequently they will lose the game.
I used to spend a lot of time complaining that liberal media bias hurt Republican politicians and conservative causes. I no longer make that argument.
Oh, I still agree with conservatives that the mainstream media is biased toward the left. It could hardly be otherwise, given the political leanings of journalists: A 2022 survey showed that fewer than 4 percent identified as Republicans. In the worst cases, this leads to reporting that treats “Republicans like a crime beat and Democrats like friends in need.” More commonly, it subtly affects what stories journalists choose to cover, what angle they take, whose experts they give more credence and whose feelings they are careful not to hurt.
This effect has grown pronounced over the past decade, in part thanks to pressure from progressive staffers at media organizations. But along the way, something ironic happened: I started to believe that media bias had stopped helping Democrats. Instead, it started to hurt them, along with the institutions themselves.
During this election cycle, I watched in astonishment as left-wing critics complained that the mainstream media was botching this election by “sanewashing” Trump, failing in our duty to cover “not the odds, but the stakes” and trading in false equivalence. I was not astonished that progressives wanted us to spend more time criticizing Trump and less time pointing out the flaws of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. I was amazed because they were talking as if this might affect the election’s outcome.
This conversation seemed to be taking place in an alternate reality — or perhaps in 1976, when 72 percent of Americans reported in a Gallup poll that they had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in mass media. But that trust was purchased by precisely the “view from nowhere” coverage that progressives now decry, because that’s what convinces audiences you’ll give their own views a fair shake.
As the news media moved left, we lost that trust. By 2024, less than one-third of the country had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust; another third said they had “not very much” trust, and the remainder said they had “none at all.” The fact that there’s a clear partisan skew suggests this is connected to our politics. In the latest Gallup survey, 54 percent of Democrats said they had high trust in the media, while only 27 percent of independents and 12 percent of Republicans did.
Given the lack of trust among people who don’t already agree with us, there’s little we could do to persuade them that Trump was a danger. Had we spent this past year standing with arms linked, chanting “Trump is a fascist and an enemy of democracy,” Trump’s vote share would have looked much the same. Trying to correct this problem by amping up the political outrage would have been like trying to cure your lung cancer by smoking an extra pack of cigarettes.
This was damaging for the news media that had already spent down the very reputational capital that progressive critics were begging us to use. But it was also bad for Democrats. By letting them win so many news cycles, we handed them a series of pyrrhic victories.
In fact, the stories that mattered the most during this year’s campaign were the ones where we had given Democrats the most “help.” In the 2020 election cycle, Democratic primary contenders counted on us to give them room to move well to the left, especially on social issues, which is how Harris created the fodder for this year’s negative ads against her. This cycle, Democrats counted on us to downplay Biden’s shocking and obvious decline. The issue was handled with kid gloves, under threat of blowback from campaign operatives, readers and even fellow journalists.
Even as the video evidence became clearer, anonymous Democrats airing concerns were often juxtaposed with quotes from his staff insisting he was still as sharp as a tack. Meanwhile, many of the same outlets repeated the Democratic spin that accurate videos of his concerning behavior were “cheap fakes.” This comforted liberal readers, who could dismiss the stories as nasty rumors swallowed by gullible voters. Judging by the catastrophic reaction to Biden’s debate, much of the mainstream media’s audience availed themselves of that comfort. The result was a disaster for their party.
Democrats got good at working friendly media refs in the era when most voters got their political news from three networks, one or two local papers and a handful of political magazines. But the old gatekeepers no longer have those monopolies; now they control access to a much smaller walled garden, full of nice liberals talking to each other. Outside, the messages they don’t want to hear are racing through the untamed jungle of new media: podcasts, YouTube streams and social media sites.
The gatekeepers know this, hence all the complaints about “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Unfortunately, the only people who can hear their denunciations are the folks at the garden party.
I can’t guarantee that Democrats would have won this year if they’d gotten the message sooner and cut Biden loose in time to find a better candidate than Harris, or at least let her stand up a full campaign. But they certainly would have had a better shot than they gave themselves by trying to use the media as campaign surrogates. Until both Democrats and the media realize their mistake, this will keep happening.
In the age of the internet, it’s no longer possible to win elections by working the refs, because the only decisions that matter are made by the folks in the stands. The refs can keep your coalition in line, but they can’t help you expand it — indeed, they’re likely to shrink it, as more people conclude that the game is rigged. Which means the more often your party wins the calls, the more frequently they will lose the game.
