Of Course The Media Is Liberal. But You’re Dead Wrong On The Reason Why.
“The liberal media…
That sentence usually ends with dangerous statements such as:
- …hates Trump.”
- …loves Hillary.”
- …loves government to solve all of our problems.”
- …is fake news.”
There is an alarming number of people who think journalism is:
- people yelling on cable news
- radio talk shows
- or articles labeled as analysis or opinion in newspapers
They do. They do.
This is exhausting.
None of those things above are examples of journalism. Journalism is defined by Webster as “Writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.” Simply put, journalism is researched and sourced-based stories about people, places and things.
You may believe that the mainstream media is a bunch of democrats with an agenda to push. Nope. It’s not about ideology — it’s about geography.
Why are the big car companies located in Detroit? Why are Des Moines and Hartford the insurance capitals of the country? Why are Indianapolis, Seattle, Charlotte and the Bay Area technology hubs? Why are half of the world’s floor tiles made in cities in Spain and Italy? Because industries tend to group together. This clustering creates competition. Workers and businesses learn more from one another when they’re close. Car parts makers didn’t want to be in Oregon. They wanted to be in Michigan, where the cars were being made.
Same goes for the media. They cluster.
According to research conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 73% of broadcast networks and Internet publishers live in American counties that Hillary Clinton won by 30 points or more! 30!
Where’s your CNN bureau in Topeka? Does The New York Times staff an outpost in Oklahoma City? I’m looking for the CBS news office in Fargo…
Take San Francisco. Bluest of the blue. Utopian socialist liberalism at its finest. Now drive inland 35 miles. You’re in red California, friend. Most counties in California ARE red.
But “everyone” lives in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco. There’s the thing. A journalist in San Francisco walks out of her office and sees 20 different ethnic groups on the sidewalk. He hears 10 different languages being spoken. And she grabs lunch at a Mongolian barbecue joint that is getting raves on a food app. This journalist isn’t going to a diner where the server is a lady named Flo and the special is a ham steak and a preacher is sitting at the counter enjoying a cup of coffee.
The vast majority of your news is generated by people who, though they might once have been from Fargo, are now in unbelievably diverse cities. And that worldview has taken hold. Country folks have legit beef with the media, but not because they are all stupid racist haters. They’re not.
I have a tiny bit of cred in this. I’m the son of an Iowa hog farmer and grew up in a county where church was packed on Sundays, everyone ate ham steaks served by a waitress named Flo, and folks worked their asses off in the fields. Those were my people.
It’s not that the reporting of stories about people, places, and things is phony or propaganda. It’s that the stories about people, places and things in the vast rural areas of our states have been ignored by urban policymakers and the media outlets in the cities.
The idiots who think mainstream news is fake like to cite about 20 famous examples of journalistic fakery or flubbery. 60 Minutes screwed this up. That New York Times reporter made that up. CNN blew it with that one thing.
There are 60 million news articles published every month on the Internet. We’re not even including local TV news and the broadcast networks. The amount of truly false and proven false reporting by journalists is so small it can barely be measured. So if you believe ABC execs wake up every morning, rubbing their hands together in evil glee about how they’re going to “get” their agenda shoved down our throats, you are living in Alex Jones’s little world of fuckery.
Fox News Channel is almost always #1 in the 55+ demographic. Why? They talk to the folks out in the country. Their hard news reporting is frequently on point. But the politics and the opinion shows? Bright red raw meat for the disenfranchised white folks. Why wouldn’t they? It’s an audience ripe for romance and ad revenue. But it is not JOURNALISM. Sean Hannity is a professional liar. Rachel Maddow is biased on the extreme left. Opinion shows and talk shows are not seekers of truth. They are preaching to the choirs.
The industry has clustered and it’s telling one narrative, not because of a conspiratorial agenda, but because of the lens they are looking through. I have been a journalist for 20 years. I know many journalists. Not one, not ever, has told me they have faked a source or a story. Because that’s not what we do. It’s the kind of stories the industry is telling, the stuff they choose to report.
You as a news consumer have the right to choose which gatekeepers you wish to trust. There are 7 billion stories told every day on Earth. Every human did something today. Journalists try to find the top 20 things they think you’ll care about and sort it out for you. And when they make a mistake they retract or correct. You’ll never hear a talk show host do that.
Stop calling them liars. You’re killing your country if you do. We can both agree that if media publishers and broadcasters were decentralized, with more independence in ownership and less corporate coastal influence, it’d be a better media landscape for all of us.
There are many stories yet to be told. For our sake, let’s hope they’re the best ones possible.
