It’s why you should never trust, or even listen to the news
The weekend brought a startling omission from the venerable, politely left-wing magazine The New Yorker, courtesy of staff writer Jay Caspian Kang: “How Biased Is the Media, Really?” (New Yorker style apparently treats the plural word “media” as singular.) Kang’s answer: Pretty biased toward Democrats, if not the far-left.
His question was hooked to Gallup’s annual poll, “Americans’ Trust in Mass Media,” a trust which has declined from over 70 percent in 1976 to 31 percent today.
You don’t need a Gallup poll to tell that the public’s trust in the mass media — which for these purposes we can define as the major broadcast and cable networks, newspapers, and a handful of high-profile magazines — has fallen, and, although the reasons for this decline aren’t as immediately clear as they might seem, the fallout from decades of growing suspicion and contempt toward the press litters the political discourse. Much of the criticism aimed at the media is both fair and accurate, and, even if I don’t believe the scale of the harms to be as large as some say, I do think the attacks carry added significance in an election year….
Kang offered up a hypothetical question, then answered it:
Every news organization that feigns objectivity is actually heavily slanted toward the left. Not only that; the media is actively working with the Democrats to defeat Donald Trump.
Kang’s “reply” references former NPR editor Uri Berliner, who revealed his company’s intolerant brand of tax-funded leftism:
Delusions of Adequacy 