How The Mainstream Media Killed Itself

It’s been a long time coming, but the mainstream media is now officially dead. According to Gallup, the trust of the mass media among Americans was down to 32% back in September. After the election, the Wall Street Journal reports an approval rating as low as 19%.

The funny thing is, the media did it to itself. Taking opinions and disguising them as objective reporting doesn’t count as journalism. But for years now, that’s exactly what news outlets like CNN and MSNBC have been doing. Sometimes bias can be disguised by portraying objective facts, but cherry-picking those facts to paint the picture you wish to portray.

For example, when the media acts like Donald Trump’s demeaning comments about women are just as important as Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information. Both may be true, but portraying them as being equally bad is a gross error. Unlike dodging FOIA requests by using a home-brew email server, speaking rudely about women has nothing to do with being president.

And that’s just a recent example. The reason it became so obvious now is because, in the past, the media would often try to hide their bias, at least partly. But during this election cycle, the media was so out of touch with how the American public thinks that it assumed a vast majority of people would be on board with the idea that Trump could never be president. This caused them to shed their cloak of false objectivity and speak openly about how they really felt.

And the public noticed. Once the election was over and Trump won, everyone saw the stark contrast between what the media thinks and what the people think. And this contrast applies even more broadly to the political left as well. The people have rejected both the left and the media that supports it. Maybe, just maybe, calling people racist just because they’re white, or sexist just because they’re men, turns people off to your cause.

But that’s another story.

Media Bias Fact Check?

I recently came across a website called Media Bias Fact Check, which claims to rate the right/left bias of various media outlets and determine their level of trustworthiness. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think journalistic bias is a big problem, especially in the mainstream media (CNN, MSNBC, and such). However, there is a problem with that site that I think needs to be addressed.

The site seems to think that the more biased a website is, in either direction, the more untrustworthy it is. That would be true, if and only if both the left and right sides of the political spectrum were equally untrustworthy. That is not necessarily the case. Leftist ideology tends to be based on feelings and opinions, while the right takes on a more practical, real-world approach to policy.

Look at it this way: if you have a group of people that think the sky is blue, and a group that thinks it’s red, which one is correct? The Blue Skyers of course. Now imagine we have a website that reports on both groups, but seems to be biased in favor of believing the Red Skyers. That would be bias that results in untrustworthy information, because the Red Skyers are wrong. If, however, the website leans towards believing the Blue Skyers, their information would be more trustworthy because of their “bias.”

And that’s where the problem of media bias lies. In order to actually be objective, you can’t be completely neutral, unless both sides are equally wrong. Neutrality involves taking a position directly between the two sides so as not to favor one over the other. But if you are to be objective, you have to report the facts. If the facts happen to line up with one side’s ideology, so be it. To the ignorant, you may appear to be biased in favor of that side, but that’s simply a side effect of true being truly objective.