A Reflux on Our Society
Rethinking media bias.
Oh, man. This is so embarrassing. I owe someone an apology. Not just any someone. I mean the Republican Party.
For 50 years I’ve been listening to them complain about media bias and the cabal of partisan journalists smearing them again and again as caricatures of dishonesty, hypocrisy, bigotry, political cynicism and, often, criminality. And how did I react to such complaints?
By rolling my eyes. To me, the whiners were just running against the media, because they didn’t have the goods — or the courage — to run on their own records. And were shamed when their secrets became headlines.
I didn’t even stop to think whether they had a point. Bias? From an institution that prides itself not on some imaginary notion of objectivity, but on intellectual honesty — reporting based on the public record, data, evidence and sometimes law? How could we stand accused of putting our thumbs on the scale? The allegation was so obviously propaganda, failing to acknowledge the disproportionately Republican misconduct and duplicity that generates bad press.
Or so I thought. But now I’m recalculating. In recent days I’ve done some investigating and found smoking guns of the very sort of bias they describe. I mean, it’s all there in black and white: the radical left press piling on without even trying to hide its contempt or balance coverage with the “other side of the story.”
This passage, for instance, is plucked from The Guardian:
On 24 February, the armor of the “enlightened autocrat” that had housed Vladimir Putin for the previous 20 years cracked and fell to pieces. The world saw a monster – crazed in its desires and ruthless in its decisions. The monster had grown gradually, gaining strength from year to year, marinating in its own absolute authority, imperial aggression, hatred for western democracy, and malice fueled by the resentment engendered by the fall of the USSR. Now, Europe will have to deal, not with the former Putin, but the new Putin who has cast aside his mask of “business partnership” and “peaceful collaboration”. There shall never again be peace with him. How and why has this come to pass?
Maybe the question should be: how and why is there no Kremlin response here? Or any balance whatsoever. Ok, so Putin slightly invaded a neighboring country and caused the death of hundreds of thousands Ukrainians and Russians, and perhaps 20 of his political rivals have coincidentally fallen to their deaths, and others have been poisoned and his courts deal harshly with opponents on bogus charges.
What about the positive things he has done, such as extremely fastidious personal Covid hygiene and equestrian photography? He is president for life. Where is the respect?
Rhetorical question. If only that example were an outlier.
Let’s discuss Sean Combs. Here is a three-time Grammy winner, a philanthropist and billionaire entrepreneur suddenly arrested by the weaponized Justice Department on allegations of sex trafficking, abuse, racketeering and whatever book they can throw at him. This is a man who had his own tequila brand and ran a marathon, but all the press focuses on is unproven charges. Like this story from the BBC:
More than a dozen civil lawsuits in total have been filed accusing the music mogul of assaults, rape and sexual extortion. In these lawsuits, both men and women say they were coerced or forced into sex, either by Mr Combs or those in his entourage. Others say they obliged because they were intimidated by Mr Combs and the power he held in the entertainment industry. Some described having their careers derailed or opportunities taken from them when they did not cave to Mr Combs’s whims.
Rush to judgment much? The response from Diddy’s camp is interesting, because it could have been written by Trump spokesman Steven Cheung:
It’s disappointing to see the media and social commentators twist these cultural moments into something they were not. Shaming celebrities who attended, taking video clips and photos out of context, and trying to link these events to false allegations is simply untrue.
For reference, here’s some classic Cheung, about accusations in the Daily Beast that Trump had repeatedly reduced Black Americans to the N-word: The story, Cheung said, is “completely fabricated and total fake news of the highest order. It is appalling that a lie so blatantly disgusting can be printed in media.”
Is it not strange that the same bias complaint is lodged in entirely different spheres of public life? Are you beginning to see the pattern?
Alas, there’s more. This is a headline from the Tallahassee Democrat:
FSU football may not win another game this season
Oh, I see. Suddenly the media are clairvoyant, cruelly attacking the vaunted Florida State Seminoles football program. For decades an NCAA powerhouse — going 13-1 as recently as last season — Florida State is being smeared as incompetent after beginning the 2024 season 1-4. As if that single out-of-context fact were the whole story.
Sportswriters ridiculed the team for its 42-16 loss to Clemson, but didn’t see fit to mention that, with one or two luckier bounces, the final score could easily have been 42-19. Still, the paper predicts a winless next five games. For the hometown team! Sick. Oh, and what was that paper again? Ah, yes. The DEMOCRAT.
Since when do journalists have the right, much less duty, to uncover inconvenient facts and report the so-called “reality” in front of them? They think they can, for instance, count 35,000 documented, public lies someone has told and just glibly brand him a liar? Who died and made them mathematicians? Do they not consider the damage they are doing? This leads me right back to college football. Before the 2024 season even began, the radical left Marxists at The New York Times’ sports spinoff The Athletic arrogantly pronounced Kennesaw State University the worst of 134 Division I teams. Um, says who? So traumatic was the obvious bias that the team has since gone 0-6. Obviously, The New York Times hates the Owls and hates America.
The sad thing is, the constant negativism about certain disfavored parties has left us all brainwashed. Here are a few more headlines:
Has the human species become a cancer on the planet?
Interesting. So smug and self-righteous are the media and their elitist cousins in academia that they single out one natural biological process and not only stigmatize it but make it synonymous with horror. Excuse me … what about eczema, ADHD and reflux? Are they so innocent? And then there’s the abject refusal to see the good things about cancer. Just as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) reminded us that slavery helped Blacks learn valuable work skills, and just as Donald Trump praised Hitler for building up the German economy, we should remember what this ancient condition, as old as life itself, has meant to pharma, screenwriters and the walk-a-thon-industry.
But no. That’s not how the biased media behave. Instead they reflexively criticize cancer, just as George Soros wants them to. Cowards.
But what about whataboutism??!! Surely that’s keeping the media in check. Huh?