The following commentary is published on Thursdays as part of TPPF’s subscriber-only newsletter The Post. If you would like to subscribe to The Post, click here.
The left-wing bias of the mainstream media is nothing new. It will likely be on display in the questions asked and coverage following tonight’s presidential debate. For most of my career in political communication, conservatives have struggled with getting reporters and editors to cover our positions accurately and fairly. But in recent years, impartiality seeping into the coverage of today’s issues has turned into a full-blown culture of left-wing activism in newsrooms.
What’s interesting is how brazen they are about it today. Several recent high-profile examples demonstrate how open their organizations are about promoting – and intentionally assisting – liberal causes, while attacking or refusing to cover stories that might validate conservative positions.
For example, Uri Berliner describes three instances where NPR knowingly pushed story narratives – Russia collusion, Hunter’s laptop, and the Wuhan lab leak – that would help Democrats and hurt Donald Trump .
Nellie Bowles writes how the New York Times would slow roll or spike stories that might promote a conservative position, such as exposing the violent Antifa movement. And Vice Media suffered a catastrophic collapse after it was hollowed out by the woke police who wanted to use the platform to influence the public toward a left-wing worldview.
So what changed? I believe many in the mainstream media, particularly at the biggest institutions, feel tremendous guilt for its role in elevating Donald Trump in the 2016 primary. Trump famously received more than $2 billion in free media on his way to the nomination, dwarfing all the other candidates. By the time the media pivoted in the general election to focus their attacks on him, it was too late. The Trump Train rolled into the White House.
Trump then went on to, in the eyes of the media, commit the dual atrocities of appointing conservative Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and objecting to the 2020 election results which incited the attacks at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. The gut-wrenching sense of complicity must have eaten at them each day.
So now they have overcorrected. They can’t simply take the jersey off and cover current events in a neutral way. To atone for their role in promoting Trump, they feel they have a moral obligation not just to ensure Joe Biden wins and Trump loses, but that all conservatives are silenced and portrayed as evil and extreme in all things.
Unfortunately, I think there is no going back. This is what the media is now.