by Eric Zhou
Many of us can agree that this past election was a unique one. Coronavirus concerns, uncivilized debates, accusations of fraud; It was all quite out of the ordinary. Even more extraordinary is President Trump’s refusal to concede, citing massive voter fraud for which he has yet to provide physical proof. Legally, Trump has certainly lost the race; any attempt by the administration to get the issue in front of the Supreme Court will most likely fail, and is rather irresponsible given the current circumstances. Yet make no mistake - this election was biased. An election won by means of a demonizing, selective narrative pushed by the left and so strongly corroborated by the media that it has led 71 percent of Republicans to distrust the news media. In comparison, only 22 percent of Democrats distrust the news that they consume. And why would Democrats have a reason to dislike what they’re hearing? The media feeds them what they want to hear.
In June of 2004, Tim Groseclose of the University of California at Los Angeles and Jeff Milyo of the University of Chicago conducted an objective study of bias in news media. They measured the tendency of media sources to cite 200 prominent think tanks in their reports, then assigned a number rating to each of them. The centrist rating was set at 39, and any numbers lower were deemed conservative, while any numbers higher were deemed liberal. Conservative outlets like Fox News and the Washington Times were given ratings of 27 and 34 respectively - relatively close to the median. On the other hand, the most liberal news outlet, Newsweek, had a rating of 72, a whopping 33 points higher than the median. Other liberal outlets, including The New York Times, CBS, and NBC all had ratings of 62 to 64, 23 points above the median. Even in 2004, the media showed a significant bias towards the left.
One would not be wrong in saying that these statistics were gathered 16 years ago, and thus may not be an accurate representation of journalism today. Yet recent evidence shows that the media has only skewed further left. A survey conducted in 2014 as part of a long-term project analyzing reporters’ biases found that only 7.1% of journalists identified as Republicans, while 50.2% identified as independent and 49.7% as Democrats. The study also concluded that these so-called “independents” were consistently left-leaning on social issues; this means that just 6 years ago, nearly 92.9% of all media was biased for the left.
Still too outdated? Consider this: another study in 2018 conducted by researchers from Arizona State University and Texas A&M University questioned 462 financial reporters - historically the most conservative among mainstream journalists - and found that 58.47% claimed to be liberal, while 37.12% claimed to be “moderate”. Considering moderates tend to lean left, this means that in financial journalism alone, liberals outnumber conservatives 13 to 1.
As expected, this heavy bias spells disaster for the Trump administration. Because he’s boldly called out the media for being “the enemy of the American people”, the media have increased their attacks on Trump to an unbelievable level. In a 2018 study, the Media Research Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to exposing media bias, viewed about 1,000 evening news stories on networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC, or about 32 hours of news. What they found was that the mainstream media’s coverage of Trump was overwhelmingly hostile - 92% of stories were negative compared to just 8% being positive. If these stories were in fact true, and 92% of Trump’s actions are actually bad, then how would Trump have received the second highest popular vote total in history? Are 74 million American citizens radical conservatives? The coverage of Trump isn’t news. It is borderline propaganda.
There is a section on CNN’s website called “Facts First”. The description reads, “CNN holds elected officials and candidates accountable by pointing out what’s true and what’s not”. Recent “fact checks” have the headlines, “Trump delivers the most dishonest speech of his presidency as Biden closes in on victory”, “Trump makes series of egregious false claims in Election Night address”, and “Fact-checking the dangerous Bin Laden conspiracy theory that Trump touted”. Now, the description mentions holding candidates accountable - candidates plural. It is odd, then, that as I currently scroll down the page, there are two articles related to Biden in a sea of articles attacking Trump. No candidate is perfect - Trump has his fair share of controversies and so does Biden. But where are the articles slandering Biden’s support of a crime bill that put countless African Americans in prison? What about the cages at the border that the Obama administration built?
Just a month ago, journalist James O’Keefe leaked audio recordings of CNN president Jeff Zucker telling his staff to attack Trump’s supposedly erratic behavior. He was quoted as saying, “OK, I just want to re-emphasize that, you know, I think we cannot normalize what has happened here in the last week with Trump and his behavior… this is a president who knows he's losing, who knows he's in trouble, is sick, maybe is on the after-effects of steroids or not… He is all over the place and acting erratically. And I think we need to lean into that.” Accusations of steroids and erratic behavior? Yet there is no mention of Biden’s concerning memory issues by the left, and when the right brings it up, it is somehow a disgusting attack on Biden’s character. One can observe that not only are the mainstream media biased to the point of dehumanization, but also that there is a frighteningly normalized double standard for them to abuse freely.
Even with this blatant censorship, Trump managed to pull in 232 electoral votes and 74 million popular votes. What would have happened if people were consuming stories that criticized both candidates equally? I find it very hard to believe that Trump would still have lost. The loss of accountability and responsibility in the media foreshadows a very dark path for America, and it’s time that we start demanding fairness in our reporting.