Are mainstream media members naturally so liberal it creates bias?

Interesting Twitter thread from Ross Douthat on how the media exercised restraint on viral videos regarding late-term abortions in ways that it did not regarding the Covington kids.

 

I think we've reached a point where every reporter is injecting their opinion into their Twitter feeds. Objective "reporting" on either side is rendered useless when the "objective" reporter adds his or her opinion on the matter. It's frustrating.

 

I agree. I'd also say most objective reporters are also pretty liberal/progressive on top of it.

 

If reporters are “liberal” or “progressive” or whatever, it’s because in the process of their reporting careers they routinely see the problems of the unvarnished world rather than the propaganda being handed out by dip wads like Ross Douthat trying to obscure the view of that reality.

 

I'd agree with this. In the last newsroom I worked in, it was basically a bunch of folks who voted democrat, and an opinion editor who was a Reagan republican who has now turned into a Rick-Wilson type never Trumper.

 

Nothing Ross Douthat says is ever interesting, even as a thought experiment.

 

My last newsroom was overwhelmingly conservative.

(Also, too, Douthat is a doofus whose own biases ruin his objectivity. Last week, he griped about the way the town in "Sharp Objects" was portrayed. He said something about how its portrayal was how European who've never visited a small town in Real America imagine things to be. Nevermind the fact Gillian Flynn - a Missourian - wrote the book that it's based on and is quite familiar with small towns in the Ozarks. And the director of the miniseries is a Canadian.)

 

Douthat grew up in New Haven, went to Harvard and lives in New York. He probably should shut the fuck up forever about "small-town America."

 

The recognition of the rights of a free press when the United States Constitution was created was a very liberal concept. In practice, a free press exists to challenge authority with the truth. Those in power or protecting power will almost always view a free press as the voice of opposition to some degree.

 

I think he does.