Media Bias – What Won’t Work, What Helps (Somewhat)

​You don’t have to be in the bag for one party or another to see that media outlets are taking on the partisan tone of newspapers reminiscent of the vitriol of the early American Republic. CNN and Fox News are at the far latitudes of different hemispheres and Newsmax and MSNBC are the North and South poles.
 
Roland Fryer, a Harvard University professor of economics, in Monday’s Wall Street Journal writes that the economic incentives of a fragmented media environment make it unlikely that we will see a return to objective journalism any time soon. “My hunch is that it will get worse before it gets better,” Fryer wrote. “I am skeptical that there is enough demand for objectivity and believe there are powerful economic forces pushing media outlets to give audiences the red meat they desire.”
 
All answers to this conundrum have so far failed. For example, some promote subsidized journalism as a way to ensure clear-eyed objectivity. But a close reading of subsidized ventures invariably reveals they skew to the left- or right-leaning predilections of their billionaire donors. We should remember that one reason early American newspapers were so biased is that they often received lucrative printing contracts when their favored political party won an election.
 
Out of frustration some hold up the heavy-handed speech codes of Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union as a way forward. But, as we saw in the censorship of the Covid “lab-leak theory” – now held by the FBI as probably true – no one is smart enough to declare what is disinformation and what is mere information that belongs in the national debate.
 
Some look to President-elect Trump’s successful lawsuit against ABC for anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate statement that Donald Trump had been held “liable for rape by a jury.” ABC’s admission of error resulted in a $15 million settlement by the news organization to the Trump presidential library. This defamation case is cheered by some on the right as a sign that media bias can be addressed by aggressive application of libel law. This outcome certainly offers a new precedent that widens the boundaries of a public figure’s ability to win a defamation suit. Yet the statement in question was a limited misstatement of fact from a professional news organization, placing it arguably within the boundaries for public figures set by the U.S. Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan.
 
Most media bias, right or left, is not like that. Bias is less about how a story is reported, and more about which stories are selected. Thus CNN focuses on anonymous reports of Defense nominee Peter Hegseth’s alleged peccadillos, while Fox News focuses on heinous crimes committed by illegal aliens.
 
So if subsidized journalism, anti-“disinformation” campaigns by a consortium of government and media, and libel law will not guarantee objective journalism, what can we do?
 
We should begin by accepting there is no getting around the need to respect that the First Amendment gives media outlets the right to report in a biased fashion if they so choose. Even biased reporting fulfills the right of readers, watchers, and listeners to receive available reporting that aligns with their own biases. This is decidedly suboptimal. But if the alternative is to put some government functionary or faceless executive, or trial lawyer in charge of determining truth for everyone, we will be even worse off.
 
Fryer is right that media outlets pander to their audiences. The only way we’ve found to achieve balance is to skim The New York Times and Breitbart, CNN and Fox News, and then use our brains to read between the lines.

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