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John Jackson
I can’t agree more with Mike on sources. The mainstream media try (and largely, but imperfectly, do) report the news impartially. If you doubt this, look at the mainstream media’s reporting on the Afghanistan withdrawal. Rather than circling the wagons to defend Biden, their coverage was withering.
A good example of how responsible media separate the opinion and the news pages is the Wall Street Journal. It has a very conservative opinion page, but its news pages, because its reporters and editors subscribe to traditional journalistic principles of relying on what can and cannot be verified through reputable sources, are not much different than the New York Times, Washington Post, AP or coverage on the major networks (from the networks I exclude the embarrassment of Fox News primetime hosts like Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, etc.).
The right wing media, on the other hand, make no bones about impartiality (and it shows).
One of the most distressing things is that when people on today’s far right lose the argument because they don’t have the facts to back up their claim, they whine and claim that mainstream media is “biased”. In other words, they work the refs. This is new - traditional conservatives have in the past shown a respect for facts and rational argument and are appalled at what is happening today in their party.
But the main reason not to trust right-wing over mainstream media is that they have an appalling record of getting it right on major issues. Three examples:
Climate change: The argument in the scientific community was over 20 (or more) years ago. After our summer of freakish weather catastrophes and as virtually all major domestic and foreign car manufacturers “vote with their feet” by announcing they are no longer developing new car models based on the internal combustion engine (and announce huge investments in battery plants for electric cars), even Republicans in Congress are starting to acknowledge the reality of climate change.
Stop the Steal: There are no credible facts to support the idea that the 2020 election was stolen. If there were, at least one of the more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump’s clown car legal team in federal or state courts wouldn’t have been dismissed. Instead, even conservative judges, some appointed by Trump, have largely laughed these cases out of court. There is no better example of a conspiracy theory than Stop the Steal.
Vaccine misinformation: A staple of right wing media coverage is politicizing and casting doubt on the demonstrated safety and effectiveness of the COVID vaccines. Vaccine skepticism about the types of vaccines that are required in all fifty states for schoolchildren used to be confined to the extreme far left, but, thanks to right wing media misinformation on the COVID vaccines, I suspect skepticism about vaccines of all kinds will now go mainstream in many places. Silver lining - weren’t we all just a little nostalgic for the return of whooping cough, measles, etc?
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