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I think the focus on the media's tone misses a more important point about media bias.
Take, for instance, the Hunter Biden laptop coverage back in the closing weeks of the 2020 election. Some have accused the mainstream media of liberal bias there, based on the skeptical tone mainstream outlets took when running those stories (e.g., highlighting the possibility that it was part of a Russian disinformation campaign). But by far the more important point is that they were talking about it at all, while all but ignoring Trump-family corruption stories.
Take any mainstream news archive of your choice and do an article count, in the month before that election, of stories that include "Hunter Biden" and "laptop" versus those that include "Ivanka Trump" and "trademark" (her business was granted a bunch of Chinese trademarks, in apparent defiance of actual Chinese laws, just as her father was negotiating trade policy with them). By all rights, the Ivanka story should have been a much bigger one, since she was actually a major figure in the administration at the time she was being handed those lucrative benefits by a foreign power. By comparison, Hunter Biden was just a private citizen when he worked for that foreign business (as was his father, by the way, at the time when the famous "big guy" email went out).
Yet, despite there being much firmer ground for treating the Ivanka story as a big deal, there was a near blackout of any Ivanka Trump coverage in the period leading up to the election, while the Hunter Biden speculation was treated as one of the biggest stories in the world. The New York Times, for instance, ran sixteen separate stories dealing with Hunter's laptop just in the last two weeks of October 2020 -- more than one per day. And we're not talking about "damage control" stories trying to blame things on the Russians. Like there's a 10/22/22 story laying out everything known to that point about the laptop saga, which goes out of its way to say there's no evidence it's Russian disinformation.
The more important point, though, is that even those articles that injected a note of caution were still acting as if the GOP was their assignment editor -- focusing their articles on whether or not Hunter Biden was crooked, rather than a million other stories they could be covering that would be riskier for Trump. That's what I mean about the difference between tone and content. In terms of tone, the corporate press arguably had a bit of a liberal bias. In terms of content, though, they have a tendency to run with exactly the stories the Republicans want covered, while largely steering clear of those they'd prefer sit in obscurity.
Take, for instance, the Hunter Biden laptop coverage back in the closing weeks of the 2020 election. Some have accused the mainstream media of liberal bias there, based on the skeptical tone mainstream outlets took when running those stories (e.g., highlighting the possibility that it was part of a Russian disinformation campaign). But by far the more important point is that they were talking about it at all, while all but ignoring Trump-family corruption stories.
Take any mainstream news archive of your choice and do an article count, in the month before that election, of stories that include "Hunter Biden" and "laptop" versus those that include "Ivanka Trump" and "trademark" (her business was granted a bunch of Chinese trademarks, in apparent defiance of actual Chinese laws, just as her father was negotiating trade policy with them). By all rights, the Ivanka story should have been a much bigger one, since she was actually a major figure in the administration at the time she was being handed those lucrative benefits by a foreign power. By comparison, Hunter Biden was just a private citizen when he worked for that foreign business (as was his father, by the way, at the time when the famous "big guy" email went out).
Yet, despite there being much firmer ground for treating the Ivanka story as a big deal, there was a near blackout of any Ivanka Trump coverage in the period leading up to the election, while the Hunter Biden speculation was treated as one of the biggest stories in the world. The New York Times, for instance, ran sixteen separate stories dealing with Hunter's laptop just in the last two weeks of October 2020 -- more than one per day. And we're not talking about "damage control" stories trying to blame things on the Russians. Like there's a 10/22/22 story laying out everything known to that point about the laptop saga, which goes out of its way to say there's no evidence it's Russian disinformation.
The more important point, though, is that even those articles that injected a note of caution were still acting as if the GOP was their assignment editor -- focusing their articles on whether or not Hunter Biden was crooked, rather than a million other stories they could be covering that would be riskier for Trump. That's what I mean about the difference between tone and content. In terms of tone, the corporate press arguably had a bit of a liberal bias. In terms of content, though, they have a tendency to run with exactly the stories the Republicans want covered, while largely steering clear of those they'd prefer sit in obscurity.