Elections

Liberal Media Bias (And How To Win In Spite Of It)

(REUTERS/Rick Wilking)

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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It’s time once again to reiterate a point that I’ve made before many times: Yes, media bias exists — and yes, this impacts political campaigns — but yes, it can be overcome.

There are multiple types of bias, but I believe the two that matter most (for the sake of this discussion) are liberal worldview bias (which leads to selection bias) and — specifically in regard to campaign coverage — a preference for “fun”/salacious/horse race coverage over detail and substance.

Let’s address both.

First, it’s just a fact that most people in the media have a liberal worldview. But I’m in the Bernie Goldberg camp here in dismissing the conspiratorial notion that this is the media plotting to elect a Democrat. I’m not saying this never happens, but it is incredibly rare. Instead, the types of stories that are selected organically match the worldview of the people who get to pick which stories matter on a given day.

And — less important, but still worrisome — their political inclinations shape the framing of those stories. (Conservative radio host John Ziegler recently suggested to me that the rise of alternative “conservative” media outlets has absolved mainstream outlets from feeling like they have a responsibility to represent the conservative side of a story. Talk about unintended consequences.)

Ideological bias matters, but while it is constantly lamented, a bigger problem this cycle is probably a bias against substantive campaign coverage. This benefits Hillary Clinton, inasmuch as her sins are more substantive than Trump’s (which are mostly rhetorical).

Let’s take the fact that she lied about classified information on her private server. To be fair, this scandal got a fair amount of attention, but not the kind of breathless feeding frenzy coverage that Trump’s comments have garnered — largely because Trump is an interesting figure who gets eyeballs. (The other night, I called Hillary Clinton a liar on TV. But that’s pretty much where it ends. What else is left to say? She won’t be indicted, and it’s not nearly as fun or entertaining as showing video of Trump.)

Advocates of unfettered free market capitalism should also consider the negative impact that intense competition over ratings has on all of this. As Eric Metaxas recently discussed with me on my podcast, free market competition incentivizes giving people what they want. Personally, I would say that this is dramatically better than the alternative (government giving us what it thinks we need). But it’s worth admitting that a society that has undergone decades of cultural degradation will demand different products and entertainment than would a healthy civilization. One of the “cultural contradictions of capitalism” is the ironic fact that economic competition in the media world is probably helping elect a liberal politician.

Another substantive story that has been largely buried by Trump-ian coverage is the apparent “ransom payment” to Iran for hostages. Anyone who remembers the Iran-Contra affair can tell you that this is the sort of thing that could make investigative reporters start dreaming of a Pulitzer. But (so far) it has mostly been greeted with a yawn. Call it ideological bias or just a bias toward covering the more fun Donald Trump. But the lack of coverage is striking.

Part of this has to do with incentives. First, almost anyone can opine on Trump’s stupid comments and get clicks, but adding anything new to the Iran story requires having cultivated high-level sources. What’s the point of putting in the elbow grease to write about the topic if it’s barely going to move the needle? I mean, if you can get more page views, ratings, tweets, buzz — whatever — from a 750 word opinion piece on Trump — why would you want to expend so much energy on the Iran story, especially when it’s going to be a he said/she said thing. (“Critics believe it was a quid pro quo, but Obama administrations deny that, suggesting it was a mere coincidence.”)

As someone who works in and around media, I realize this is not entirely flattering. The truth is that most of the people I know in media are very good and smart people who try to do their best. In many cases, they are simply responding to incentives that you (we) have created.

So where does that leave us? Overcoming this requires a two-pronged strategy.

First, in the long run, it might be possible to either infiltrate the media or to build a parallel media infrastructure that levels the playing field. The latter project must be done correctly. It would require outlets that look more like the Wall Street Journal than Breitbart — because the goal is not to preach to the choir (an echo chamber that creates epistemic closure is arguably worse than the old days of MSM monopoly), but rather to provide quality and reliable information, presented by people who do not inherently have a liberal worldview.

Second, in the short term, Republican candidates must run shrewd and disciplined campaigns that avoid providing any excuse for not covering Democratic scandals. When Donald Trump, for example, claims to have seen a video that doesn’t exist, he is providing the media with an excuse to talk about that rather than the Iran money for hostages deal.

The problem is that conservatives have botched both of these things. So far, our parallel media infrastructure has been a net negative (although there are some very good things that have come out of it). Second, rather than conceding that Republican politicians must play the game to win (there’s a reason Reagan become “The Great Communicator” despite a liberal media), many conservatives seem to have concluded that the liberal media is an artificial construct. This led them to believe that Donald Trump, via his celebrity and refusal to bow to political correctness, could magically transcend the game.

They were duped into believing it would work based on Trump’s success in the GOP primary — a bogus trial run, inasmuch as the electorate was completely different (and so were the media’s incentives) at the time. The truth is that conservatives face a somewhat hostile media environment. Until we can change that environment, shrewdly navigating this milieu is a sign of shrewdness, not submissiveness.