from the everything-I-disagree-with-is-biased dept
Not content with just filing baseless lawsuits against media companies who say mean things about our historically unpopular president, the Trump administration has unveiled a new lazy wrinkle in its war on journalism and free speech.
The White House unveiled a new section of its website last week that claims to be tracking media outlets for “bias.” And by “bias,” in traditional right wing fashion, we of course mean news organizations that sometimes say true things our increasingly authoritarian government doesn’t like.
The website casually throws around words like “biased” and “exposed,” crying about various media reporting on subjects like the president’s death threats against elected officials for reminding the military that they serve the Constitution, for example.
It’s adorable to watch some MAGA-pilled White House intern pretend to do journalism and fact checking. There’s a list of stories that upset Trump, then a cute list of classifications trying to claim news reports aren’t true, with labels like “bias,” “left-wing lunacy,” and “malpractice” (?).
The great irony is that most of the feckless U.S. corporate press generally already covers Trumpism quite favorably. Even their stories and headlines about Trump’s threats against Democratic lawmakers were couched through the lens of Donald Trump’s claims of innocence (see this NBC News story), downplaying the insanity of the president’s often-illegal behavior.
CBS is now owned by Trump’s billionaire buddy Larry Ellison, who is busy turning the already Republican-friendly news outlet into a right wing propaganda mill with the help of Bari Weiss. But even CBS can’t avoid the grumbly whining of the White House and shows up repeatedly on the naughty list:
A cornerstone of lazy right wing ideology around the world for fifty-plus years has been to accuse fact-based journalism and science of having a “bias” if it reveals absolutely anything the right wing doesn’t like. It’s an easy way to quickly discredit any critics of your worldview without having to engage in thinking, introspection, or debate, and it’s been on display for longer than many of us have been alive:
The claims of “media bias” by the right wing comes simultaneously as the U.S. right wing builds arguably one of the biggest and most effective right wing propaganda machines ever constructed (Fox News, The New York Post, Breitbart, The Daily Wire, OANN, Newsmax, Sinclair, CBS, etc.). The right wing’s propaganda efforts routinely take second stage to the false claims of widespread “liberal media bias.”
The U.S. press is, indisputably, center-right and corporatist. As it consolidates, it increasingly serves billionaire and corporate ownership, not the public interest. Layer on fifty years of bullying over nonexistent “liberal bias,” and you get the kind of journalistic fecklessness that was on proud display last election season as the country stared down the barrel of authoritarianism.
These billionaire-owned outlets enjoy doubling or tripling down on their bias claims with “solutions” to the nonexistent “liberal bias” problem that almost always make the problem worse (see billionaire LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s make believe effort to “fix bias with AI,” Bari Weiss’ efforts to “fix CBS bias” by… making it more biased, or Jeff Bezos firing of all the columnists he personally disagrees with).
There are a ton of existing “bias monitors” out there claiming to fix the problem as well, and most of them aren’t particularly reliable, and like Newsguard, have a history of giving unearned credibility to right wing outlets like Fox News or Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire. And even they are quick to face “investigations” by Republicans for, you guessed it, bias.
The only people allowed to identify and criticize media bias are, ironically, the most biased and non-credible people America has to offer.
That said, it’s not clear who this bullshit White House website is supposed to be for. The kind of folks trapped in the MAGA delusion bubble aren’t the type who are going to head to the White House website to fact check a story. The entire taxpayer-funded gambit smells of little more than sad desperation in the face of sagging poll numbers and increased media criticism of unpopular, unhinged Trump policies.
And now that most corporate media outlets have gotten their massive tax cuts and mergers approved, they’re likely to show slightly more backbone over the next year or two — especially as the president’s health, influence, and political power wanes. This weird little performance art isn’t going to help.
Filed Under: bias, both sides, consolidation, fake news, journalism, media, news, partisan, propaganda, white house
