Understanding the US Media, Part I: Centrism and Being “Unbiased” Is Bad

Good news: this blog is biased.

When trying to understand any meaningful issue, historical context and knowledge of relevant parties with varied, sometimes opposing, perspectives are crucial to seeing the whole picture. The amount of background knowledge needed to understand any issue could easily fill thousands of pages, so journalists are always left to choose what information to include vs. not include. Their choice constitutes a bias, even if everything they say is true.

Reason #1 to stop seeking “unbiased” journalism: there simply is no such thing as an unbiased source. Claiming to be unbiased is an act of deception used to gain legitimacy, instead of using evidence to demonstrate legitimacy.

To illustrate this, the following two blurbs discuss the events of January 6, 2021. Both are entirely truthful, to the best of our understanding, with evidence linked. The two also display substantially different biases in the process.

First blurb:

On 1/6/21, Trump held a peaceful rally outside the White House. After that, the crowd walked down to the Capitol and protested the results of the 2020 election. Trump was not among them, instead remaining in the White House. He ultimately told them to cease in a video telling the crowd to “go home”. The transfer of power from Trump to Biden proceeded.

Second blurb:

On 1/6/21, Trump held a rally outside the White House, in which he and others promoted violence, with Trump telling the crowd “if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore,” and Rudy Giuliani calling for them to have “trial by combat.” This came after Trump had told the Proud Boys to “stand by” in a nationally-televised debate, then communicated with said Proud Boys between the election he lost and January 6. Later, several Proud Boys were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their role in planning and executing January 6. The Proud Boys coordinated with other right-wing militias like the Three Percenters & Oath Keepers. The leader of the Oath Keepers was also convicted of seditious conspiracy.

The crowd was attempting to prevent the transfer of power from Trump to Biden, chanting “Hang Mike Pence” because the VP refused to go along with the fake electors scheme Republicans were using, attempting to dispute the results and have the states override it. Trump had primed his base to believe the election was stolen with claims of voter fraud that were all thrown out by the courts. Fox News helped out, by claiming Dominion voting machines were faulty. Dominion sued Fox for defamation and Fox had to pay over $700 million to settle.

Despite the whole nation seeing what was happening on 1/6, the National Guard didn't arrive until almost 4 hours after the crowd breached the Capitol. The person in command of the DC National Guard is the Secretary of Defense. After losing the election, Trump fired the previous Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, and several others at the Department of Defense. Doing so during a lame duck period was unusual, and after being fired, Esper said “Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.” His replacement, Christopher Miller, appointed after Trump knew he lost the election, was slow to call the National Guard in on 1/6, and only did so at Pence’s request. Trump never requested sending the National Guard in.

While the crowd was still inside the Capitol, a Trump advisor texted his wife Melania asking if they wanted to tweet something about not being violent, and the reply was a simple “No”. Only once the scheme had clearly failed did Trump release his video telling the crowd to go home. Instead of denouncing their actions, he said “we love you, you’re very special.”

Neither of these blurbs include lies, but the messages they impart are vastly different. Given the facts listed in the second blurb, the first blurb was egregiously misrepresenting what happened, leaving off the calls for violence; coordination between Trump, Republicans, right-wing media, and militia groups; and actions/inactions by Trump and his administration to prevent a crackdown on the mob he riled up.

Thus, we see that “biased” does not mean untrue, and insisting on being “unbiased” would lead to a less accurate and useful depiction of what happened. If a Republican or Democrat did something bad, are you being a better journalist by obscuring that reality, in an attempt to not seem biased? Of course not. These things need to be reported, regardless of how many readers/viewers don’t want them to be true. Arguably, the more people want a truth to not be true, the more important it is to report on, but those are exactly the issues journalists shy away from for fear of appearing biased.

Sometimes doing/saying the right thing is hard because you have to go against a large and/or powerful group of people. Remaining “unbiased” is a shield to cower behind to avoid the discomfort of taking such a stand. As the cliché goes, if you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything. Centrists, obsessed with not coming across as biased, voluntarily put themselves into the “fall for anything” category.

Centrism as a journalistic ideology is more interested in avoiding telling anyone they’re wrong than being right itself. Truth exists outside of political ideology, and centrism puts ideology above that truth. Specifically, it puts the belief that “the correct perspective” is somewhere between two ideologies, liberalism and conservatism, above the interest of doing the right thing, regardless of where that falls ideologically. Liberalism and conservatism themselves are very similar ideologies in the grand scheme, as Part II covers in more depth. It’s not uncommon for both to be wrong in the same way. In such a case, centrism is guaranteed to lead to a bad position, so choosing to be a centrist means deciding truth and representing the most valuable perspectives are not priorities.

For example, many Americans see the situation in Gaza as an issue. However, both the Democrats and Republicans have and will continue to support Israel while it murders Palestinians by the thousands. The centrist is left to decide where US foreign policy should fall, between the war-hawk Republicans and war-hawk-with-slightly-less-racist-language Democrats, leaving no room for anything other than war hawking. Saying the US shouldn’t provide weapons to facilitate the killing of innocent people falls outside the Democrat-Republican political spectrum – a tiny sliver of the whole spectrum of ideas – so the only way to present that position is to be biased rather than centrist.

Does presenting the biased opinion that “innocent Palestinians shouldn’t be killed, and US taxpayer dollars shouldn’t facilitate that killing” make you a worse journalist than staying quiet to conform to the establishment’s narrowly-defined “acceptable” beliefs? Of course not. Downplaying the abuse of Palestinians to avoid going against someone else’s narrative is not “unbiased journalism”, it’s contributing to journalism’s normalization of US tax payer-funded mass murder. Which, again, is highly biased, hiding behind the imaginary shield of being “unbiased”. It’s just biased towards the political establishment’s status quo.

This gets at the key role this obsession with being “unbiased” plays in the politics of the US.

The 20th century began with print as the main source of news, then TV came along and grew in popularity throughout the century. Both of these were mostly controlled by wealthy interests, so it was easy to control the ideas the populace were exposed to. Then, at the end of the century, the internet was created, and grew into the 21st century. The internet decentralized the ability to spread ideas to people, particularly in the early days, when most websites were run by hobbyists rather than large companies. It takes large amounts of money to start a printing press or television station, but a single person interested in computers can make a website. Podcasts contributed to this trend as well. This all created the potential for ideas outside the status quo to spread easier than before. In its early days, there were even pieces written about how the internet would usher in an anarchist future as a result.

Of course, that did not come to pass. Instead, repressive governments have put strict controls on the internet within their borders, and in more free countries, large corporations like Amazon, Google, and the many social media platforms have come to dominate the internet. In short, the capitalist status quo captured the internet. Yes, they often started as small enterprises like the American Dream Internet Edition promised, but once they grew to large companies, they began operating like large companies do.

Appreciation should be given to the fact that the internet is mostly free in the US, which is a valuable democratic institution. It’s not hard to see a future where certain websites are blocked in the US, considering there’s been plenty of talk of banning TikTok already. Once that’s on the table, where does it end? Many countries engage in much more aggressive censorship of the internet than the US, including shutting it down entirely at times. A few corporations controlling most of what you’re exposed to, but still having the ability to visit any website that isn’t doing something illegal is a better deal than outright censorship. Well, I guess all that would ever really change under outright censorship is what is “illegal”, but all things considered, the US has a pretty open internet.

Still, it’s become less open as it’s become dominated by large corporations, since their algorithms promote a certain format of content, forcing people to adjust to fit that or not get promoted. While large corporations can and do control what websites people are exposed to, it’s not hard for someone to directly visit sites outside those promoted by internet behemoths. As such, the internet’s capacity to undermine the status quo consensus may have been reduced, but hasn’t been eliminated.

The system doesn’t want ideas outside its sanctioned “acceptable ideas” to reach people, and the internet provided an avenue for that to happen. By establishing themselves as the “unbiased” sources, the legacy corporate media could take advantage of the blinding array of different perspectives on the internet. Don’t pay those blogs and podcasts any mind, they’re biased, just continue listening exclusively to the ideas of the large corporate media, we’re unbiased!

This effect can be seen clearly in rankings of media bias, which generally rank sources as less reliable the farther away they get from the centrist status quo. This famous one couldn’t be more clear in its belief (or one might say...bias) that the farther from the “center” you are, the less reliable. Even the idea of “center” goes hand-in-hand with all this – who’s to say what the center is? Just because the US has only two meaningful political parties doesn’t mean the ideas they espouse are the entirety of the political spectrum.

Some might say the “center” is the middle of the political spectrum that moves to fit the voting base. That would require that the Democrats and Republicans adapt to fit the views of voters, which they decidedly do not do. This is proven by polls on individual issues, stripped of the rhetorical language typically associated with specific parties. When this is done, results show a majority of Americans support a public option for health insurance, increasing the social safety net, increasing taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth, and a federal jobs program. Some Democratic politicians support these, but the majority, and critically the party leadership, don’t. Republicans basically never support them. As a result, these highly popular measures haven’t been passed, except a few on the state level.

In short, the median American voter is to the left of the Democratic Party.

This may be surprising at first, but it makes sense that the policies that benefit the most people would be most popular. US politics does a good job of suppressing that reality. A 2015 study out of Princeton found that the views of the average voter has no meaningful impact at all on what bills get passed. Only wealthy people’s opinions had an impact. One of the ways wealthy people established and maintain this state of affairs is using their influence over the media to set the narrative of what’s acceptable/achievable, regardless of public opinion. In short, they define “the center” to be the center of the ideas rich Americans want, not the center of the ideas Americans as a whole want. Again, this is clearly not “unbiased”, it’s biased towards the ideas of wealthy people. If the “center” was placed at the average voter’s opinion, MSNBC (and the rest) would be to the right, and no major outlet would be to the left.

Left-wing economics are focused on preventing elites from accumulating more wealth and power, and instead distributing that wealth and power more evenly throughout the population. Obviously, most elites aren’t going to want that, but most average folks do want that.

The fixation on “unbiased” news, conveniently defined as being to the right of the average voter, is a way to make Americans feel like the ideas they support in high numbers are unacceptable, or at the very least unachievable.

All this has focused on the company level, but there’s another side to this: the individual journalists. Some journalists do put good journalism over the manufactured obsession with being “unbiased”. With rare exceptions, these journalists simply won’t be hired by large outlets, and won’t have their work promoted by internet algorithms. These people will also be refused access to CEOs, politicians, and other elites, who would rather be interviewed by one of the many journalists eager to write fluff pieces without pushback.

A system won’t promote ideas that threaten that system, and one of the best ways to get away with this is to convince people that anything that goes against the system’s narrative is “biased”, and the only “unbiased” news is that which unquestioningly follows the system’s narrative. This, as I’ve repeated throughout this piece, is not actually unbiased. Instead, it’s biased towards the people who, thanks to their power within society, get to tell everyone else what “unbiased” is.

Who to trust

Of course, this does not mean any biased source is good, only that all the good sources will admit to being biased. There are plenty of terrible biased sources out there, and this post is not defending them. It’s not news to anyone that people need to be discriminating about the media they consume, the point is this does not mean seeking out the “least biased” source, whatever that even means.

More important than bias is how valuable it is to helping you understand the reality. As stated at the top, this blog is biased. The bias, however, is not towards any political party or ideology, but towards presenting the most essential truths that are under-discussed. Specifically, the goal of this blog is to present important positions/explanations that are missing from the status-quo-approved “unbiased” political discussions in the US. Being “unbiased” means discriminating about which facts can and can’t be included before you stray too far from a desired position, which is exactly how not to arrive at an accurate & useful conclusion. Political discussions should be about following all the facts to their logical conclusion, regardless of where that conclusion falls ideologically.

This leads to a big question in modern societies: In a media ecosystem with so many different voices, how does one decide which sources to trust?

The answer is simple but not easy: history.

We already know the media is dominated by large corporations, disseminating narratives they support, rather than “the truth, no matter where that falls”. In such a situation, that media cannot be trusted to give you an accurate representation of the world, since doing so is not their goal. They exist to set a narrative and sell ads/subscriptions, not to create a well-informed populace. The only way to be truly informed is to learn history.

When you learn enough history, you’ll find that the same kinds of arguments have been made repeatedly over time, and similar groups of people have stood in the way of progress repeatedly. Once you learn these trends, it’s easy to spot deception in the media today, which largely follows the playbook of the past. Here’s an example:

Trump’s spin for the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that undid Roe v. Wade thanks to his Supreme Court appointments, has been to frame it as an issue of states’ rights, rather than women’s rights.

Learn some US history and you’ll see that this same argument was used to justify the Confederacy seceding and causing the Civil War. Learn even more, and you’ll find that the Confederate Constitution explicitly revoked the states’ rights to ban slavery, meaning the whole “it’s about states’ rights” argument was a blatant lie. Learn more still, and you’ll realize that “states’ rights” has been reincarnated by conservatives repeatedly in the years since to justify abuse towards black people, like the States’ Rights Democratic Party formed in 1948 by southern Democrats upset Truman supported Civil Rights, and by states opposed to the Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated schools.

After 150 years of “states’ rights” being used repeatedly by conservatives to justify abusing certain populations, are we really to believe that the conservatives using the exact same argument now, in justification of abusing another population, are being genuine? Anyone well-versed in US history knew from the jump that this was yet another in that long history, not a break from it. Those people were vindicated when the Republicans then pushed for a nationwide ban and if not that, at least a federal ban on traveling to another state for an abortion. These proved the states’ rights claims were a bad-faith argument Republicans used, echoing others throughout US history, to justify eroding women’s rights.

Obviously, anyone saying the Republicans were being disingenuous in claiming Dobbs was a states’ rights issue was being biased. More important than the fact that they were biased, though, was the fact that they were right. Obsessing over appearing unbiased would’ve only served to make their depiction of reality worse.

So instead of consuming clickbait headlines, attention-seeking cable news, and media of all sorts obsessing over being “unbiased”, you’re better off reading about history, and applying the context that provides to the modern day.

This can all make it sound like there’s no point in paying attention to the media at all, but that’s not the point. While history should be the priority, there is also value in keeping up with current events. To this end, even the corporate-owned media isn’t terrible for getting the facts of what’s going on. What’s important is that you need to understand their bias and the greater context of any events they report on. Most mainstream sources can generally be trusted to state accurate facts, but not to depict an accurate reality. For that, you need to learn history.

To end, I’ll plug the two best journalism pieces I’ve seen in the past year, which both go beyond surface-level “unbiased” reporting, with valuable insights into how USA politics works. The first is this video done by the New York Times explaining how Republicans are planning to steal the upcoming election(s), by refusing to certify them at all levels. It lays out how this is a concerted effort that Trump, Steve Bannon, and other Republicans have helped in.

The Republicans’ goal is to either prevent the certification on January 6, as was attempted after the 2020 election, or certify electors that don’t match the vote (e.g. Harris wins Georgia, but then Georgia’s election board certifies “alternate electors” who go for Trump, overriding the will of the people). Either would likely end up in the courts, but with 6 conservative Supreme Court Justices, they’d have enough votes to hand the election to Trump even if he lost, should they so choose. The former, simply not certifying the election at all, would result in the election being decided by the House of Representatives. However, each state would only get one vote, so while California has 52 Representatives, they would all decide on a candidate together, then ultimately cast a single vote between them. This means the election would come down to which party had more states where they made up a majority of that state’s federal Representatives.

Currently that breaks down as 26 Republican, 23 Democrat, and one tie in Michigan. The Democrats would need to hold the 23, add Michigan and flip two more in order to defeat this scheme. The two most possible to flip are Wisconsin and Florida. Wisconsin is among the most pro-Republican gerrymandered states, and Florida’s Republican state government has been enacting some of the most extreme voter suppression in the country. This is nothing new in Florida, which ranks 47th out of 50 states for percentage of eligible voters who are registered. The suppression is targeted at urban communities that primarily vote for Democrats. The Democrats would require a landslide for this to go their way, and if that happened, the plan to throw the election to the House by not certifying would probably have failed anyway. The Republicans have found a pretty glaring loophole in the democratic system that they intend on exploiting. Republicans don’t care about democracy, they’re playing to win, and get closer to doing so every time they’re given power. Once they’ve consolidated enough power to not need the votes, any goodwill they have left towards their supporters will go away.

The second piece is this article written in the Atlantic, about the “American Gentry”. This borrows the term from feudal times for the landed elites – people who aren’t quite the billionaires that founded massive companies, but are multi-millionaires many times over who own resources. These can be agricultural land, natural resources like oil or timber, or companies like car dealerships and fast-food franchises. Generally, those in this gentry class inherited the sources of their wealth and mostly just had to manage not to squander it. There’s far more of these than the Forbes list elites, so even with less individual wealth and power, their still-astronomical wealth and greater numbers makes them a very powerful force in American politics, particularly at the local level. This class of people is a big part of the Republicans’ power base, so understanding it is useful to understanding US politics. The article linked does a good job laying things out.

This sort of good journalism is critical to maintaining a free society, so it’s not like the media never produces anything good. Instead of not trusting anything from the media, people should develop their ability to understand the media’s inherent biases, and put their reporting within a strong framework of how society works. This is easier said than done, but one of the first steps is understanding the role the media plays within our society, which is what this post, and especially Part II, lay out. The rest is learning history.