We’ve all seen it. Most Americans can’t recognize it, but those of us with some degree of political acumen can read the TV screens and newspaper headlines and pick out the one or two false or misleading words or phrases used to describe an event or person that fall short of the truth. Some of us have gotten so used to it that we enjoy picking apart the CNN headlines and MSNBC ticker tape and remake them into how they ought to read.
If only there was an adult, or an editor, in the room. Unfortunately, national mainstream media (MSM) editors are now falling into the dangerous trap of perpetuating their own liberal biases and beliefs and packaging them up as what all Americans think or should think. Such single-track thought and removal of genuine discourse ultimately sows distrust between Americans and the media and eventually between Americans themselves. The pitting of Americans against each other, simply because they do not share the same belief, weakens America as a whole and threatens our national security as true enemies of the United States seek to exploit and expand divisions in American to their advantage.
So why, then, does the mainstream media lie to the detriment of American unity? There are a number of theories, much too many to explain here, but there are two worthy of discussion.
One, it’s in their best (read financial) interest to keep perpetuating these lies. One effective tactic used to achieve this is boosting website traffic with clickbait – using provocatively false or deceiving headlines to get readers to click and read the full story – or worse, the reader not clicking through and getting influenced by only absorbing and taking as fact the false or deceiving headline. After all, newspaper editors know that their dying business based on falling ad revenues is not sustainable in the long term, so sensationalism, however untrue, is awarded and propagated.
Second, the liberal bias systemic to corporate America’s mainstream media juggernaut is more reflective of editorial rooms than of American family rooms. For example, a 2004 Pew Research study of 500 national American reporters and editors found that 34% self-identified as liberal, whereas only 7% identified as conservative. When contrasted with the 20% of Americans who identified as liberal and 33% who identified as conservative, a clear disconnect is revealed. Politicians, it seems, are not the only ones out of touch with real America.
A recent op-ed by Carrie Sheffield, a senior fellow at Independent Women’s Forum, wrote about this disconnect between reporters and the Americans they report about. She nicely sums up the hypocritical wokeness of the MSM. “Progressives in the media these days speak of “equity” and “inclusion,” but the question is whether they’ll include better ideological diversity in their work moving forward. America’s national unity depends upon it.”