“The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic.”
 Bertrand Russell

There are many ways to think about the mass news media. We can talk about commercial versus non-commercial news media. We can talk about different kinds of news media (print, radio, online, TV, podcast, etc.). National versus local.

One common perception is that there is a political bias at work. This is not a trivial concern, if one is to believe the logic that the news media can wield great influence over public perceptions and opinions on important issues. Are all perspectives that might have some important stake in a story getting a fair shake from the nightly news, the newspaper, news websites, the radio, wire services, etc.? Because if not, we can end up with politicians who say one thing to get elected and gain public support, and then pursue an entirely different agenda (hmmmm . . . . . . this sounds familiar, somehow . . . . . ). An alert media, holding public officials accountable, should be able to quickly point out the differences between the rhetoric and the action of politicians. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, as is said (among other things). Unless . . . unless, that is, they lack the independence, are themselves beholden to powerful politicians or corporate actors less concerned about informing the public than they are about their own economic and political interests, or their business models and jobs.

Usually that bias is expressed as some sort of binary world, where people may hold either a ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ bias. The media themselves are most often guilty of perpetuating this idea (most of the time the accusation is made by powerful entities that the media are biased in favor of liberal viewpoints). Before we even attempt any kind of analysis, we should first go over some relevant terms:

Media

This would refer to a form of communication. We can’t possibly experience the world firsthand. Only a tiny slice of it. So for those of us in the industrial world, that experience is mediated by organizations that bring us parts of that world. But they obviously make a lot of decisions about which parts to highlight, which to ignore or minimize. And since we’re basically talking about communication to potentially large numbers of people, we’ll call it mass media. This includes various forms of media:

• Print (books, newspapers, magazines)
• TV (satellite, cable, network, TiVo)
• Cinema
• Internet (could include radio, video, social media)
• Computer (video games, books, gameboy, playstation, software, etc. Do you see how these are forms of media?)
• Radio

So when we talk about ‘the media,’ it’s always a good idea to be more specific if we can–to which kind of medium are you referring? Another common perception is that the media are full of liberals–there is a ‘liberal bias’ to media and news reporting. Keep in mind that in here we’re focusing on the news media mostly, because of the important role they play in informing the public on the issues of the day that affect them, whether local, regional, national, global, or galactic . . . and covering campaigns and elections for political office.

Bias

Bias refers to systematic distortion. It’s a distortion that tends in the same direction most of the time. Makes sense if you think about it. The key is understanding the principles underlying he distortion. Is it based on political party affiliation? The need to generate revenue? Messages from distant galaxies? 1950s TV shows (ooops, already mentioned distant galaxies, didn’t I)? So when we talk about a political bias in news media coverage, we’re essentially asking whether or not the coverage is distorted in such a way that it tends to favor one point of view over other competing or alternative views. The fact that it’s systematic means that it would do this consistently, and that the viewer/reader/listener would be exposed to a specific and possibly narrow point of view, usually couched merely as ‘news,’ to the exclusion of other perspectives. The ‘bias’, though it could involve business owners and workers, investors, the elderly, children, rural residents, the LGBTQ community, foreign nationals, persons of color, etc.,  is usually discussed in terms of partisan or political viewpoints, left vs right, liberal vs conservative, republican vs democrat. Certainly simplifies things with only two teams, right??

Liberals and conservatives

What does it mean to be liberal or conservative? Here are a few things to consider:

• Party affiliation. Liberals are more associated with the democratic party. Republicans are more likely conservative. This is the shorthand news organizations often use, one assumes because most have deemed their readership mostly uninterested in complexity and nuance. 
• One state, two state, red state blue state. Certain parts of the country are considered more conservative, certain parts more liberal. By state, we sometimes refer to the more conservative states as ‘red states,’ and the less conservative as ‘blue states’ Wikipedia has a nice discussion of the issue, with some interesting maps. Carving up states into ‘red’ or ‘blue’ categories vastly oversimplifies differences (e.g., there are democrats in Alabama and republicans in California), but allows media to also simplify how they cover partisan politics. And remember, complexity and nuance don’t sell well in 2-3 minute stories or reads.
• There are also rural and urban differences. Reality is as usual more complex than red and blue states. When you begin to look at the red and blue states, you also find that there are big differences in how people vote based on where they live in the state. The three-county area around Portland votes democratic, the rest of the state more republican, for instance. They may look more purple than red or blue (and don’t forget the green areas!).
• Right and left–If you think of politics along a spectrum, to the extreme right are the fascists–heavily into law and order, very autocratic, allowing few civil liberties. Examples of fascist governments would be Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Pinochet’s Chile, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Putin’s Russia, etc. Examples to the extreme left would be communists. There haven’t been any real communist regimes in the sense that Karl Marx envisioned them, but the Soviet Union and its satellite states (the ‘Eastern Bloc‘) are the most well-known examples. Cuba was an example (but it’s opening up now). China is dominated by the Communist party, but economically it produces goods for global markets. In communist states, wealth is supposed to be redistributed. To paraphrase Marx, ‘to each according to their need, from each according to their ability.’ In the Soviet Union example, this meant that most everyone was poor, but equally poor, except for government bureaucrats (and the military), who belonged to the communist party, and athletes or other well-known public figures, who often received special privileges. So left is often associated with liberal and democrat, and right with conservative and republican.

These are just stereotypes–the way they’re presented in the media. And commercial news media are very good at perpetuating and accentuating stereotypes–things fit better in between commercial breaks that way, and many news outlets seem set up to channel the audience into these narrow partisan cattle chutes.

• What do liberals and conservatives stand for? Here are a few things that separate them (here’s a table  that compares them):
  • Role of government: Conservatives prefer that government play a small role–too much government is a corrupting and wasteful influence. Private property and capitalism work best when government stays out of the way. Especially the Federal Government–they are more likely to support authority at the local or state level. Liberals tend to think that government is necessary to curb the excesses of capitalism and the private sector, and to ensure that all citizens are entitled to basic fundamental rights. The federal government has often intervened when states, for instance, were discriminating against minority groups. The liberal viewpoint is that taxes are necessary to support the society and care for the disadvantaged. Conservatives believe that people know better than the government what to do with their money. They support letting the ‘free market’ and the forces of supply and demand as the driving forces behind true democracy. When you hear people spouting off about ‘free enterprise’ or the evils of government regulation, that’s a conservative viewpoint. But conservatives spend taxpayer money, just on different things. They tend to build more prisons, order more weapons systems and build more military bases. The issues of taxation has become contentious. Conservatives want to reduce taxes, claim the government is wasteful, often arguing that the wealthy pay more than their fair share (and using misleading statistics that exclude the payroll tax, which everyone who works pays up to an $90,000 income cap). Liberals contend that education, roads, social services, management of public lands, regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency or the Securities and Exchange Commission (sort of the police force for corporations) are there to ensure that private corporations aren’t fleecing their customers or shareholders, or aren’t polluting and killing citizens located near their factories, or approving new medicines that haven’t been adequately tested on humans, etc. Taxes finance these ‘public goods.’ The big difference here is that conservatives believe, generally, that private enterprise is more important to a society’s health and vitality than public space. Liberals believe that true democracy requires broad participation and that private enterprise excludes those who lack the societal cover charge, so to speak.
  • Morality: Conservatives generally just have more conservative ideas about what morality is, or should be. They’re more likely to be suspicious of social change. Their ‘social construction’ of morality is more conservative than liberals’. Conservatives may be more likely to attend church, especially more conservative Christian Churches (Baptists, LDS, Jehovah’s Witness). The conservative view is that declining marriage, increasing divorce and co-habitation, acceptance of gay relationships and gay lifestyles, etc., are corrosive influences on society. They stress the importance of ‘family values’ (the ideal type being two parent heterosexual). Liberals stress tolerance, point to how ‘family values’ in the 1950s co-existed with severe racial and sex discrimination, and contend that those who are considered ‘deviant’ should have as much right to public space and public resources as other dominant groups (white, male, protestant, heterosexual . . . ).
  • Poverty: Conservatives generally think of poverty as an individual problem. In fact, most of conservative ideology is individualist–the wealthy are are wealthy because they have somehow risen above the masses. If you’re poor it’s your own fault. Those in poverty are unmotivated, have no work ethic, or are single parent. If you look at the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 (appropriately titled the ‘Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act), promotion of marriage is a key feature, as is abstinence-only sex education. Getting people off of welfare and into low-wage work is also a central feature. Welfare recipients, so many conservatives say, have grown dependent on welfare, and what they need is some ‘tough love’ to embrace the work ethic and work their way up the socioeconomic ladder. Welfare benefits should be less attractive than the lowest-paying, least secure jobs. A more liberal view would say that poverty is not an individual problem–many wealthy people did nothing to earn their fortunes besides being born and living to the ripe old age of eighteen. The liberal view contends that poverty is a huge social problem, and at any given time, even with antiquated definitions of poverty, there are 35 million people who fall below the poverty line. People are constantly in and out of poverty, losing work, health benefits, using up savings, running up charge cards, etc. Most people have little opportunity to pursue the American dream–many go to underfunded schools with the least qualified teachers paid the lowest, and have few if any expectations about going to college and if they do are likely not to be prepared to compete well with their peers. Poverty is for liberals a structural problem, and the government has an obligation to address it. The means-tested programs that poor qualify for make up a small portion of the budget–maybe 6% at most–while mandatory spending on social security, Medicare and defense makes up a much larger percentage. In fact, a more liberal view suggests that a key function of welfare is to subsidize employers who do not pay their workers a living wage (which for a family of four would be probably $15/hr–the minimum wage in Oregon is second highest in the nation at $10.75/hr in 2018).
  • Immigration: Donald Trump has turned this into a central issue in the 2024 campaign, and conservatives tend to want less immigration, laws to more quickly deport those who entered the country without legal documentation, even the ability to use surveillance to ‘catch’ immigrants. Liberals are more likely to support immigration, and to accommodate the special needs that immigrants may have trying to settle in a new country. 
  • Race, ethnicity, gender, age. Views can vary along these lines as well. Minorities are more likely to vote democratic, women tend to vote democratic more often than men. Except in Florida, where Cuban Americans and Cuban exiles who are anti-Castro are staunch conservatives. As people age and have more formal education, their views tend to become more liberal. But as they age and their income increases (this is a fairly standard occurrence, you should be happy to know), their views become more conservative. Figure that one out. Why would higher income tend to affect one’s political views?
  • ‘Culture wars.’ As Donald Trump’s campaign adviser said before the 2016 election, ‘Culture is upstream from politics.’ What he meant was that appealing to people’s cultural beliefs could influence their political views and voting behavior. By 2024, there is actually little of substance in presidential debates, which mostly seem to turn on these ‘culture war’ topics, such as abortion, sexual orientation (LGBTQ+), gun rights/ownership, violent crime, etc. The ways in which they are debated are often intellectually dishonest as well. For instance, ‘pro life’ is anti-abortion, but those who are ‘pro life’ may also support death penalty sentences or even pandemic policies (e.g., no mask requirements, no distancing, no business closures or online schooling) that would increase mortality. ‘Pro choice’ espouses the rights of women to make their own reproductive choices, including whether to end a pregnancy (in a medically supportable way, anyway), but there are plenty of ways in which proponents would not support ‘choice.’ 

Changing meaning of being liberal

Now, having stated all that, don’t take the liberal/conservative divide too literally. It is a simplification or caricature that the media themselves help perpetuate. We’ll get into why soon. People’s views tend to be more complex and not reducible to simple positions on a political spectrum. If the country is becoming more polarized, it may be in part because complex social issues tend to be debated as dichotomous–there are only two valid positions, and debates are waged on ‘culture war’ issues that are oversimplified to the point of being cartoonish–and the ‘debates’ become an exchange of ‘sound bites‘ using loaded language to either create warm and fuzzies for your side, or radiate cold shafts of glass (Roger Waters, 1976) on the other. However the idea that liberals believe government protects and serves citizens, and conservatives believe government gets in the way of the economic system, are generally accurate, but full of qualifications (e.g., elder Americans dissatisfied with the prospects of ‘Obamacare’ are often fine with Social Security and Medicare, the retirement and health insurance programs for elders; many people who might call themselves ‘liberal’ and support policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions might still oppose projects that would affect their surrounding environments, like wind turbines, or commute to work in Hummers that require two parking spaces).

But to be media literate, you’ll have to understand how the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ are used and caricatured in commercial outlets. Understand why it is done, and who benefits from it, and how it might distract from more fundamental biases.

The meaning of liberal changed with the neoconservative movement (often referred to as ‘neocons’), whose recent roots are often traced to the Republican Congressional Class of 1994, the ‘Contract with America,’ and its leader, Newt Gingrich). More recently we had the ‘pledge to America.’ And even more recently, there is Project 2025, from the folks at the Heritage Foundation. From a propaganda standpoint, there appears to be an effort to make one party look ‘more American.’ A fine marketing strategy for dividing the country into polarized camps, but perhaps not for trying to reach consensus on difficult issues where disagreement is expected, but compromise required. One thing, as a Sociologist, I can say with some certainty: Those groups promoting a conservative political agenda have displayed a much greater capacity to fund organizations and pursue their objectives through political channels.

And the Contract with America was a fine document (my favorite: politicians would pass term limits to eliminate career politicians … that worked out really well).

In 2010 came the ‘pledge to America.’ Here’s Frank Luntz’s take, and Jon Stewart’s (scroll down). But some things do not change–like a political landscape where republicans and democrats define themselves by defining their ideological opponents. Here’s some advice: if you want to inform yourself about a group, a philosophy, an ideology, you will need to go beyond what political or politicized actors have to say about it.

Bias

So what does bias mean? Presenting distorted views, in this case that represent certain political points of view. Bias suggests these are systematic distortions, not random or coincidental. This is especially important when considering news coverage. Are we getting biased news? And if so, is it a liberal, or a conservative bias? Or something else (hint)? Remember–news outlets decide what to cover (and thus what not to cover), where to cover it, and how to cover it. The ‘Powell Memo‘ in 1971 (penned by conservative Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell) represented a conscious effort to redefine liberal and conservative in the public arena. Lawyer and scholar Joseph Overton referred to a ‘window’ (the Overton Window), which might shift over time, and within which policies were debated, but outside of which policies might be considered ‘radical.’ For instance, the notion of a ‘single payer’ health insurance program was considered so radical, that during debates over national health insurance in 2009-10, it was rarely if ever mentioned by commercial news organizations (which take in a fair amount of advertising money from the insurance, pharmaceutical and health care industries, it must be said).

Keep in mind, we’re simplifying the liberal/conservative dichotomy. This is what the media do, and this is what is inflicted on media consumers on a daily basis, and this is one of the reasons that the state of public discourse has become toxic, right down to local school boards. Yikes. But there are plenty of republicans who are pro-choice, and there are plenty of democrats who are pro-war or pro-life, as an example. There are democrats in Alabama, and republicans in Vermont. What if this were more distraction than reality, a dichotomy set up to upset, to polarize, to keep people watching a meaningless battle in an ongoing war, of which many may not even be aware, in a relentless march to keep ratings high?

As usual, reality is more complicated. There are many types of media. We’re mostly dealing here with corporate mass media, because that is what most people see/read/hear/consume. You may get it through a newsfeed on social media, but if it’s news, that’s just the medium where it is being fed and shared. And even if these debates generate little heat and much light, they have a great impact on public opinion, voters’ attitudes, etc. But conveying that message takes time, energy, and may not be as exciting as short, pithy stories where republicans and democrats yell at each other, try to highlight their differences rather than find common ground, use heated rhetoric, and generally provide television viewers with a grand spectacle that, to paraphrase William Shakespeare, may be ‘full of sound and fury, (but) signifying nothing.’