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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> For example, you'll almost never see CNN write an article critical about Democrats,

Not true at all. Here's one critical about Democrats as being too beholden to progressives: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/opinions/democratic-party-pro...

Here’s one critical about the current Democratic VP largely for being too concerned with (and ultimately ineffective at) undercutting Republican talking points. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/opinions/democratic-party-pro...

And that's just one day.

Except for stuff responding to new Trump-era revelations, they don't seem to have much current criticism of Republicans not buried within criticism of how Democrats deal with them, representing their actual bias in critical opinion coverage, in that it focuses on people currently in power.

(When Republicans held the White House and the Senate, they had more direct criticism of Republicans.)

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CNN is a bad example of a left leaning news outlet. They're quite centrist. The reason mainstream media appears to be left biased is because people use the government's political center as their frame of reference rather than that of the populace. The media caters to political beliefs of actual average American. The federal government caters to the center of voting power, which is heavily skewed towards smaller states which tend to be more conservative. This disparity is what people perceive as "left bias".

Studies show that "left bias" in mainstream media is much greater than it is among Americans in general. For example:

"Compared with 2002, the percentage of full-time U.S. journalists who claim to be Democrats has dropped 8 percentage points in 2013 to about 28 percent, moving this figure closer to the overall population percentage of 30 percent, according to a December 12-15, 2013, ABC News/Washington Post national poll of 1,005 adults. This is the lowest percentage of journalists saying they are Democrats since 1971. An even larger drop was observed among journalists who said they were Republicans in 2013 (7.1 percent) than in 2002 (18 percent), but the 2013 figure is still notably lower than the percentage of U.S. adults who identified with the Republican Party (24 percent according to the poll mentioned above)."

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/05/06/ju...)

"Some of the professional groups have clear liberal leanings. People who work in the news media are almost exclusively donors to liberal candidates:"

(https://www.businessinsider.com/charts-show-the-political-bi...)

The percentage of the American population which is either Democrat or Republican is consistently[1] well[2] above[3] 90%[4], so I'm not sure where you're getting 54%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidentia... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidentia... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

Those links show that out of all Americans who vote in presidential elections, well above 90% vote for either a Democrat or a Republican. However, that does not mean that well above 90% of Americans are either Democrats or Republicans.

People lie. I'm not sure why you expect the media to sell to people's lies instead of selling to people's actions.

PS Americans also overwhelmingly vote either Democrat or Republican in non-presidential elections, even down to the city council level.

> PS Americans also overwhelmingly vote either Democrat or Republican in non-presidential elections

Americans overwhelmingly abstain rather than voting for any of the offered candidates, Democrat, Republican, or independent or minor party, in non-Presidential elections. 2018 had the highest midterm turnout since the before the Reagan era, and it reached the whole way up to 49%.

What do you mean by "people's actions"? If you mean voting, well, Democrats and Republicans get about the same number of votes in presidential elections, which does not seem to justify your view that "left" media bias just reflects the political leaning of the average American.

Except Democrats have been consistently beating Republicans in presidential elections. Click the links. Go back further if you want to. The Republican candidate has won the popular vote exactly once (in 2004) since 1990.

The Presidential election popular vote margin has not gone over 10 million votes in over three decades now, in a country that has averaged about 300 million residents over that time span. These are not margins that support the idea that the population as a whole skews left as much as mainstream media skews left.

Stated vs. Revealed preferences.

> The percentage of the American population which is either Democrat or Republican is consistently[1] well[2] above[3] 90%[4]

Even if you read “voting for a D or R candidate in a Presidential general election” as “being a D or R”, and “eligible voters” as “the American population”, both which are clearly and wildly wrong, your evidence still doesn’t support your claim, because it has 98.2% of 66.2% = 65% of eligible voters, which is not “well above 90%”.

I'm not sure why you expect news to target people who aren't even in their coverage's audience.

Super interesting take, thanks! I've always been so confused by conservatives labeling all mainstream media as left-biased when I, as a liberal, see them as centrist or conservative.

> The reason mainstream media appears to be left biased is because people use the government's political center as their frame of reference rather than that of the populace. The media caters to political beliefs of actual average American. The federal government caters to the center of voting power, which is heavily skewed towards smaller states which tend to be more conservative. This disparity is what people perceive as "left bias".

Wow, I never thought of that.

COM Library has a ranking system for news organizations that seems to line up pretty well with my personal observations [0]. They show CNN as centrist but left-leaning. This agrees with my personal experience, except for news stories in the "woke" category, where CNN seems to skew far left.

[0] https://libguides.com.edu/c.php?g=649909&p=4556556

> This agrees with my personal experience, except for news stories in the "woke" category, where CNN seems to skew far left.

You do realize that “woke” as a pejorative originated in left-wing criticism of bourgeois, centrist identity politics?

So, unless you are saying that CNN has joined that leftist critique, I think what you really probably mean is that CNN represents a strongly-held centrist position in that area, not a far-left one.

The recuperation of leftist language critiquing capitalist politics as pejorative to anti-capitalist is a sight to behold.

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