Left Wing Media Bias

Conservatives often complain about left wing media bias and the left disputes this. Here is an interesting informative article, that appeared yesterday. It is accurate and some might not be able to detect bias. Subtle bias is bias.

1. The article implies that Republican congressmen only take the Koch advocated position because of money from the Koch brothers. If Republicans who haven’t taken money from the Koches largely had different positions, that’d be good journalism. I’m pretty sure that almost all Republicans hold this position regardless of contributions and have held it long before they got any contributions.

2. The article implies that the Democratic position is the best one for the American public and that the Republican position is only good for the oil and gas industry. The environment is a complicated issue that should be open to discussion whether regulations go too far and what the impact of the regulations will be. Stiffer regulations means business spends more money. They either raise prices or lay off people to compensate.


3. The article implies that the Koch brothers are responsible for the Democratic majority, Nancy Pelosi’s position. How many Republicans did they actually give significant money to and what was the percentage of the overall money spent on those races? How did the Democrats in those races spend? How does their spending compare to other outside spending, like unions, and spending by the Republican and Democratic parties? Republicans took the majority with 24 excess seats. I don’t think the Koches spent money in that many winning races.

4. The article implies that the Koches are behind the Cato Institute, the Federalist society, and the tea parties, without indicating what percentage of money spent comes from the Koches. The tea parties existed before the Koches got involved and their involvement is limited to Freedomworks providing assistance to tea parties. Tea parties don’t accept a heavy hand from anyone.


5. The article implies something sinister about the Koch conference without providing evidence or noting that there are thousands of such conferences put on by businesses every year.

6. The article waits until the last paragraph to note that the Democratic members of the committee are liberal environmentalists. Is this true? Did Henry Waxman replace those that weren’t? Environmental groups employee lobbyists, just like business groups do. They spend money, just like business groups do. Do business groups spend more money? No idea. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to investigate?

Bias doesn’t just come from advocating a point of view. It comes from how you present the facts, what you support, and what you choose not to support. Journalism doesn’t have to be balanced, but it needs to be thorough and put in context. The Koches may be just as sinister as they make them out to be, but by leaving out important information all they’ve done is write an article which will fuel liberal paranoia and anger conservatives.