Why is the mainstream media in the US biased...?

Because corporate America loves Trump, and it’s where the profits are.

^Trump headlines sell more newspapers and increase advertising revenue. They like it.

@SQUEEKY2 has it correct. Media takes money, and the corporate types back one of their own.
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Their profits skyrocketed after he came on the scene. He had all but gone away until the MSM goaded him into running once again. CNN has become the left’s version of Fox. They’ve gotten so bad that I often feel the need to fact check them!!!

They’re owned by billionaires who think they’d prefer a far-right more-pro-megacorporate administration, even if it’s batshit crazy, because they’re afraid if the political circus dies down, the lower classes might regain some political power and notice the giveaways and power grabs that have been underway, and maybe do something about it.

And (also because of corporate influence on government) it’s somehow not illegal for the owners of giant media corporations to exert huge influence on what gets published.

Only one news outlet gives him a positive spin. The rest give him a sharply negative one. Above answers….SMH.

^Where are the stories calling for him to drop out due to his age and cognitive decline? Where are the many stories questioning his fitness after that chaos in Atlanta where there were tons of empty seats? Why isn’t the media hounding him out of the race?

@Hawaii_Jake I see those (Trump should resign) on Huffington Post, and occasionally by commentators on MSNBC. That’s all.

@Hawaii_Jake Biden has actual cognitive decline that nobody can deny. He was called out because nobody in the media wants Trump. That is, except for FOX. They know the more they call for Trump to resign the more united Trump supporters become. The idea that the media gives Trump preferential treatment is idiotic.

What exactly is main stream media? What channels are you referring to?

I haven’t been watching ABC, NBC, and CBS, but they would be more neutral. I do watch Face the Nation on Sunday, Margaret is fairly even handed and calls out when guests lie, guests from all sides of the political spectrum, but every so often her bias seems to show through a little.

MSNBC is constantly trying to manipulate the politicians and the public, and I definitely saw them pushing for Biden to step down. Most talking heads on MSNBC want the Democrats to win. They decided Biden was a big risk, so they pushed for him to step down. On MSNBC many of the talking heads constantly “tell” politicians what they should think and do. I watch MSNBC, but with an eye roll at least once an hour.

CNN is less biased, and they try to take pride in supposedly not being very biased, but sometimes they go overboard trying to prove it, and hurt the Democrats.

The “news” is now expected to get good ratings, previously it was more of a public service. So, they report the news that will get people emotional and keep people tuned in.

TV that is more neutral and straight news would be CSpan and PBS are more neutral, but I have not been watching much of it lately.

Good written journalistic articles are almost always going to be better than talking heads on TV. I hate to read, so I watch a lot of TV, but I do read NYT and WP at times or if someone sends me an article. The thing is, when I watch TV, I know a lot of it is bullshit, spun, edited, so if I see something being harped on I look up the full unedited versions and just watch for myself and make up my own mind.

A relative of mine about a month ago said she thinks MSNBC wants Trump to win.

I think MSNBC and a lot of progressives and on shows like The View they wanted Trump to be the Republican candidate. Well, on The View, Alyssa, a Republican who worked in the Trump administration try to push for Nikki, she was the only one, even though she said she is more aligned with Chris Christie. MSNBC, The View, and progressives all around me, AGAIN thought Trump would be easier to beat than a different Republican and AGAIN preferred to take that risk. Drives me crazy. On these shows they said over and over that Trump would be the candidate, gave him tons of coverage, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The irony is, the Democrats freak out when Trump accuses the media of being terrible and whatever else he says, and some of the manipulations the cable media does are terrible and deceptive. Fox is terrible, but I think we are not talking about Fox on this Q.

CNN is not “less biased” they’re the most biased, followed very closely by FOX news depending on what day it is. Sometimes FOX is more biased.

@Blackwater_Park You think CNN is more biased that MSNBC? The right wing constantly accuses CNN of bias, and I don’t see how they harp on CNN more than MSNBC. Makes no sense to me.

@Blackwater_Park Do you watch MSNBC and CNN? Or, just clips from it?

Here’s a fairly recent media bias chart according to whoever puts these things together, but my statements above were just from my own observations, not a chart. https://guides.library.harvard.edu/newsleans/thechart

They’re both biased but yes CNN it the left wing’s FOX, MSNBC wishes they were. I look at all the media outlets. CNN/FOX are the worst. MSNBC is B league and does not have the
audience. Reuters is the least biased I can find. That chart has CNN, NPR, Forbes in the center… LOL. No.

@Blackwater_Park 15 years ago MSNBC was much more balanced, but now? I don’t understand how you see CNN as worse, except that I know it is a right wing talking point. Hell, it is also a left wing talking point, I have progressives say to me, “MSNBC tells the truth!” With a tone of they will go along with anything MSNBC says. I don’t feel confident that they know half of what MSNBC talks about is opinion.

Do you actually watch MSNBC and CNN several hours a week?

Well, the question is bogus to start with. Trump never talked about electric sharks. That has been brought up before and it is patently false. So the reason the MSM isn’t piling on that is that it is completely false, verifiably false, and so bizarre that they couldn’t even spin it into being vaguely true.

And the media is not now, nor have they ever been, biased in favor of Trump. They played their role for the Democratic Party when they piled onto Biden. Joe was never supposed to be the candidate for 2024. That was obvious in 2020. They set Biden up with reality. The debate with Trump was scheduled way ahead of the normal time for presidential debates normally start. They usually start closer to September or October. They scheduled this one specifically to let him fail so they could get rid of him. They let him go, unassisted, to the debate, didn’t feed him questions ahead of time, didn’t throw him softball questions, and didn’t step in to help him against Trump. And the result was predictable…he failed miserably. The MSM then piled on Biden to add pressure to him to drop out. That is what the powers behind the throne wanted done and they did it.

The obvious proof of all is what happened when he did drop out and what has happened since. They never questioned his claim of being sick. They never really questioned him on why he decided to drop out. They accepted it without any curiosity at all. They never questioned how the Democrats moved on after pushing Biden through the primaries to just toss him aside and moved on to someone else. There was no discussion about how that saves democracy by doing away with the democratic process. Harris is the presumptive nominee at this point and she got not a single vote. That isn’t discussed at all. Harris hasn’t had a single press conference, taken not a single question. And the MSM is perfectly content with that. They aren’t questioning her record or her policies, they aren’t holding her culpable for the problems in the country she and Joe started, they are just cheering her on and trying to act like nothing ever happened before this. They have started up with Trump bashing again since that is all Harris is running on…Hate Trump. That’s all she has to run on. And the MSM isn’t pushing her at all.

As for questioning his dementia, that is a lie as well. He just got challenged on that at the NABJ session he went onto. They questioned it and asked if he would take a cognitive test. He said he had no problem with that…he has taken many. That is the answer they keep getting to that question and it is an answer they don’t like, so they keep asking it and acting like he is lying. No proof, no claims, no reasons, just that he isn’t being honest. And lefties everywhere eat it up.

The MSM is now, and always has been, the propaganda wing of the DNC. They have never been a fan of Trump. They have made their brands on Trump bashing.

Hahaha
Hahaha
Hahaha

@Blackwater_Park FWIW, CNN was trying to increase ratings so they decided to go more middle of the road in their coverage about 6 months or a year ago.

I’m a @Hawaii_Jake fan. . . .

@seawulf575 How do you define MSM? Which parts of the media?

@JLeslie The big ones. ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, WaPo, NYT…the usual suspects. You guys go nutty over Fox but Fox is actually moving left quite a bit. That’s why a lot of their celebs moved on to other things. They couldn’t push the lies anymore. They were getting in trouble for trying to dig into stories.

@seawulf575 I think there is an opportunity for you to start a HARD CORE right wing TV / cable media outlet !

Trump and Musk will send you a couple of BILLION dollars ! Oh wait they have cash flow problems. . . . .

Just don’t use a swastika in the logo.

It would be banned in several sountries in EU !

CNN is not middle ground. They’re still just as left-wing biased as MSNBC

The great thing in the USA is that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, no matter how wrong it is.

@Tropical_Willie If I were to start a TV/Cable media channel, it would be focused on journalism. That is the problem with media today…the bias. It is horrible. I would push asking the tough questions, doing the research to dig up stories, and political party wouldn’t matter. If I went into an opinion section it would be well advertised and I wouldn’t stick with one view or the other. I’d let both sides be heard. But that isn’t the point of “news”. Those sections are trying to tell you what to think.

@janbb Fox news did the exact same thing a couple of years ago and when it did not work out for them, they went right back to being partisan. CNN will follow the same path.

@Blackwater_Park I imagine you’re right. Interestingly, Fox now has Buttigegg on quite a lot and he is not pandering to the right wing.

Being moderate does not help ratings, most people want to hear news that reinforces their loyalty to their team.

@Hawaii_Jake Did you see Lawrence O’Donnell last night? You would probably be interested in his commentary related to this Q, here’s a video of it: https://youtu.be/ZD-oTJ49nls?si=3PmOFy71pnGCl5xO or you could probably see it on demand on your TV.

I had a slightly different take than my husband on O’Donnell’s thoughts.

^I did not watch the whole video, but he’s getting at what I see.

So if they report anything negative on Trump they are being biased, if they report anything negative on Democrats they are just reporting the facts?

@SQUEEKY2 As usual, you are parsing it all wrong. When they make shit up to report negatively on Trump and don’t report on negative things, or worse ye, cover up for negative things, for the Democrats they are biased. And that is how the MSM has worked for a decade now. When they finally start reporting negative things on the Dems, they are reporting facts, but they do it for the purpose of helping the Dems plans such as getting rid of Biden.

@seawulf575 likes insulting people. I wonder if it ever occurred to him that he is wrong and the rest of us are right…

Take the comment above. The supposed mainstream media is accused of “making things up’. But compare that to the utter falsehoods on Fox, OANN, Truth social, and other right wing conservative outlets. They don’t compare. The right makes up far more crap than the supposed MSM ever does.

It’s the old sleight of hand trick – if the right wing puts you on the defensive, it let’s them get away with all sorts of shit, because they think your attention is occupied elsewhere.

(By the way, this is not a recent right wing trick – it goes back to the Nixon years and Watergate, and continued through Reagan and both Bushes. The right wing has gotten really good at deceptive chicanery.)

Biden would be all over all news outlets when he slurs a word or said a gaffe.
Trump does it all the time and people just shrug and say that’s just Trump, they give him a pass on that stuff and the fright wing still scream it’s all left wing media, yeah right.

@elbanditoroso Of course they compare. When all the lefty outlets parrot the exact same talking points down to using the exact same phrases, and when they are all lying about something, let’s treat them like you do with Trump. WaPo once kept a running tally of all the Trump lies. Every time he said he never colluded with Russia they called it another lie. When he said he never called White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis “very fine people” they called it another lie. And they kept asking the questions and he kept clarifying the record. Yet they called each and every time a lie and added it. And all those things were false claims about him. So them calling it a lie was a lie in itself.

So let’s take a look back in history and count all the lies saying Trump colluded with Russia, that he said WS and N-N were very fine people, that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation, every time someone said he was a rapist, and many, many more. And each and every one of those things was a lie. So right now they have shattered any claims you have against the right wingers. Not that right wingers don’t lie too, but there are far fewer outlets.

The problem is that you don’t want to admit when the left lies. You don’t want to see the propaganda campaign they run for the Dems. You don’t want to admit they give the Dems passes on everything they do wrong. Look at this question as a perfect example. The media started piling on Biden. Yep. But the DNC wanted Biden out of the way because it was apparent he couldn’t win the election and no amount of cheating would convince people otherwise. So in swoops their propagandists to beat up on Biden for a while. And you all see that as unfair somehow. Yet for more than three years they have covered for him. They swore he was fit as a fiddle, no cognitive issues at all, not too old, never been better…right up until it was inconvenient. And now that he dropped out, they aren’t following up at all. If he is so out of touch he can’t campaign as the duly elected candidate for his party, why isn’t his ability to fill the office questioned? They don’t ask that. Harris never got a vote, never won a primary, and is now the presumptive candidate. Not democratic at all. And the MSM is perfectly content not to question it. They don’t push for her to answer any questions. They just let her run around reading canned speeches that have no substance. No one is asking her about her plans if she wins the presidency, what her policies are…none of that. They don’t care because they are told not to care. We have enough video footage of what happens when Kamala is without teleprompter. She is loony. Word salad is the meal of the day. But no one in the lefty media wants to address that.

You slam Fox and other right wing outlets, but here’s the real difference: the right wing outlets (and I’m not even sure Fox fits that picture) actually ask questions. They challenge the status quo. Do they slant things? Sure…all outlets do. We’ve already established that. Do they lie? Some of them have lied as have some of the lefty outlets. But they at least ask tough questions to the candidates and ask the pertinent questions in situations.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Once again someone is following the formula, ”right wing puts you on the defensive, it let’s them get away with all sorts of shit, because they think your attention is occupied elsewhere.”

But remember @Tropical_Willie we are the ones that have it all wrong, and the fright wing are always right.
After all it’s God’s will.
The right can do no wrong, and the left can do no right, or something like that.

@seawulf575 ‘s response was predictable and trite. As expected.

@elbanditoroso As trite as what I got in return. As expected.