Yes, absolutely. Mainstream media is a (*checks notes*) poor helpless victim when it comes to (*double-checks*) influencing public perceptions about culture, world events, and the media itself.
Bezos is definitely *blaming the victim.* Poor widdle mainstream media. 😥
A 🧵
It's sad that they can't even be perceived neutral when journalists are rabidly clamoring for a political endorsement of the Democratic nominee, and the paper itself quite explicitly defined itself in opposition to Trump since 2016.
And the endorsements definitely don't reflect or enhance perceptions of political bias. The fact that the paper has literally never outright endorsed a Republican since 1976 when they started the practice -- this is just a pure coincidence: washingtonpost.com/opinions/patri…
The Democrats are just better, 100 percent of the time. That's not bias, that's fact. And the editorial bones should make no bones about it. And if the public thinks it might indicate bias that over nearly 50 years the paper endorses only one political party for the presidency (and overwhelmingly endorses Democrats for lower seats as well) -- that's just because *those people* have their brains cooked by the Koch Brothers and Trump.
And speaking of facts, the fact that Democrats outnumber Republicans 10:1 in the field likely does absolutely nothing to influence which topics they cover and how they cover them (as I highlight here, we're clearly unbiased: youtube.com/watch?v=o-uS14…).
It's silly that people would even think that. There's no evidence of bias whatsoever with how outlets cover (or ignore) contentious moral and political issues. How would anyone even get this idea, other than by through evil right-wing smear campaigns?
The fact that the Washington Post and most other mainstream media outlets abruptly grew intensely focused on prejudice and discrimination across all dimensions during the "Great Awokening" -- this likely has nothing whatsoever to do with the political, ideological, and demographic composition of the field: musaalgharbi.com/2023/02/08/gre…
It's dumb to even think that.
The fact that the @washingtonpost was absolutely obsessed with Trump, covered him more than any other candidate pre-election and post-election, covering him more than Joe Biden even after he was voted out of office -- with nearly unanimously negatively throughout irrespective of world events -- and the fact that similar patterns held for pretty much all other media outlets...
It's really unfair that anyone could possibly perceive bias in this in any way, shape, or form: musaalgharbi.com/2019/11/13/med…
You definitely can't check out my book to find out a lot more about the composition and political economy of the journalism field, and how it relates to a lot of these tensions: musaalgharbi.com/we-have-never-…
After all, there's nothing to even possibly discuss here. Chuck Todd is right. Mainstream media organizations are just tiny helpless victims of an empty moral panic. Nothing they should, would, or even could change about what they do. And no need to change -- things are going swimmingly!
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.