"Unbalanced, Skewed Too Far Left"
Apparently we're the biased ones in the era of Donald Trump
(Photo | AP)
by Ben Cohen
The headline of this piece is actually the feedback a Banter reader gave us after canceling their membership.
Having built this site from the ground up, it is heartbreaking when members cancel their memberships for any reason, but particularly when they level criticism like this. Thankfully comments like the one above are rare and we have an extremely low churn rate for subscribers (ie. the rate at which members cancel their memberships). Our members genuinely seem to appreciate what we do and for the most part give us positive and insightful feedback.
Being biased in Trump’s America
We have been criticized before for being “too far left”. In fact, the informal media ranking site ‘Media Bias/Fact Check’ labeled us “moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation”.
Their summary of our site is confusing to say the least:
In review, The Daily Banter reports news and opinion with a very strong liberal bias that frequently uses charged loaded wording such as this: Eddie Haskell’s State Of The Union Was An Infuriating Study In Gaslighting and this Trump Described By U.S. Intelligence Officials As Willfully Ignorant. Both of these stories are properly sourced. In general, all stories strongly favor the left and denigrate the right through one sided reporting.
Both the articles cited are critiques of Donald Trump — the first is Bob Cesca’s take on Donald Trump’s Orwellian attempt to white wash his gutter politics at the 2019 State of the Union speech, and the second a literal quote from US intelligence officials on Trump’s shocking ignorance.
Criticizing Donald Trump for lying about his track record in office and quoting US intelligence officials apparently constitutes “very strong liberal bias”.
It is worth noting that previous to Donald Trump’s inauguration, ‘Media Bias/Fact Check’ reported that we had a “slight liberal bias” and rated our factual reporting as “Very high”. Their new rating is even more bizarre given we overhauled our editorial policy significantly in 2018/19 as we were switching to the newsletter format. I felt that the relentless pace of the 24/7 publishing model was hampering our ability to check everything that went out, and the slower, more thoughtful pace of a newsletter would ensure maximum editorial accuracy. Editorial mistakes are caught by our attentive readers and other journalists at an extraordinarily high rate, and after our move to the newsletter format you are reading now, we have not had to retract or even seriously update a single article. This is because we edit and check sources fanatically.
I’ve written about journalism in the Trump era quite extensively before, more recently about the choice journalists face when deciding what and how to report on the news:
Being objective in the Trump era means taking a side. One side is attached to reality, and the other is living in a bizarro nightmare where up is down, left is right, and Hydroxychloroquine is a legitimate Covid-19 treatment because Donald Trump said so.
Journalists and media companies have to make a choice about their own credibility, then run the risk of appearing to be hyper partisan by choosing to be a part of reality.
What then does it mean to be called “unbalanced,” “biased”, or “skewed too far left” in modern day America? The fact is, every writer here at The Banter is pretty moderate. We all believe in reporting facts and calling out inaccuracies and falsehoods wherever they come from. If Joe Biden had claimed Hydroxychloroquine was a legitimate Covid-19 treatment, we would have called him out on this. But the truth is that in America, only one political party operates in a fact based reality. Some Democrats are not entirely truthful of course, but spending time fact checking them for making inaccurate statements about whether Trump held a bible upside down or not isn’t a great use of our time.
For reference, Donald Trump is still maintaining that he won the 2020 election, only 27 congressional Republicans out of 249 have acknowledged Biden’s win, and Sen. Ted Cruz recently called for the Supreme Court to help overturn the Pennsylvania election result.
Is there a “balanced”, “non-biased” and “unskewed” way to report this?
It is hard to take criticism, particularly when you pour so much energy and effort into something. We have worked extremely hard here at The Banter to build a responsible media outlet, and we take what we do very seriously. We are receptive to criticism and listen intently to reader feedback, but there are limits to what we can accept. To be accused of being “unbalanced” and “skewed too far left” is a bridge too far. Not calling out the outrageous lies coming from the president and the Republican Party would not, I believe, make us more “balanced”.
The “both sides” game cost Hillary Clinton the election in 2016, and as a consequence we have had four years of a government so completely detached from reality that Trump can declare victory in the election after overwhelmingly losing the Electoral College vote and the popular vote by over 6 million.
Isolated, but sane
Over the years, The Banter has carved a niche for itself in the increasingly partisan American mediascape. We have been demonized by both ends of the political spectrum — the far left believes we are corporate sell outs, the right thinks we are socialists working for the Democratic Deep State. In Donald Trump’s America, supposed centrists have now claimed that we have an extreme liberal bias.
It is hard to know exactly what to make of all of this. But given Joe Biden - one of the most moderate Senators in US history - has been painted as an extremist by the same factions, I think we are probably in good company. Others may believe Trump has created a new center on the political spectrum, but it is not one we are going to be joining. "There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party,” said John Boehner when asked about the GOP in 2018.
Fast forward to 2020, and that observation makes you a hyper partisan liberal.
So yes, The Banter has a liberal bias, but that bias has far more do with reality than blind loyalty to the Democratic Party. If that means losing readers because we do not believe Democrats and Republicans are remotely comparable, then so be it.
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As a red diaper baby whose father helped defend Black families seeking a home in Levittown PA in the 1950s, as an ardent opponent of the wars in southeast Asia in the 1960s and 70s, as a youth worked for McGovern and Mo Udall, who became a civil rights lawyer and public defender, as an activist who often felt the self-referential Left was less principled than ideologically rigid, and as a Democrat who voted for Christie Whitman twice due to her pro-choice views when she ran against boss driven Democratic Party candidates for NJ Governor, and as a father raising daughters who thought Cheney and Bush the epitome of evil until Trump shattered that paradigm, and this year who supported Warren, and then Biden, I find your views consistently refreshing, positive, sensible and centered in the intelligent and moral political universe. Thanks for all you do.
This piece is spot on and all Americans need to understand this problem. The bias actually lies with the ridiculous mainstream media requirement to "balance" reporting with the "both sides do it" nonsense. Treating specious, fact-less, irrational, illogical, fallacious, propaganda material as equally important in any media-covered discussion serves no citizen in a democracy. I used to work in a high school library where the head librarian insisted on having literally equal numbers of articles and books for use in researching "controversial topics." I could not persuade her that all articles and sources are absolutely not academically equal or valid, and that many "controversial topics" are controversial only because much of their "supporting" arguments and opinions are based on fact-less, scientifically specious, illogical misinformation. The controversy is often only evidence-based fact versus fiction or a total lack of actual evidence. The research collection should have reflected this truth in the relative sizes of the sides of each topic. Propaganda does not deserve the outsized place it has in today's media, either.