EDITOR’S COLUMN: Why media bias leans left

The postmortem of last Tuesday’s shocking presidential election left members of the media doing an auto-autopsy, as it were, to find how we all got it all so wrong.

Far be it from me to hold anyone back from self-flagellation. Far better to jump in and join the ritual, though it might seem we’re all being a bit hard on ourselves given that in the case of Donald Trump, the bias could have been against unqualified persons, and not ingrained political beliefs.

Then again, the way the typical Trump voter was cast in the news as an angry, bigoted, yokel, it should have seemed mathematically impossible. Even if the polls were right, that would still account for 50 million of these ‘deplorables,’ which would have meant an unfathomable run on Confederate flags and Beech Nut.

“We can’t make them Stars & Bars fast enough!” is a booming business story you think you would have heard during the campaign, if that were the case.

Clearly the media blew it and clearly its tendency to lean left of the population mean is to blame.

Why is it that the media — unless it’s trying really hard to lean right like Fox News — almost always leans left?

One suggestion coming out of this autopsy is that the media elites live in ‘bubbles’ in New York and Washington D.C., and don’t know what it’s like out there for people in flyover country.

This explanation is silly. There’s plenty of cities not on coasts, and media members there also tend to lean left.

So maybe it’s a City Mouse vs. Country Mouse feud?

That’s a little bit of it.

For instance, on gun control issues, someone who lives in an apartment with hundreds of people living above, below and to the sides of them is bound to feel differently about gun ownership rights than a more rural person who’s nearest neighbor might be half-a-mile away.

Another theory I have is that journalists are overwhelmingly interested in telling underdog stories, and especially stories of little people being put upon by people in power.

Everybody likes underdog stories.

Right-leaning folks would like more stories about little people being put upon by government policies, but government policies don’t give the villain much of a face, unless they’re emblemized in an individual — like Trump — or a corporation that, by nature, is only interested in making money — like Trump, LLC.

Take, for instance, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many on the right believe Israel gets an unfair shake in the media. But if you’re a journalist covering the story, which side are you going to view as the more put-upon underdog? The wealthy, sophisticated Israelis who keep expanding their suburbs out on the West Bank? Or, the poor, trapped, helpless, hopeless Palestinians backed into a corner, left with no choice but to fight?

It’s not even close. You could pose a similar question over coverage along the U.S.-Mexico border and get a similar answer.

Another reason for the bias is that most journalists are frustrated artists and, as such, share a psychic bond with artists, starving and successful alike.

If you can write but you can’t make it big with your writing, journalism is pretty much the only job that pays, and it usually doesn’t pay that well.

Whatever kernel of truth there in the old trope, “Those who can’t do, teach,” grant two kernels of wisdom to “Those who can’t write, report.”

But I think the biggest reason has nothing to do with geography or cultural or artistic sensibilities and has everything to do with one’s relationship to government.

Most ‘elite’ media journalists aren’t from the ‘bubbles’ they now inhabit.

Tom Brokaw is from South Dakota; Walter Cronkite, Missouri; Thomas Friedman, Minnesota; Edward R. Murrow, Washington State, and if you went on to make a list of most of the most prominent and influential journalists in history, you’ll find that most come from flyover country, and rural flyover country at that.

Inevitably, their first meaningful bits of journalism were in covering local government, be it at the city, county or state level.

The first thing any reporter will typically notice covering government at the local level is how ill-informed and illogical the opponents of local government officials tend to be.

Probably 9 times out of 10 the crackpot screaming bloody murder over some action the body is taking is woefully lacking in knowledge of the subject.

As that reporter generates sources on the council, he or she will tend to come to sympathize with these public servants, who also may be the first to make a young reporter feel empowered and impactful. The journalist may also come to be more annoyed and less impressed by the citizenry, the loudest of which tend to oppose any sort of progress and the increase in taxation, regulation and forced neighborliness that comes with it.

So, by the time that journalist makes it big, everything he associates with ‘small government, low taxes, and individual liberty’ has been shaped by those local yokels, the kind he wound up painting with a broad brush as the only types of people who could possibly vote for Donald Trump.