Ever notice the tendency amongst some to dismiss everything reported in the media as inevitably split between a right-wing and left-wing bias? On the surface, it sounds like a neutralist shrug to avoid taking side. But in practice it is often used as a tactic to excuse highly damaging distortions sought by certain media owners, and at the same time discredit valid observations by genuinely impartial journalists.
Let’s look at a few examples.
A White man is found to have shot numerous people dead. Another one has murdered politicians who had a liberal outlook. Yet another one has killed Blacks and Latinos because he wanted to get rid of them. They are reported as acting alone, mentally disturbed, with no implications for any other White person, or connections to any extremist propaganda. Now a Black person is arrested for stabbing someone to death. A murderer is discovered to be an asylum seeker. Someone shouting out ‘Allah’ has set off a bomb. Suddenly there is even more coverage about the threats posed by immigrants, discussions proliferate about keeping refugees out, and all Muslims are suspects – not a word about mental illness. Bias is to always excuse those you favour and blame everyone you dislike by superficially linking them to some wrongdoer. Objectivity is to examine each case on its own merit, and not make unwarranted generalisations.
Then there is the matter of public revenue and collective expenditure. Tax in every form is reported as money being taken away from people. But where is the report that shows what tax revenue will buy for people individually and their country as a whole? The education of children, the healthcare, the policing, the defence of the realm, environmental protection, and countless other support and services that we all rely on. Imagine if the media were to report people losing billions every day to businesses that charge them for numerous items. The news keep adding up the costs from multiple bills, but never mention what is being bought – food, heating, electricity, transport, clothes, entertainment, furniture, decorations, and so on. Bias is to focus relentlessly on the costs of public support, and not connecting them with the benefits they bring. Of course it would be biased to dwell on the benefits of public services without looking closely at taxes too – but no mainstream media in the West has ever been guilty of that.
How about financial rule breakers? On the one hand we have ferocious attacks on those who commit benefit frauds and are rigorously prosecuted by the authority. On the other hand, we have a few reports on those who commit tax frauds who are rarely prosecuted. Is it because the problem is so much worse with benefit cheats than tax fraudsters? Actually, it’s the other way round. In the UK, tax frauds cost the country almost 10 times more than benefit frauds [Note 1]. There is also little coverage of people in need who underclaim the benefits they are entitled to. With other financial matters such as the managing of savers’ money, many in the banking sector acted so irresponsibly that it led to a meltdown. There was no widespread media demands for their prosecution and imprisonment, and after their banks were bailed out, many even received bonuses.
We can multiply our examples with the contrasts between the attacks on unions for trying to influence government policies to support workers, and the defence of corporations in donating to, lobbying, collaborating with allies in government to put their interests first; between the sympathetic reporting of anti-immigrant protestors who cannot stand the sight of refugees, and the negative reports of people gathered to protest against the killing of defenceless children in Gaza; or between supportive reports of corporations withholding their investment and threatening business closures when they can’t get the level of returns they want, and the critical reports of workers going on strike when they can’t get the level of pay they seek.
If we look at the main media outlets – press and broadcast – we will certainly find many lodged firmly on the Right, there are some that are still managing a fair balance (though for that very reason they are arbitrarily lambasted as “Left-leaning”), and very few that routinely frame their stories with a Left-bias.
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[Note 1: See https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/02/the-real-cheats-are-in-tax-not-benefits; other estimates range from 6 to 15 times worse for tax frauds. This does not even include money siphoned away through tax avoidance loopholes.
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