Liberals Must Get Comfortable Running Counter to the Media

The freedom of the press has long been among the strongest principles of liberalism as an ideology, and for good reason—only through the dissemination of news and ideas can an open society share knowledge and engage in dialogue that is necessary, particularly for a representative system of government. Journalistic heroes from John Peter Zenger to Carl Bernstein hold a special place in the pantheon of liberalism, especially in the United States, where they often take the place of militant revolutionaries in other states. But protecting the liberty of the press does not preclude actively combating narratives pushed by major outlets. While we should defend press freedoms from governmental encroachment, too often liberals see the press as a natural ally and are at a loss when that ally seems to turn on them.

This has not always been the case. Liberals of the 19^th century understood that they needed their own presses to publish their side of the story, knowing that the default position for a major paper was going to be to actively or passively defend the interests of its owners. For example, Ida B. Wells is today remembered as one of the great investigative journalists in the history of the profession, demonstrating the power of the written word and dogged investigation to shift public perceptions. But her publishing was absolutely against the general tide of the papers of her day; one of the goals of her activism, which she set out in an address to the National Negro Conference in 1909,  was to “try to influence the daily papers of the country to refuse to become accessory to mobs either before or after the fact,” because  “Several of the greatest riots and most brutal burnt offerings of the mobs have been suggested and incited by the daily papers of the offending community.” Such local papers are of course little remembered compared to Wells herself; this selective preservation of documents can obscure the reality that most of the press in the country was either indifferent or involved, in an active or tacit way, in perpetuating this crime. 

One of Wells’s mentors and publisher of several prominent Black newspapers of the late 19^th century, Timothy Thomas Fortune, wrote in his book Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South that “The great newspapers, which should plead the cause of the oppressed and the down-trodden, which should be the palladiums of the people's rights, are all on the side of the oppressor, or by silence preserve a dignified but ignominious neutrality…There are no ‘Liberators’ to-day, and the William Lloyd Garrisons have nearly all of them gone the way of all the world.” It is difficult to imagine today's liberals being so forceful in their condemnation unless we carefully qualified our discussion, limiting it simply to the properties of Rupert Murdoch perhaps. 

There are good reasons for this reticence. Enemies of free society make their disdain for the press known at every opportunity. When people like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin are dismissing press outlets as enemies of the people, there is a natural instinct to rush to those outlets’ defense. And as educational polarization continues to pit more educated Democrats against, on average, less educated Republicans, cultural signifiers like reading a daily paper take on a partisan salience that can mask important failures. But the consequences of this very human failing can be disastrous, and they have been ruthlessly exploited in the very recent past.

Perhaps no figure understood the difficulty liberals faced in standing up to respected media sources than reactionary crusader Christopher Rufo. One of Rufo’s goals is to tear down ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ programs that seek to make space for marginalized communities, especially in prestigious or powerful institutions. Claudine Gay, the first Black president of Harvard, made a particularly attractive target—not only is she a Black woman, but Harvard and other schools were gaining notoriety for the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests. The time was ripe for Rufo to launch a clandestine campaign against her, using the national media without leaving any trace of his machinations.

Except that there was nothing secret about it at all. Rufo went on Twitter and declared his intentions extremely openly, telegraphing his plans like the proverbial comic book villain  “We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right. The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.” The squeeze worked particularly well, with the New York Times setting up a live blog of the accusations and their progress, publishing stories at an impressive pace until Gay finally resigned.

The strategy has worked elsewhere, but the Times, as our most prominent paper, has played a leading role again and again. LGBTQ+ rights organization GLAAD notes that Times reporting has been repeatedly cited in legislative debates and legal opinions limiting access to gender affirming treatment, with disastrous consequences on the availability of treatments like hormone therapy. 

This has continued into recent days of the Trump campaign, particularly prominently in the way Times headlines have treated Trump’s various promises, compared to his verifiable record. Republicans passed and Trump signed the massive Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a sharply regressive tax policy that cut taxes particularly for high earners and corporations. These cuts are set to sunset, unless renewed, at the end of 2025. Whether to renew this multi-trillion dollar bill, or to reform it in some way, is inevitably going to be a major, probably the major, economic policy of the next presidential term. But in the Times story “From Tips to TikTok, Trump Swaps Policies With Aim to Please Voters”, the paper does not see the need to mention this act or the Republican promise to renew it, even though it is mentioned in the same bullet point of the Republican platform as the tax on tips. The extension of the TCJA is at least an order of magnitude more significant of a policy than any change on tips—but to the Times in the same article, this represents “doubling down on populism.” The focus on the piece, and the use of the right wing’s favored (but inaccurate) self-description as ‘populists’, are journalistic decisions that the reporter has every right to make, and does not, crucially, prove a left or right wing bias. However, it is equally important that liberals watching the media note the direction of these decisions and bring attention to them—to inform media consumers and hopefully encourage journalists and editors to be more thoughtful about them in the future. 

A similar pattern has emerged with press coverage of Trump’s fitness for office. The day after Biden’s debate with Donald Trump in July, the Washington Post front page (preserved by the Telegraph ) top headline was Biden Struggles in Testy Debate. The next? Performance Stirs Worry in his Party. The Times editorial board spent much of July publishing piece after piece about the need for Biden to halt his campaign, in a pattern eerily similar to the obsessive focus on Ivy League university presidents earlier. And the campaign bore fruit—Biden ultimately was forced to withdraw, though contrary to some of the more unrealistic proposals, swiftly endorsed Kamala Harris and helped create the race we see today. 

By contrast, when Trump gave a press conference August 10 that was chock full of untruths, the Washington Post article by Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, and Patrick Svietek called it “Meandering” but made no mention of Trump’s health or cognitive abilities. This despite the fact that Trump’s remarks included an almost certainly misremembered story about a helicopter emergency landing. This stands in sharp contrast to Biden’s press conference after the 2024 NATO summit, where every American journalist asked about Biden’s health until a Radio Polskie journalist brought the line of questioning back to the issue at hand. Does this show a media bias against Biden? Not necessarily—the Post made a point to draw attention to several of Trump’s lies and false statements. But it does point to an element of ‘herd behavior’ and narrative writing. Once Biden’s health became a story—the day after the debate, on the front page of our major newspapers—every other story, even foreign policy ones, became about that narrative. Media consumers and commenters should be comfortable pointing this out—that the media not only reports news, but to a great extent sets agendas and broad narratives that dictate what gets deemed newsworthy in the future. And liberals should be especially diligent in pointing this out when the media narrative is to our detriment. 

Naturally, liberalism has some strong allies in the press, as well—and not everyone left of center or subscribing to liberal values is so enamored with the press. But Americans fearful of encroaching reactionary governance need to learn to more aggressively fight back against the press if we are to survive.

This can be hard to do without falling into sounding like a conspiracist, convinced that any source of information is out to get them. However, a few principles make a good framework. 

First, while some outlets are reliably conservative, charging every press outlet with being right of center is not particularly plausible. The issue is not so much one of ideological bias, but of procedural tendencies. In his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, comedian and later Senator Al Franken makes this point well: “there are other, far more important, biases in the mainstream media than liberal or conservative ones…pack mentality…laziness…negativity”. These biases are extremely easy to understand and don’t require believing in much malice on the part of reporters—anyone can see how the nature of humans and the nature of institutions can lead to biases of this sort. This can then be abused by malicious actors—fortunately, actors like Rufo don’t hide their malice, so this step can be easily illustrated without sounding paranoid. 

Second, respond with a certain amount of ‘working the refs.’ The idea is that in a sports game, consistently claiming bias on the part of referees will rile up the crowd, and it is likely that the refs, even if they believe their previous calls to be properly unbiased, will start to second-guess their future calls, giving the benefit of the doubt to team making the accusations. This almost certainly happens in the realm of media. If everyone suspects the New York Times of having a systemic liberal bias, so much so that it is common knowledge, Times reporters who take a more conservative stand on some issue, or report early on the foibles of a liberal politician, will feel they are restoring balance—and might help them stand out in a crowded media market. Calling ‘conservative bias’ with the same ferocity conservatives call the reverse is unlikely to work—but we should point out the other biases at work. Note the absolute absurdity of devoting multiple front page stories to whether Biden is staying in the race! Call out the tendency to catastrophize bad economic data while barely covering the good!

Finally, keep an eye out for both truly liberal media outlets, and direct sources of data. Publications with a distinct and openly acknowledged perspective are just as important to the news ecosystem as those purporting to be unbiased. Supporting these—whether weekly papers, online magazines, or podcasts—is crucial to building an ecosystem that can balance that which conservatives have built over the decades. Becoming familiar with, and teaching students to be familiar with primary sources of information is also crucial. Looking directly into the text of bills or checking economic data directly from agencies is a critical bulwark against getting sucked into media narratives that distort reality.

Vocal pushback to harmful stories about DEI or trans healthcare won’t crumple the media or rob it of its ability to stand up against oppression—partially because it is not inherently in the nature of news media to resist oppression. Newspapers and cable networks are driven by their own institutional logics. They can to some extent be trained to follow more liberal courses, but only if liberals themselves take on the challenge of undoing decades of conservatives attempting the same. 

Featured image is Ida B. Wells-Barnett, by Sallie E. Garrity