There is clearly a different standard when judging the performance of news channels and news programs when viewed by left-leaning audiences vs. right-leaning ones. Each camp loves to demonize the other, and neither news camp has much of a following from the opposite side.
A key difference, however, is internal criticism, with the left camp much more critical of their newscasts than the right is with their own.
This is possibly because the right tends to be more monolithic. Conservatives, as noted by William E. Connolly, a political theorist at Johns Hopkins University, are “these seemingly disparate groups [that] are bound together by a kind of spiritual existentialism.”
Conversely, the left-leaning faction is composed of many groups, including those who focus on women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and/or minority rights, as well as climate change advocates, etc. These groups tend to band together to gang up on the liberal news media when they feel that their rights are not being properly represented or vigorously defended.
But advocates from the left, for the large part, tend to ignore the slights from right-wing newscasts and instead lash out to the news people on the left.
On the opposite side, the political right seems to be largely uncritical of their own news media, and if there is even a small amount of reproach, the level abates when critics swing more to the extreme right. Conservatives, for example, don’t criticize the FOX News channel. With left-leaning audiences, criticism of their own news media increases when moving to the fringes.
In terms of accuracy, however, audiences tend to favor centrist views and are largely weary of so-called “cancel culture” (1,586 books were censored in the U.S. in the last year alone) proponents, and with advocates of conspiracy theories that can result in dangerous propaganda being spread (which often seems to compel anti-vaxxers and mass shooters to take action).
Plus, as seen with the seizure of former president Donald Trump’s classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate, statements from 18 of Trump’s former associates –– contradicting their former boss that the documents were, in fact, not de-classified –– did not do anything to dissuade Trump supporters from continuing to back the former prez and their preferred news media. On the contrary, the raid caused donations from supporters of Trump to increase from $200,000 a day to $1 million a day for two days.
Similarly, right-wing media seemed to condone threats from Trump supporters against the FBI agents that raided Trump’s estate, and, recently, the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute at New York University, reported that one poll agent out of five has worried about pressure to certify election results, and 20 percent of the 600 election agents polled said they planned on leaving their jobs before the 2024 election.
On the other hand, left-leaning newscasts have a tendency to self-censor when it comes to negative news reports involving minorities, and during the pandemic they tended to create anxiety (for example, reporting on the high level of contagiousness, but not the low level of hospitalizations), while on the right, the message was basically to ignore COVID completely.
“Reprinted with permission from VideoAge International”
