Today's two-party system: The Republican Party and the mainstream media

By Gary Abernathy

Let’s be honest about the political powers at play today

Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash

For decades, the mainstream media leaned left politically. That wasn’t because there was any grand plot designed to create a media world dominated by liberals. It was simply the natural order of things.

Political liberals were more inclined than conservatives to become journalists. I recognized this in my years as a reporter and editor, although it was not always quite as pronounced at the smaller newspapers where I worked. Liberals have long viewed journalism as a calling, an environment wherein they could impact the world — to “make the world a better place.” Conservatives by and large saw journalism as an occupation devoted to informing readers, listeners or viewers about news events, nothing more, nothing less.

As such, liberals always viewed journalism as a more exciting and fulfilling occupation. Naturally, over time, journalism’s ranks were filled with more liberals than conservatives.

Despite the growing liberal domination of journalism, the major outlets had for years attempted to set parameters designed to adhere to a notion of balance and fairness. The obvious growing liberal domination of the media made that effort increasingly difficult.

Liberal bias is not just a matter of story content. It begins with which stories are chosen to cover or highlight in the first place, and which ones are not. Liberal editors and news managers naturally viewed certain events and developments as newsworthy, based on their worldview, whereas conservatives would lean into an entirely different set of stories if they were in charge. But as the years went by, liberals were, by the nature of their sheer numbers compared to conservatives, in the decision-making positions.

This is all beyond dispute. Every measure and survey of the personal politics of journalists at the major outlets reveals time and again the overwhelming liberal bent of newsroom personnel. Our major journalism schools are dominated by liberal professors and liberal students, funneling a new army of leftwing replacements into the mainstream media outlets year after year, decade after decade.

Until Donald Trump came along, news organizations attempted to defend themselves as fair and balanced journalists putting aside their personal politics in order to report accurately and honestly. This charade fell apart completely in the Trump era.

From deciding to simply call Trump a liar to the Washington Post tracking his “lies and misleading statements” (but not those of other presidents) to declaring Trump and his followers threats to democracy, the mainstream media — its ranks by now dominated by the far left — abandoned any pretense of being fair and balanced in its coverage of Trump and, by extension, the Republican Party and half the voters in the U.S. They may pay lip service to their professionalism and fairness, but such protestations ring hollow not just to the right, but to everyone across the political spectrum.

Fox News has, since the late 1990s, been the primary conservative news counterpart to the mainstream media. Other conservative cable outlets have emerged, but they have far fewer viewers and influence. Occasionally, important conservative media voices have emerged, primarily the late Rush Limbaugh, who spawned numerous imitators. And the era of podcasts has empowered anyone with internet access and given voice to more conservatives. But the mainstream media enjoys highlighting the supposed influence of certain “MAGA” voices far beyond the power of persuasion they actually enjoy with the public at large.

The liberal mainstream media — primarily, but not limited to, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, CNN and MSNBC — far outweighs the power of conservative media in regard to establishing the tone and tenor of the national conversation. To this day, stories that appear in the Times and Post set the agenda for the lead items on the national news broadcasts, even including Fox News.

Trump didn’t create the animosity on the right toward the mainstream media. Trump’s immense popularity among his base comes in large part thanks to his willingness to call out the forces that conservatives have long felt were their main opponents — much greater adversaries than the Democratic Party.

Trump takes the right tone with the mainstream media. They are not respectfully adversarial in a traditional journalistic sense. They are outright enemies — maybe not when they are face to face with Trump, but in the coverage their outlets routinely produce. He responds in kind, with a “let’s not pretend you’re covering me fairly” attitude, in the way that too many Republicans have historically attempted in hopes of appeasing the enemy.

It’s been years since the Democratic Party on its own has been a worthy adversary. The Democratic Party has long been just the convenient official party organization benefitting from the efforts of the mainstream media. Candidates cannot run under the banner of the mainstream media, so they do so under the umbrella of the Democratic Party. But the mainstream media is their voice, their megaphone, their soapbox, their advocate and defender.

When wrongdoing or scandal involves a Democrat to the degree that it cannot be ignored, the mainstream media will reluctantly cover it. Even then it is often with the caveat that “Republicans say” Democrats are doing something wrong. But Democrats are seldom subjected to the daily scrutiny and dogged investigative efforts that target Republicans.

When Republicans gather in groups, be it locally, statewide or nationally, the main target of their complaints, even in personal conversation, is not the Democratic Party. It is the mainstream media. Republicans consider the mainstream media their greatest adversary, not Democratic officeholders or officials. And in the Trump era, the mainstream media has accepted that role, defending such a posture as standing up for democracy and standing against the forces of authoritarianism. The mainstream media defines Trump and the GOP in terms that allow it to more blatantly and openly stand in opposition to it.

We still have a two-party system in the U.S., but it is now the Republican Party on one hand and the mainstream media on the other. The Democratic Party has become so ineffectual, disrespected and disorganized that it can hardly be seen as a serious threat on its own. The Democratic Party would soon cease to exist as a national movement if it were not for the power and influence of the mainstream media giving it relevance.

These facts are largely at play in the vote by Congress to defund public broadcasting. In this instance, PBS and NPR are merely stand-ins for the mainstream media as a whole. Trump and Republicans in Congress are able to defund public broadcasting, and so they will, just as they would defund other mainstream media outlets if it was in their power to do so. Trump’s lawsuits against various media outlets and the settlements that have happened in a couple of cases are moral victories for him and his base, even if they amount to peanuts in regard to their vast resources.

In recent years, as a result of my six years as a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, I was often invited to appear on cable news programs. But I was most consistently associated with PBS and NPR, and, particularly, the PBS NewsHour, where I often appeared on panel discussions and became the go-to substitute for David Brooks when he was unable to fill his usual seat on the “Brooks and Capehart” segments featured each Friday (and where it became “Capehart and Abernathy” in those instances — Jonathan rightfully moved up to top billing).

I welcomed those opportunities. Sometimes I did them remotely, via Skype, and other times they flew me into Washington to be on set with Jonathan Capehart and host Judy Woodruff — and later with Geoff Bennett or Amna Nawaz when they took over after Judy reduced her role at the station. I enjoyed it immensely, and consider many of the journalists, producers and some of the behind-the-scenes personnel at PBS to be friends. And in many ways, I have long considered PBS to be more balanced in their news reporting than other mainstream media outlets — certainly less sensationalistic and bombastic. But, as in most cases across the mainstream media, I often felt like the lone voice in the room saying anything positive about Trump, MAGA or the GOP.

But even as I have a soft spot for PBS and NPR, I have a tough time defending taxpayer financing of public broadcasting, and I can understand why Republicans are taking the opportunity to bring such financing to an end. It can be argued that public broadcasting will be better off without it. It will free them from having to consistently defend themselves and their need for the funding. And I suspect that corporations and loyal “viewers like you,” as the slogan goes, will step up to fill the void through donations. I’ll be one of them.

But mainstream media outlets in general would be better off dropping any lasting suggestion that they are not biased against Trump, his administration as a whole, the MAGA agenda, and the Republican Party. They clearly are. Their daily reporting unequivocally reveals it. One cannot scroll through the websites of the mainstream media outlets without it feeling like it mirrors a scroll through the website of the Democratic National Committee.

This is where we are in American politics today. On one side is Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party and their patchwork of cable, podcast and social media allies, and on the other side is the mainstream media, with the Democratic Party existing to provide a party registration vehicle for the mainstream media’s favored candidates.

Acknowledging this modern-day power dynamic would be an exercise in honesty. Let’s stop pretending otherwise.