Did you know that Columbia Journalism Review is "left-leaning"? By the standards of "media bias checkers" that must mean they want conservatives to be murdered just for existing.
I jest, but not by all that much. Let's just take a minor current affairs example: in writing about the protests in various U.S. states regarding lockdown rules that can be said to be at the least inconsistent confusing and possibly self-defeating, Jon Allsop refers to The right-wing media’s rallying cry: Anti-lockdown edition. Let's have a little peek.
Whatever the source of the anti-lockdown protests, right-wing media has thrown its weight behind them. Talk radio hosts, Twitter pundits such as Candace Owens, and sites including Infowars and the Gateway Pundit have all played their part, as have stars of Fox News. On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson called Whitmer’s shutdown policies “mindless and authoritarian” and accused her of careerism.Well there you have it: arguing against a politician's actions (and/or questioning the motives behind them) is "throwing your weight" behind any and all protests against them. Back when George W. Bush (pbuh) was President that sure would have been a useful tidbit to know, wouldn't it? Warming to his theme, Allsop continues:
Asking whether the current anti-lockdown sentiment is “real” or manufactured is both a hard question to answer and, in some ways, a false one: conservative “movements,” these days, never exist independently of the right-wing media echo chamber. The echo chamber is the apparatus by which they operate.So let me get this straight: it's false to believe that a conservative movement (and implicitly it's only conservative movements Allsop believes are to be described as such) can be natural unless it "exists independently" of "right-wing media" coverage.
So how, exactly, if you're a conservative interested in forming a movement, does Jon Allsop suggest you go about doing so? You will be banned or shadowbanned from social media. You will be ignored in the mainstream press. Without places like Gateway Pundit or Infowars covering your event and getting the word out to likeminded people, it's a guarantee that your movement will fizzle and die as you're left unable to mass-coordinate and recruit. One gets the sense that this conundrum is baked into the pudding of bad-faith far-left arguments like this one.
Going back to CJR as a whole, look right at that headline: "right-wing media". Columbia Journalism Review loves that formulation...2,840 results.
How right-wing media is covering the COVID-19 epidemic ...
The right-wing media's rallying cry: Anti-lockdown edition ...
What if the right-wing media wins?
Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader
Pandemic in the right-wing mediasphere
But hey, maybe they also use the phrase "left-wing media" all the time and just make it clear that they're in that camp. No, not so much...
the Times, more than anyone else in the “left-wing media,”
lazy, fraught terms like “thought police,” and “left-wing media machine.”
Media Matters for America, a left-wing media monitoring group
belatedly to the mainstream press, left-wing media
results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media
96 percent of the results for Trump News were from the left-wing media
catch-all “dishonest left-wing media” formulation
Notice that in this case "left-wing media" is almost always in quotes, either because its a direct quote or a scare quote meant to belittle whoever is using the term. It never appears in any headlines, and even in the mere 138 results some of them are describing Media Matters for America as a left-wing media monitoring group (my emphasis) rather than actual media themselves. Of these, only this article from Allsop in December about Pete Butt-in-Gag the child molesting Presidential candidate uses the phrase un-ironically to refer to actual media: in this case discussing their opposition to him on the basis that he's too busy sodomizing little boys to care about the plight of niggers who rob convenience stores.
How ironic is it that when Justin Peters writes attacking the press in this catch-all “dishonest left-wing media” formulation is dangerous in that, by its obvious falseness, it makes it easier to dismiss more legitimate criticisms". Peters better check what's on his masthead.
You'd think that Columbia Journalism Review might be bothered to review journalism, give it a go and see if it fits them. Unfortunately that would require them to understand that if Gateway Pundit is "far-right", then Jon Allsop is one of the most extremist leftists on the globe.
