Illiberal Bias and the 2024 Election

I’ve stopped reading the New York Times, as it has turned to clickbait garbage, but I still crack the Washington Post every day to scan the news and gauge the state of the “liberal-biased media.” While far better than the Grey Old Lady, it can be nearly as frustrating a process. Check out the headlines and framing for four of the five above-the-fold stories today in America’s last half-decent broadsheet.

1. Biden faces pressure to deliver a strong message to DISSATISFIED VOTERS.

2. Bernie Sanders made private WARNING to Biden about 2024 campaign.

3. Biden has canceled $138 billion in student loans. Some say it’s NOT ENOUGH.

4. Of Biden’s proposals in his address last year, here’s what FLOPPED and what succeeded.

These choices represent a lot of editorial intention, but they sure as hell aren’t guided by a “liberal bias.”

Yesterday, while puttering around in the kitchen, I thought about what a great exercise it would be to aggregate all economic stories in the major media over the past year to compare the framings. By the numbers, it’s been an extraordinarily great year by nearly every metric of growth. Inflation is down, employment is up, GDP growth is strong, manufacturing jobs are soaring, unions had a great year, and so did the stock market. Building projects are engaged across the country through the Inflation Reduction Act, the crush of debt from student loans for young earners is being addressed through forgiveness and remediation, and pharmaceutical companies are being forced to rationalize the prices of at least some lifesaving medicine. All that is empirically true, but what I’d like to know is the percentage breakdown between stories that SIMPLY REPORTED THOSE NUMBERS vs. stories that reported the numbers inside articles leading with the message “economy strong, BUT NO ONE BELIEVES IT.”