A Dictionary of Media Bias

If there was anything to learn from the Republican presidential candidates debate last Wednesday—and there wasn’t much—it was that the warring campaigns had finally found a common enemy other than Hillary Clinton: the mainstream media.

When asked to comment on a Sun-Sentinel editorial calling on him to resign after a notoriously shabby attendance record, Florida Senator Marco Rubio deflected to the attendance records of previous Democratic candidates and called it “evidence of the bias that exists in the America media today.” Never you mind that editorials are opinionated by definition.

“Bias” is reporting—which appears in the news and not the opinions section—that is altered and swayed based on the political preferences and agendas of writers and editors, the conscious bending of facts by way of omission and misrepresentation, even though it is branded as fair and balanced. “Bias” is not the printing of stories that make the press secretary unhappy. That’s just life.

“The Democrats have the ultimate super PAC, it’s called the mainstream media,” said Rubio later on.

“Super PACs” are nominally independent groups that can spend unlimited sums for and against candidates, and Rubio has had no problem accepting the help of one to the tune of $16 million. There is another $16 million to support him raised by a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization advised by the same man running his super PAC, which can raise unlimited sums but does not have to disclose their donors.

In contrast, newspapers are newspapers.

And though Rubio started the fire, his opponents were more than happy to pile on. Take this response from Texas Senator Ted Cruz after being asked a substantive question about his opposition to the debt limit deal:

“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” he started, giving examples of unfair questions (“Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?” should also be off the table, apparently), before ending with an unironic call to the moderators to talk “about the substantive issues the people care about.”

With the Democratic debate, Cruz continued, “Every fawning question from the media was, ‘Which of you is more handsome and why?’” How anyone could describe the Bernie-bruising first debate in such a way confuses me, but then again so does a lot about this presidential primary.

“Substantive” questions revolve around policy, not personality or internecine politicking. Looking over the much-derided list of purportedly “biased” CNBC questions, I would consider 45 of the 46 to be substantive—the lone exception being the question asking Carly Fiorina to defend an unrelated quote from Tom Perkins.

Contra Cruz’s declaration of the debate being a “cage match” where the moderators ask candidates to “insult people over here,” nothing of the sort occurred in this debate. Yet the very first Republican debate, in which the Fox News moderator’s first question to Rubio was to “address Governor Bush across the stage here, and explain to him why you…are better prepared to be president than he is,” attracted no similar complaints of mainstream media bias.

Just 32 percent of Republicans say they trust the mass media compared with 55 percent of Democrats—and candidates are quick to seize on these assured applause lines when confronted with uncomfortable and tough lines of questioning.

Consider the timing of each Republican’s invocation of the mainstream media straw man: Rubio after being asked about his subpar voting attendance record, Cruz after being asked about his desperado debt ceiling antics, Ben Carson after being asked about his questionable and extensive relationship with a nutritional supplements company.

All substantive questions in their own right—all going unanswered. Surely had the same questions appeared in the combative Fox News debate, no candidate would have been able to spin and deflect so easily.

And the madness didn’t end when the debate did. Angry campaigns tried wresting control of debates from the Republican National Committee, prompting Chairman Reince Preibus to suspend a future debate with NBC and accuse the network of “bad faith” and “gotcha questions, petty and mean-spirited in tone.” And he conveyed his expectation that the media hold a, can you guess it, “substantive” debate.

Rules of rhetoric set out that you tackle the message rather than trying to shoot the messenger. Unfortunately they don’t hold for audiences who haven’t internalized those rules, and who would rather reinforce their prevailing narrative of media bias than confront the fact that reality occasionally disagrees with stump speeches.

What the hysterics of the week showed most clearly was the depth of the victimhood complex to which the Republican Party, establishment and Tea Partiers alike, have sunk. And why should any rational Republican candidate nowadays voluntarily answer a tough question when he can simply cry discrimination and protect his poll numbers?

It’s a neat paradox: Substantive questions are denounced as unfair and the questioners blackballed till there’s no one left to ask them.

Then the base descends into a mess of conspiracies and confirmation biases, the primaries grow ever polarized, and the nominee does not win.

You’ll be able to read all about it in the next RNC autopsy.

Idrees M. Kahloon ’16, a Crimson editorial executive, is an applied mathematics concentrator in Dunster House. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays.