Media's Pro-Insider Bias: A Hard Habit to Break
with one surprising exception ...
Old habits die hard, and apparently few die harder than the mainstream media’s habit of slanting its reporting toward the political establishment. That was apparent again in the coverage of this week’s primaries—with one surprising exception.
The headline for Politico’s coverage of the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan reads, “Progressives didn’t get the big election night they wanted.” The article begins, “Progressives didn’t get the earthquake they expected. Moderates are relishing in their stronger than expected showing.”
That’s the takeaway to the once-improbable victory of a Muslim democratic socialist against an establishment candidate in a critical swing state?
Any real understanding of Tuesday’s Michigan results must begin with the flood of outside spending—$60 million, at last report, including roughly $32 million from AIPAC—against the eventual victor, Abdul El-Sayed. It’s true that El-Sayed’s opponent, Haley Stevens, performed significantly better than public polling had suggested. But that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Research by political scientist Thomas Ferguson and others has measured the effect of last-minute cash infusions in races like Donald Trump’s in 2016. They can shift votes dramatically at the eleventh hour, confounding polling expectations in the process.
The $60 million cash tsunami for Stevens isn’t even mentioned in Politico’s 950-word article, which merely says in passing that El-Sayed “quickly recast his narrow lead as a victory against the barrage of spending against him”—as if that was a whimsical notion on his part.
“The progressive wave never materialized on Tuesday night,” the outlet insists, “igniting fresh questions about the potency of the movement.” To buttress this claim, Politico writes:
“Progressive Sunrise Movement co-founder William Lawrence won his primary for Michigan’s 7th District, but largely because two more moderate candidates had split the vote. Democratic socialist Donavan McKinney is still locked in a tight race with incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar for Michigan’s 13th District. And over in Missouri, progressive Cori Bush’s comeback bid fell apart.”
McKinney won his race. So did Yousef Rabhi, a democratic socialist who ran against the incumbent mayor of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Combined with El-Sayed’s and Lawrence’s victory, that’s four wins in Michigan—wins that Politico claims will “ignite fresh questions” about the winners.
As for Cori Bush’s loss: Don’t Politico’s readers deserve to know that Bush was outspent by a 27-to-1 by an opponent who was flush with AIPAC and other outsider cash? Doesn’t that add some much-needed perspective?
New York Times political reporter Reid J. Epstein doesn’t do much better in a write-up headlined, “The left wins a nail-biter in Michigan: Here are eight takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries.” In the first “takeaway,” headlined “The left beat the establishment, but the results showed its limits,” Epstein writes:
“Dr. El-Sayed campaigned hard against the Democratic political establishment. That was enough to win, but enough voters backed Ms. Stevens to suggest that the establishment still has plenty of influence. Ms. Stevens showed strength among Black voters in Detroit and Flint and carried most of the state’s interior rural counties, aside from a few with college towns and resort communities.”
Does that result really “show the limits” of the left? This first “takeaway” makes no mention of the massive campaign spending El-Sayed had to overcome to win his race. One could just as easily—or more easily—conclude that overcoming this much cash is a sign of the left’s strength.
Epstein does mention AIPAC’s $30 million—eventually, in takeaway #3—and concedes that it suffered a serious setback. But he doesn’t mention the other $30 million in this race. More importantly, he fails to connect this lavish spending with the voting results he characterizes as a setback.
“The establishment still has plenty of influence”? It still has plenty of cash.
Ms. Stevens’ strong performance among Detroit voters undoubtedly had roots in that community’s history of ethnic division. It was buttressed, however, by a series of outside-funded ads which (falsely) implied that Barack Obama had endorsed her. Another ad emphasized her relationship with a prominent Black church leader in Detroit with a problematic history of anti-Muslim as well as anti-LGBTQ comments, which served as a not-so-subtle reminder of El-Sayed’s Muslim faith.
At least one major news outlet got it right. Surprisingly, it was Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post. Under the headline, “El-Sayed edges out establishment candidate in crucial Michigan Senate primary,” this was the Post’s lede:
“Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official who built a surging progressive movement in Michigan, overcame a massive spending disadvantage and opposition from the Democratic establishment to win Tuesday’s nationally watched Senate primary, the Associated Press projected.”
That’s all a news outlet has to do to get a story right. It’s not necessary to replace a pro-establishment bias with a bias toward the left or any other ideology. All that’s needed is context. In today’s money-driven electoral system, reporting that excludes or downplays the role of big money in politics lacks context. The Democratic Party could change that at any time, at least for its own primaries, by banning dark money and big donors from its own primaries, but it has chosen not to do so. That’s also important context for Tuesday’s results.
The billionaire-owned Post’s article also said this:
“Tuesday’s primary race spawned tensions within the Democratic Party, including over the party’s political identity, support for Israel and the role of money in politics.”
That’s undeniably accurate. Those tensions are likely to shape the party’s future for the foreseeable future.