The mainstream news media in the United States is generally moderate—more liberal or progressive in terms of certain social values and, because its owners are usually large media conglomerates, more conservative in regard to economic values. Separate in purpose from the mainstream media is the conservative partisan press, whose rise in the United States since the 1970s is well documented.9 Evangelical Christian cable television and radio was introduced in the 1970s, allying itself with the Republican Party. Then, conservative talk radio spread across America in the late 1980s with the success of radio host Rush Limbaugh, strengthening the alliance. In 1996, Fox News debuted, followed by a number of conservative websites, including the Daily Caller and Breitbart.
The problem is not that partisan media exist; the problem lies in suggesting that they are (in their editorial objectives) part of the mainstream news media. That would be a false equivalency. Fox News, for example, is the No. 1 rated cable news channel, but it is different in kind from CNN, MSNBC, and network television news organizations like ABC, CBS, NBC, as it is substantially and consistently allied with the Republican Party and President Trump. MSNBC may skew to the left of Fox and CNN (which is generally middle-of-the-road in its politics), but it would be inaccurate to describe it as the left-wing counterpart to Fox News. In fact, it tilts to the right with its morning news show, Morning Joe, cohosted by former Republican U.S. representative Joe Scarborough; and its Hardball host, Chris Matthews, was no friend of the left and was fired in March 2020, in part for demeaning characterizations of Elizabeth Warren’s and Bernie Sander’s campaigns. With hosts like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, MSNBC may have a more progressive political perspective at times, but it does not align closely with a political party, as Fox News does.10 Understanding that conservative media outlets have a clear political agenda to elect conservative candidates and support conservative issues is essential to understanding and interpreting their news reports. Mainstream media outlets aren’t value-free either—being moderate is a political position as well—but they generally hew to journalism’s rules of truth-telling and verification.
9See Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella, Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Christopher R. Martin, No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019).
10Christopher R. Martin, “Is There a Working-Class Cable News Channel?” Working-Class Perspectives, February 10, 2020, https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2020/02/10/is-there-a-working-class-cable-news-channel. See also Michael M. Grynbaum, “Chris Matthews Out at MSNBC,” New York Times, March 7, 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/media/chris-matthews-resigns-steps-down-msnbc.html; Jacob L. Nelson, “What Is Fox News? Researchers Want to Know,” Columbia Journalism Review, January 23, 2019, www.cjr.org/tow_center/fox-news-partisan-progaganda-research.php.