Media Bias In One State

Scott wrote earlier about a pathetically illogical and fact-free editorial in today’s [Minneapolis] Star Tribune denouncing Monday’s decision by Federal District Court Judge Mizelle that invalidated the CDC’s travel mask mandate. The Star Tribune editors gave no sign of having read Judge Mizelle’s decision, or even knowing what the basis for it was.

This is typical. The Star Tribune is a minor-league New York Times that exists to promote left-wing narratives, not to report the news. The good news, however, is that most people understand that the Star Tribune is not a trustworthy source. We know this because of the just-released Thinking Minnesota Poll, summarized by my colleague Bill Walsh here. The poll is conducted by D.C.-based Meeting Street Insights.

The extent to which Minnesotans distrust the news media is remarkable. By 66% to 30%, Minnesotans agree that “[t]he media in Minnesota contribute to the political polarization in our state.” That is bad enough, but this is, I think, stunning: 52% of Minnesotans say that “[r]eporters in Minnesota misrepresent the facts to fit their own narrative.” A minority, 42%, disagreed with that statement. That is perhaps the most damning possible indictment of reporters and editors.

And we all know in what direction reporters misrepresent facts. The poll finds that a 49% plurality believe that “[b]ias in Minnesota media favors liberals and harms conservatives.” 30% say there is no bias–they are pretty much all liberals–and 10% say media bias favors conservatives. Those people are either Communists or liars.

Poll respondents said that all major Minnesota news outlets are biased toward the left, but what organization fared the worst? The Star Tribune. A whopping 57% of respondents said they think the Strib is biased in its reporting, compared with only 24% who think the paper is unbiased. That minority are liberals who, like the fish that doesn’t know that it is wet, see the paper reflecting their own skewed view of reality.

The fact that the press is massively biased toward the Left is significant, obviously, but not as important as it was decades ago. The Left’s ability to block voters from finding out information that would hurt the Democratic Party is nothing like what it used to be. (The principal purpose of loyal Democratic outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Star Tribune is not to cover the news, but to cover up the news.)

For now, I will offer just one data point in support of that observation: this Trafalgar Group survey that asked, “How likely is it that President Biden is conflicted/compromised when dealing with China due to the Biden family’s personal business dealings in China?” An astonishing 63.7% of respondents said that it is likely (52.3% very likely, 11.4% somewhat likely) that Joe Biden is so compromised. Only 36.4% found that proposition unlikely. This despite a coordinated–or perhaps just like-minded–campaign, across nearly all major media sources, to prevent Americans from learning about Joe Biden’s China-related corruption.

America’s news media have squandered the only asset that really mattered, their credibility. This is why people who want to know what is going on turn to Libs of TikTok, Minneapolis Crime Watch, and–we hope–Power Line for information.

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