Why does mainstream media lean left

But it didn't hide a tweet from Iranian ayatollahs calling for armed resistance in Israel. This - according to many on the right - proves Twitter's double standards. Such examples were repeatedly given during a congressional hearing in July where the bosses of Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon were cross-examined. But what is certainly true is that several have recently taken a much more hands-on approach to moderation.

In doing so, they are grappling with the kinds of issues that newspaper editors face every day: what should should and should not be published? One of the Republican criticisms of social media is that its algorithms push down conservative content.

But that isn't borne out by the data for Facebook. Data from CrowdTangle, a public insights tool owned by Facebook, puts together the most popular posts for each day on Facebook. On any given day the top 10 most popular political posts are dominated by right-leaning commentators like Dan Bongino and Ben Shapiro, along with posts by Fox News and President Trump. Mr Trump's Facebook page has 32 million followers, nearly 10 times more than his Democratic challenger in next month's election, Joe Biden.

If the accusation is Facebook suppresses right-wing content, it doesn't seem to do it very well. So is right-wing content in fact being favoured over left-wing content?

He says that while "some pretty extreme right-wing" posts have spread widely on social media in the US, their popularity isn't proof of the platforms suffering from structural bias. But, if you look at what is clamped down on, you can see why more people from the right might get tangled up in moderation than those from the left. For example, few Democrats claim postal voting is rigged. Facebook has a policy to label claims about voter fraud.

It argues it is trying to tackle disinformation that could erode faith in the US electoral system. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has openly stated he supports the movement. The Black Lives Matter Facebook page has just over , followers.

However, another Facebook page called Blue Lives Matter has close to 2. These news sources are rated as "Left" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mostly liberal, consistently liberal; and are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly conservative, and consistently conservative.

These news sources are rated as "Right" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly liberal and consistently liberal; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mixed, mostly conservative, and consistently conservative. Note that this represents a further bias leaning than the "towards the left" sources.

There are no direct parallels on the right. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly liberal, consistently liberal; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mostly conservative, and consistently conservative. It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.

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Search this Guide Search. What is "Fake News"? Why is this important? Where do news sources fall on the political bias spectrum? How do you recognize bias in yourself and the media? The Liberal Media Does the media have a liberal bias?

The up-with-socialism videos are OK, though. Nor, as should be obvious by now, am I demanding that they should be. Downstream, the administrative state that would carry out any of the various new directives is every bit as left leaning as mainstream media, academia and allegedly the big tech workforce. There of course exists no political right not to be offended, nor even to be told the truth, for that matter. Finding that out is each of our jobs. While I may point out monolithic thinking, Congress needs to protect it.

It needs to preserve the right to express newspeak and groupthink, whether it comes from the right or left , or from conventional or newfangled media.

We are — or should be permitted to be— independent thinkers who not only can but have an obligation to sort it out. Will non-conforming social media of the future retain that essential freedom? With members of Congress and social media companies alike coming out in favor of content regulation, a decision by mainstream media to pile on too would represent quite the challenge for dissident free speech.

This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here. More From Forbes. Many of these differences are attributable to familiarity with the outlet. One example is Fox News, which often has commentary about the mainstream media in its opinion content. Some partisan differences do emerge in views of smaller outlets. In addition to asking Americans whether they got political news from various outlets in the past week, the survey also asked respondents in an open-ended question what their main source of political news is.

The Center then asked them to decide whether their mainsource of news is part of the mainstream media or not — and whether they think that source presents news differently from most outlets. Large majorities of those who turn mainly to other outlets for political news — including local TV, network TV, the other two major cable TV sources CNN and MSNBC and The New York Times — see these outlets as part of the mainstream news media, and majorities also say these sources do not present news differently than most news outlets.

Note: Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology. In times of uncertainty, good decisions demand good data. Please support our research with a financial contribution. It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values.