'Today’s real media bias': Journalist blasts conservative slant inherent in 'Bidenomics' conversations

10 July 2023

MAGA Republicans often paint themselves as marginalized victims who are disrespected in everything from mainstream media to pop culture. Liberalism, they complain, is everywhere, and right-wing outlets like Fox News, Newsmax and Breitbart are the only places where they can get a fair hearing.

But The New Republic's Michael Tomasky has a totally different viewpoint. In an article published on July 10, Tomasky points to media coverage of "Bidenomics" as a prime example of how pervasive Republican ideas are in America's "political culture."

Tomasky's piece is not strictly about President Joe Biden's economic agenda, however. The journalist argues that way too many political conversations in the United States start out with a right-wing or Republican premise.

"Biden has made a greater effort than any president in decades to shift wealth from the top to the middle class and working poor," Tomasky explains. "We might live in a political culture that applauded that effort. But we don't."

Tomasky continues, "We live in a political culture that is far more inclined to punish that effort as insufficient in this or that particular…. While Biden is trying to do stuff, Republicans don't try to do anything. Cut taxes. That's about it… And because they're not trying to do anything, nobody expects anything of them. So they skate."

The journalist cites a Washington Post article, published on June 30, as an example of "Bidenomics" receiving much tougher scrutiny than Republican policies. Of the seven economic voices quoted, Tomasky points out, only two were truly favorable.

For decades following the economic crash of 1929, liberal ideas dominated the United States. Even Republican Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Gerald R. Ford made it clear that they supported parts of the New Deal.

But it was during the 1970s that the terms "knee-jerk liberal" and "bleeding-heart liberal" started to become really weaponized by the Republican Party. And from Ronald Reagan's presidency on, conservative ideas have dominated political discussions in the U.S. — even among many Democrats.

Tomasky laments, "The mainstream media hold Democrats to a far higher standard than it holds Republicans, because the Democrats try things and sometimes fail, which is an easy 'gotcha!' for the press, while the Republicans, who try nothing, can't be 'gotcha’d!.... And the right-wing media, of course, holds Republicans to no standards at all. That is today's real media bias. It's a bias of expectations, and it always mitigates in favor of the people of whom nothing is expected in the first place."

The New Republic's full article can be found at this link.

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