Media and Democrats

Author

Bubba
30 Sep

Kamala Harris’ friendship with the businesswoman Laurene Powell Jobs might be a case study in institutional media bias. (Ink Stained Wretches)

The latest: The Jones-Harris connection is explored in a recent New York Times essay.

  • According to The Times, Powell Jobs has become one of the vice president’s “most essential confidantes,” working “behind the scenes” and quietly contributing “millions of dollars to an organization backing Ms. Harris, according to three people briefed on the gifts.”

  • One factor that gets somewhat downplayed in the Times’ piece: Powell Jobs’ ownership of The Atlantic.

  • What The Times completely fails to mention: Powell Jobs’ investment in Axios (where I was one of the first employees) and her funding of Courier Newsroom, a controversial network founded by Democratic Party operatives and which has been accused of pushing “hyperlocal partisan propaganda."

Ink Stained Wretches co-host Eliana Johnson:

The Times story gets at how close these two are and how long they have been friends, and that Jobs was a key player in circulating research and polling that pushed Joe Biden off the ticket, and that, truly, they are intimates. …

At the same time, Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective owns The Atlantic and she's an investor in several other center-left media outlets and also this sort of fake news series of local websites on the left called Courier Newsroom. So, is The Atlantic going to run hard-hitting anti-Harris pieces?

Related: A Media Research Center study from August found Harris has received 84% positive media coverage on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts since emerging as the Democratic nominee.

  • In contrast, Donald Trump received 89% negative coverage during the same period.

Bubba’s Two Cents

A recent study found that just 3.4% of American journalists identify as Republican. With few exceptions, the biggest, most influential corporate outlets lean left. This all drives home the fact that media bias is fundamentally an institutional problem. The upshot is that, while calling out individual instances of bias, hypocrisy and double standards is important, the real key to fixing the problem is finding a way to change how the game is played. And that’s easier said than done.