You know... are they though? In 2025? At the politics desks and mainstream publications and news networks? The answer may surprise you! bsky.app/profile/thor... - ThreadSky

mtsw.bsky.social • 15 hours ago

You know... are they though? In 2025? At the politics desks and mainstream publications and news networks? The answer may surprise you! https://bsky.app/profile/thoreauaway.bsky.social/post/3lj6c4g7im22y

Reposted from Thoreau Away

Because journalists are a more Democratic group than DC voters

It’s like saying white evangelicals were secretly in the tank for Harris

Comments

thoreauaway.bsky.social•15 hours ago

The donation data seems to back that up

normcorerockwell.bsky.social•14 hours ago

It might be helpful to distinguish between political reporters (and opinion writers) and journalists in general. The former aren't like the latter.

pygmalion55.bsky.social•14 hours ago

But but 92% voted for Clinton in 1992!

j-salvo.bsky.social•15 hours ago

DC voters are like 90% dem voters… like I’m less Democratic than DC voters.

mtsw.bsky.social•15 hours ago

Someone asks about this every time and no. "I will deliberately sabotage my own job and lie to my audience because I think it will be good for my employers' bottom line several years from now" is much weirder, less-held belief than "I like Trump and want to help him" https://bsky.app/profile/scottwithrage.gobirds.online/post/3lj6c7u3s3k2m

mtsw.bsky.social•14 hours ago

if they like drama and attention on their reporting, i would've expected a lot more stories about trump's extensive, well-documented connection to jeffrey epstein, the notorious child rapist. would've been a pretty dramatic story for the election! so I'm not sure this theory tracks

yohannanx.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Doing that kills the golden goose though.

mtsw.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Precisely because so few conservatives choose to go into journalism, there is affirmative action programs to hire them at mainstream pubs, both for "ideological balance" and the assumption they are better sourced with GOP politicians. https://bsky.app/profile/erik-pbg.bsky.social/post/3lj6cjzgvec2e

mtsw.bsky.social•14 hours ago

And the place they naturally try to navigate to at these publications, and where they try to get their friends hired, are the news and politics desks because that's where they can best accomplish their goal of working at these types of publications (helping Trump and Republicans win elections)

joyouspanther.bsky.social•14 hours ago

There is a whole system now for weird conservative kids to work at billionaire-funded online spaces, then get a job at like NewsMax, and then wind up covering politics for Politico or the Washington Post.

mtsw.bsky.social•14 hours ago

There's no delicate way to put this: Joe Biden hired a lot of women and black people in his comms shop and a lot of these "journalists" are racists who went in with the assumption that by default black people and women are incompetent or rude https://bsky.app/profile/russms.bsky.social/post/3lj6crnzbp22s

johnbrownwasright.bsky.social•14 hours ago

100% true. Elite media is dominanted by people who went to elite schools/grew up super rich. They don't like being uncomfortable

mtsw.bsky.social•14 hours ago

That would be bad for Trump and they don't want things to be bad for Trump they want things to be good for Trump https://bsky.app/profile/whoisthedrizzle.bsky.social/post/3lj6d5bhruc2g

russms.bsky.social•14 hours ago

100% And this goes for the many “liberal” ones: I strongly suspect that your average Democrat in the DC bureau of a national publication is a Bill Maher type who voted for Harris but thought that even if Trump won it wouldn’t be that bad because those uppity wokes needed to be put in their place

zugernat.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Yes, Leavitt is abrasive as hell, clearly an idiot, and more importantly a liar, but they're relieved because she's white.

jeffreyskarski.bsky.social•13 hours ago

This is definitely true

anniegt.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Seriously, the Trump family could have been mined ENDLESSLY for stories of corruption and graft and bribes and criminality

takethepith.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Indeed, the MSM routinely reports on wildly shocking and unprecedented Trump actions using the most boring and euphemistic language they can muster. Their headlines are often the opposite of clickbait.

whoisthedrizzle.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Seems like a 24/7 CNN chyron of "Constitutional Crisis Day 19" or whatever would bring a lot of drama and attention, but I don't think I've seen it yet?

missmoonlight.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Thank you! This is for everyone who says "Trump does stuff that attracts the attention of the press which nobody else can do" - no he doesn't. If that were true, then explain how his genuinely horrid stuff makes no headlines while "Trump said thing he actually did not not say at all" is everywhere?

jeffreyskarski.bsky.social•13 hours ago

I don't think the idea is that that entire process takes place inside of a single brain...

planetoffinks.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Also, as you've pointed out, what's the deal with Trump and Epstein would appear to be a story that would get a ton of clicks. But weirdly no one wanted to run that 🤷🏻‍♀️

erik-pbg.bsky.social•14 hours ago

There are very few media jobs and the best way to get hired is to know someone already there. Given the choice they hire like minded friends

News desk editors aren’t hiring literature majors from Bard

robpollard45.bsky.social•14 hours ago

The biggest example of political reporters & their bosses liking Trump is Epstein.

There is so much reporting that didn't get done and just sits there to be picked over be internet conspiracists.

You'd think wall to wall coverage on a lurid sex scandal involving would attract viewers!

mcdonalds.help•14 hours ago

A good thing to do when deciding whether something might be a conspiracy is to think through what it would take to pull it off. If editors are making journalists constantly betray their ideals to support a bottom line, that would require a lot of communication and enforcement, which creates evidence

mcdonalds.help•14 hours ago

on the other hand, if journalists and editors are simply ideologically aligned with Trump and happily stew in right-wing rhetoric all the time, that doesn't require an enforcement mechanism or convoluted decisionmaking. It's just way easier to hire journalists who are right-wing and let them write.

mcdonalds.help•14 hours ago

In any case, right now the "ratings conspiracy" crowd is asking us to believe that they're deliberately making the news MORE BORING than it really is now, so it's just nonsensical on its face. This is the biggest thing to happen to the US since the civil war. Why are the headlines still small?

elretch-stacker.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Also, why would a rich person buy a newspaper or cable news network in the 2020’s, other than to control its political skew? Surely not buying them for the ever-expanding profits.

moman.bsky.social•14 hours ago

But the first Trump term wasn’t just good for their employers’ bottom lines

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/05/biden-books-bad-sales-trump-00113793

mrgraz.bsky.social•14 hours ago

It's like a political version of rooting for Tony Soprano. Dumb people do it unironically and Very Smart people do it convinced of their own grasp of nuance and irony, but either way you're rooting for the bad criminal guy.

normcorerockwell.bsky.social•14 hours ago

How is it possible to be more Democratic than DC voters? That's like asking for "spicier than Thai spicy" at your local noodle shop.

Plus, it's pretending that supposedly centrist/center-left publications like Politico and Wapo, not to mention actual right-wing outlets, exist!

johnwingeyadams.bsky.social•14 hours ago

"journalists" are overwhelmingly D. DC political reporters are not journalists. They did not start on a real beat and work their way up. Several prominent ones, in fact, are former R/Conservative think tank staffers. The rest do the "it's my said duty to inform you that Dems suck" act Every DAY.

yougottagive.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Elite j-school journalists are Dems in the “the country needs a strong gop too!” sense

johnwingeyadams.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Saying journalists are all Ds so WH press corps must be overcompensating for their liberalism is like saying that since most Doctors are (were) Republicans, that the people at your local holistic wellness center are probably too conservative.

mikemo5.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Most journalists are desperate to prove they are not part of either political party

lurkymclurk.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Also no one with a tv commentator gig is doing journalism any more even if they “work” for a big famous newspaper

cricketmice.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Many of them probably do believe in their “neutral ideology that just so happens to be more skeptical of democrats“, but also Sulzberger inherited a billion dollar business from his father- in his life story and material interest as an owner he is similar to trump

cricketmice.bsky.social•14 hours ago

no contradiction between that rank and file journalists are liberal vs media owners are conservatives who hire republicans for top jobs. “Director of like national political coverage at ABC” is very likely to be a republican

alexwenzel.bsky.social•14 hours ago

I think we’re forgetting how long the hollowing out of journalism has been going on. More and more of the people there are the ones who can afford to be there. It’s how science used to be, and where it’s headed with the new policies.

alexwenzel.bsky.social•14 hours ago

During unionization, there was a huge cultural disconnect between us and many older faculty. They didn’t understand it. Had we considered finding roommates? And why didn’t we just ask our families for help?

alexwenzel.bsky.social•14 hours ago

To be upfront, I’m in the group privileged enough to be the primary demographic left after austerity and re-segregation. I’m just capable of recognizing how bad things will go when everyone in the room has only my life experience. See Tuskegee study, the development of gynecology on plantations, etc

jgsimmerman.bsky.social•14 hours ago

I think "political journalists have a liberal bias" holds about as much water as "Republicans are better for the economy." I could be wrong though. I don't have any data to back that up.

pallmallwalker.bsky.social•14 hours ago

We’re using journalists very broadly. Individual writers may be dems, but those who dictate the direction of news at these outlets are in the tank for trump. They have been all along, so there’s also years of selection happening with the downstream writers.

poormarlowe.bsky.social•14 hours ago

People confuse the mass of workers in a situation with the power players who get themselves into positions to control budgets and narratives. Republicans or foreign fascists *own* most US media and are more and more quickly turning the upper ranks of their employees *evil*.

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