The "left" and "right" political descriptors are often problematic in this sense, since they are relative terms. If you ask my conservative parents where CNN is, they'll describe it relative to their own placement on the spectrum. But an eye-of-the-beholder center is problematic for communication, so how should one determine the middle? A mean? Median? Something else?
But that doesn't even address a dependent problem of the quantifiablilty of a political ideology. You can't boil a belief into a number; why do we pretend that polotical ideologies fall on a soft numberline? A libertarian may "lean left" on marijuana legalization, but "lean right" on gun control.
Indeed, the left-right dichonomy's inability to house non-linear opinions or ideas leads to a lot of confusion, especially so in journalism. Where does a factual, source based news outlet lie on the spectrum?
That's actually a good point! That doesn't mean every independent source is equally valid though. In this case, I asked for an argument as to why CNN and the Washington Post weren't left wing and got a link to a blog with instructions to read the methodology section (which I did and wasn't impressed).
In their defense the vast majority of mainstream media in the United States is left wing biased. Fox news is pretty much the only major right wing counter balance.
Supposedly Fox News has the highest viewership by a large margin, at least according to Fox and Friends last week.
It doesn’t make sense to me that the liberal outlets are “mainstream” when supposedly no one watches them, according to conservative talking heads.
What exactly makes them mainstream then? Hannity was railing on and on last week too about CNN and MSNBC losing their minds because of some Trump story and that it was fake news, but he clarified their ratings are in the can and no one watches them anyway. But then he also calls them mainstream, and you’re here just repeating what he says.
How do you have it both ways? If no one watches these other channels and Fox News has all the viewership, then isn’t Fox News the mainstream?
Edit: sitting at -5 downvotes now. Would honestly love a response.
Left wing biased by US standards. By the standards of the rest of the world, most US outlets are pretty right wing, especially on foreign policy matters.
I totally agree. It just shows that even though Google has the potential to break up the mainstream media's near monopoly on narrative creation, they choose not to do it.
The dream of the Internet (for me and many others) was the destruction of mainstream media and the creation of platforms that gave individuals and independents a voice. That does exist and is growing in momentum but it's clear that Google is on the side of the mainstream media and their political counterparts.
