Print Column: Please, Conservatives, Don’t Abandon Local Media
MINOT, N.D. — I wrote a column recently about local journalists getting blowback for the bias of the national news media.
I almost always get a lot of feedback from my writing, which I’m deeply thankful for, but this particular column garnered more responses than I expected.
Mostly from two categories of reader.
One was from people across our region who work in local journalism. They’re tired of getting lumped in with the nationals when it comes to the debate over media bias.
The other was from readers who are right-of-center in their political perspective, who argued against my point because, in their view, local media bias is just as bad as national media bias.
I don’t agree with that point, though it is undoubtedly true that most who work in the journalism industry lean left. “The characterization of mainstream media newsrooms as left-leaning hives indeed has documentary backing,” the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple wrote in 2017, citing several reports and studies illustrating the point.
A national survey in 2013 found that only 7% of reporters identified as Republican, compared to more than 28 percent who said they were Democrats.
People who work in journalism tend to lean to the left, and it doesn’t matter if they’re working for the New York Times or the Podunk Daily Bugle.
