Want to understand how pervasive media bias works? Read on.

Check out this awful headline from @AP. A gun was found on the scene, there are bullet casings and bullet holes on nearby walls.

This isn't simply an allegation. This was clearly was a gunman.

It would be bad enough if the Associated Press alone published this headline. But because @AP is a wire service, many other leading news outlets have republished this content, often verbatim.

Here's the article on the @WashingtonPost, for example.
And here's the same article, and same headline, on @YahooNews.
The article was republished in plenty more well-known media outlets. Here it is on the @ABC website.
Moving forward, the content of the article is deeply problematic. This is how an article about an attempted shooting attack begins: by focusing on the *response* of the security forces to being attacked.

More from Journalism

You May Also Like

I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x