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On a recent “Face the Nation” appearance, Marco Rubio blamed Donald Trump’s extraordinary success as a presidential candidate on — you guessed it — “the media.” In his words, “the media coverage for Donald Trump has almost been cheerleading over the last couple weeks and I’m convinced [it’s] because many in the press want him to be nominee.” Why? Because it would provide Hillary Clinton “a clear shot to the Oval Office.” Rubio then added, “So I think there’s a kind of weird bias here in the media rooting for Donald Trump because they know he’s the easiest Republican to beat.”
The notion that the so-called lamestream media (a neologism popularized by Sarah Palin) has a liberal bias is, as those of us on the left know, widespread on the right. But as those of us on the left also know, it’s simply false. First of all, as a 2015 article in Politico notes, Fox News “easily dominate[s] the cable news landscape.” It’s the third most watched channel on TV, and it has “the top 14 most-viewed cable news shows.” Another survey reveals that Fox News is by far the “most trusted national news channel” in America, as hard as that may be for some to believe. Furthermore, anyone with a functioning nervous system can see that Fox News is an activist organization with strong conservative principles that effectively functions as a branch of the Republican Party. Its motto “Fair and Balanced” could hardly be more Orwellian, given the right-wing lens through which it views world affairs. It follows that American news is, if anything, conservative in its overall political orientation. Fox News is more popular, influential and trusted than any other network in the country. It is the lamestream media.
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