Oftentimes the mainstream media draws allegations that it has a liberal bias.
Is it true?
Sites like AllSides and MediaBiasFactCheck categorize much of the mainstream media as left-leaning, and many conservatives argue that President Joe Biden will receive more favorable media coverage than former President Donald Trump because of bias.
But how did coverage of President Joe Biden and his administration go on his first day in office in Massachusetts?
Several pro-Biden puff pieces quickly appeared — and not just by opinion writers, but by news reporters. Here is a look at a few of them.
1. Helping “Residents Without Legal Status”
If you’re Steph Solis of MassLive, when you’re not complaining about editorials from The Lowell Sun that tell immigrants they should learn how to speak English, you might be writing nice things about President Biden’s immigration policy.
In case you need it translated for you, she’s talking about illegal immigrants. She wrote a piece that interviewed all pro-amnesty people talking about how Biden wants to create a pathway to citizenship and legal protections for those who live in the country illegally.
She interviewed someone from the American Immigration Lawyers Association New England and someone from the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. No anti-illegal-immigration sources appeared, including the easy-to-get-ahold-of Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies.
Instead, if you read the piece, you won’t hear about any downsides to illegal immigration.
2. “A Reason To Feel Pride”
Inauguration day this week will be part of the history books, especially since a minority woman, Kamala Harris, became vice president. That’s the kind of thing the liberal media eats up.
The main reason for this pride? Kamala Harris’s sex and skin color.
Here is what the first three paragraphs say:
Across deep blue Massachusetts, the historic inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris brought forth an unfamiliar, but welcome, feeling among their supporters: hope.
There was hope in living rooms, in hospitals, in barbershops and day-care centers, as people paused to savor the moment, just two weeks after a violent siege on the Capitol, and after a year-long pandemic that has claimed 400,000 American lives.
Hope — and pride, as Harris became the first woman, the first Black person, and the first South Asian American to be vice president. Some of the Massachusetts faithful found themselves so electrified they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, sleep.
The article includes the fruits of interviews with an anesthesiologist at Tufts Medical Center; a woman from Medford who told her kid “the good guys are going to help us now, and the bad guys are going home”; state Representative Liz Miranda (D-Roxbury), quoted as saying, “Today sitting at home in my pearls and Chuck Taylors — as a woman of color, I saw myself”; the Boston chapter resident for Alpha Kappa Alpha, the sorority Harris was in back in college; a Democratic State Committee member; a woman from Mattapan; and the executive director of the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action.
In all, the story consists of more than 1,000 words about a bunch of people gushing about Harris and Biden.
The articles includes comments from five people, including a member of the Quincy Democratic City Committee, who offer praise for Biden. One person interviewed said that former President Donald Trump created a “radical right,” without elaborating.
Interestingly, it looks like the initial headline of the piece was “South Shore responds to Biden’s promises of unity,” based on the front page of The Ledger web site. Good to know we all agree.
The reporters who wrote the article, Jenna Manto and Mary Whitfill, also took a shot at Trump.
“Despite the smaller crowd, Biden struck a hopeful tone throughout much of his speech, hitting on his campaign theme of unity and vowed that his ‘whole soul’ was invested in trying to bring people together after the bitterly fought election,” they wrote. “Touching on a theme often embraced by past presidents but largely missing over the past four years, Biden pledged to be a ‘president for all Americans,’ fighting as hard for those who didn’t vote for him as those who did support his candidacy.”
Then there was that Trump inaugural address in January 2017, full of dark phrases such as: “The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.”
Yes, good to see that President Biden has turned the page rhetorically.
The angle of the story: a couple of guys who stood outside with signs showing they were happy that Biden is president and a handful of people watching the inauguration on TV at a brewery.
However, the fact that people in Provincetown are happy that Biden won is hardly news. Of the people who voted in the 2020 presidential election in Provincetown, 91.7 percent of them voted for Biden. That’s like saying Cambridge is happy that Biden won.
A more interesting story angle for them next time: find a Trump supporter in Provincetown, and see how tolerant people are of said person.
5. Carrying Jim McGovern’s Water
In case you weren’t sure, U.S. Representative Jim McGovern (D-Worcester) liked seeing Biden inaugurated as president, and The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported something on what it was like for him to be at the event. The article has the headline “McGovern gets good view of ‘awe-inspiring’ inauguration of Biden.”
In a substance-free interview with McGovern, we find out that he didn’t get to meet Lady Gaga at the inauguration, that McGovern is optimistic that the new administration will be “taking on the issue of racism in this country”; and that McGovern thinks Biden is a “genuinely nice man.”
Brad Petrishen, the reporter who wrote the article, also notes, “Still, as Biden acknowledged in his speech, the divisions that preceded the Jan. 6 insurrection are real, and underscore the need for people of all political beliefs to learn to disagree civilly again. Biden also focused on the importance of respecting truth — an aspect McGovern said he appreciated.”
