Chuck Todd Doesn't See a Liberal Bias in Media

Chuck Todd doesn't see a liberal bias in the media. In an interview with The Verge, Todd claimed the notion is a tiresome GOP talking point that others have come to believe.

"The Republicans have been running on, 'There's a liberal bias in the media,'" Todd says. "If you say something long enough, there are liberals who say there's a liberal bias in the media when you see polling now."

"The Republicans have subsumed all of this, and it's turned into this. We should have fought back better in the mainstream media. We shouldn't accepted the premise that there was liberal bias. We should have defended," Todd goes on.

Todd is correct that if someone tells a lie, tells it well, and tells it enough, they can spread that lie into a reality. Thus, after a while, uncontested lies become the consensus belief. However, the media isn't contesting its liberal bias because it can no longer dispute that effectively. It's not a lie.

Take away the decades of examples and focus only on the past 12 months. From March 2020 to now, mainstream outlets have promulgated the talking points that Donald Trump handled the pandemic dangerously, Joe Biden is a peacemaker, the country is systemically racist, and BLM riots were "mostly peaceful." The cherished media outlets presented each debatable viewpoint as an indisputable fact in favor of the Left's agenda.

Meanwhile, blue-chip media outlets had dismissed the possibility that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab, that it could've been Hunter Biden's laptop in the New York Post's story, that BLM riots got out of hand, and that Big Tech has taken editorial stances. Tellingly, the press dismissed each of these conservative beliefs, all of which have since been proven correct.

Moreover, Todd referenced back to the Left's playbook when he defended the media, claiming Democrats are just the smarter, more fact-based party. "I hear the attacks on fact-checkers where they 'fact-check Republicans six times more than they fact-check Democrats.' Yeah. Perhaps the Republicans are being factually incorrect more often than the Democrats," Todd says. 

Outlets should fact-check Republicans as they often cite out-of-context statistics, but so do Democrats. Chuck claims Republicans are factually incorrect at a significantly higher rate than Democrats are. If that's true, fact-checkers could easily prove such by a comparison. Yet they don't. See, promoted "fact-checkers" don't check the Democrats enough to know if most of their claims are right or wrong.

As of mid-July, CNN's Daniel Dale had not checked Biden a single time this month. 

Todd's NBC colleague, Lester Holt, admitted in March that he doesn't feel obligated to treat both political sides equally. I wonder which side he plans to give the short end?

The more interesting debate is the why. Why does the media lean so Left?

Are media members simply trying to fit in? Is it because most media companies are headquartered in New York, which is liberal territory? Whatever the reasons are, it's an open debate. By contrast, the media's political bias is not.

Several of the mainstream media's most prominent outlets represent a far-Left viewpoint: the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ESPN, and the Washington Post. And the others are well left of center, such as ABC News, CBS, and NPR.

Todd falls under the "leaning Left" category. He's certainly not as radical as some of his fellow media colleagues. But his questions on Meet the Press, his talking points, and his reactions have a clear leftward bent.

What's great, Chuck Todd is a baseball fan. Next time he analogizes a politician striking out while swinging, point him to his defense of the media here.