Journalistic ethics revolves around a grid of truthfulness, impartiality, accuracy, fact-based reporting, and objectivity. These words, with their overlapping but distinct meanings, are at the heart of what we think about when we evaluate the virtue of particular journalistic reporting. Unfortunately, none of these core standards are doing well in our era of extreme journalistic bias.
There are other ethical considerations in traditional journalism as well. The sensitivity with which sources are treated is one. The overuse of anonymous sources—which are, after all, sometimes legitimate and anonymous for legitimate reasons, but can easily be abused, especially in cases where the information is controversial and sometimes ultimately proved wrong—is an ethical consideration.
The use of money—paying sources—which is not ethical, is generally not a problem in legitimate journalism. It happens mostly in the realm of extreme tabloid journalism.
When it comes to bias, one of the great, if somewhat understated problems of our time, is that our national media functions as an adjunct to one of our dominant political parties, instead of being an independent voice keeping a check on politics, politicians, and government. This is a problem because a free people needs to know what those whom we elect, or are considering electing, are actually doing. And we need to know what government, which is always and everywhere inclined to overstepping what should be its boundaries, is actually doing. Our media is not doing its job of keeping honest tabs, technically or ethically.
We see this clearly in an election season like the one we’re currently in. It is apparent when, for instance, the TV interlocutors at a presidential debate ask easy questions of one side and loaded ones on the other side; and fact check one side and let the other side’s untrue assertions slide.
That is an egregious example of media bias, of course, since some number of voters rely on these media-sponsored debates to make up their minds about whom to cast their vote for. But it is not the worst example of media bias toward Democrats. Worse would be the sins of coverage omissions, in which Democratic lawmakers are allowed to lie about the reality of their policies—what they are, and what they do.
That happened over the course of the Biden Administration with the Biden/Harris open border, migrant invasion policy. (Also economic policy, in particular inflation.) Conservative FOX News reported on the border policy and how it was playing out—how many illegal immigrants were rolling across the border into Texas or California—from day one. The New York Post, which is owned by the same company, reported on the story. But even the Wall Street Journal, also owned by the same company, was too “respectable” to report the story as it initially unfolded. So people at the border faced an invasion. And citizens in more northern, “blue” cities remained ignorant that this was happening because their TV news and local papers did not report it.
The three major TV networks, most of cable, the New York Times, the Washington Post—the “elite media”—all ignored the fact that hundreds of thousands, then millions of military aged men from across the Third World, and then across the world itself, including China, were pouring into the U.S. across the unguarded southern border. Because of explicit policies at the Department of Homeland Security, many of these people were being flown or bussed to other cities and towns across the country. This included migrants with criminal histories, and many who had previously been expelled from the U.S. Many of these flights were scheduled, by the government, for the dead of night, into local, relatively quiet airports where they wouldn’t get a lot of attention.
Not until two years in, when a red state governor sent a busload of migrants that had been shipped to his state, Florida, to the elite summer playground of Martha’s Vineyard, causing a stir on the island, and therefore in the media itself, did the elite media begin to report this story. By that time shelters in “sanctuary cities” were overrun with migrants living for free at four-star hotels, rejecting the food they were given, getting generous benefits, and starting to commit crimes in big numbers—so that local Democrat officials were starting to complain about federal policy. But more than half the country was two years late to this story because the elite media had neglected to cover it, since it looked bad for the Biden/Harris Administration.
These reporting choices by reporters and editors were deeply politically biased, both in favor of a Democrat administration, and in favor of an open border policy.
It should be obvious, but the political biases of reporters and editors and TV anchors should be scrutinized regularly to keep them from affecting coverage of issues and stories. That is hard, given that all status incentives in mainstream journalism lead to biases toward Democrats and their policies. One way to deal with this would be to have reporters from both parties on your staff, including in positions of power. That would require radical restructuring of most elite newsrooms. It would require editors who are above the status incentives that keep the news biases toward Democrats. It is very unlikely that such a thing will ever happen.
When we think about media ethics, we tend to think about the smaller incentives that affect journalists—personal gain, for one. Close relations with people whose actions should be covered, for another. Those are important. But, as we have learned in the extreme during the Biden/Harris Administration, failure to cover the actual actions of politicians, and the policies they promulgate and their effects, is the most serious failing.
It is worth noting that this is a relatively new phenomenon. The news had a much more moderate left wing bias as recently as the Clinton Administration. Not no bias. There was certainly some. But news about Clinton era policies that were not popular, or that failed, made it through the choice barrier of editors. For young reporters, it was understood that anything happening should be covered. Until it wasn’t. Back in those days objective journalism was the only ethical standard. Now it would be fair to say that there is no functioning ethical standard.
It is also true that none of this happens by accident. It’s not a surprise that many members of the White House press corp, and the elite media in general, are married to people who staff the permanent government. Or to Democratic political aides and operatives and office holders. Or they’re married to people who work for leftist activist groups. Or they, themselves, come out of those activist groups. That creates ethical problems. It’s not just that loyalties are affected. It’s that there are deep and inherent biases toward some information at the expense of other information, created in such relationships. Is this a matter of ethics? Yes, conflict of interest is a matter of ethics. Journalists should not cover entities where their spouses are employed. That’s pretty straightforward, and most media companies are reasonably clear about this. But it happens a lot in Democratic administrations.
But it’s larger than just specific jobs. Reporters should not be covering any politics if they have a spouse working in an administration. The tendency to support that administration is too great, even if you are covering Defense and your husband or wife works at the Department of Education.
The exception to these rules are editorial pages, or opinion-based talk shows, where it is legitimate to make a case for the policy or politics the institution supports. Though it is the case that the nation’s best editorial pages – I would nominate the Wall Street Journal for that honor – present the most fact-based analyses and arguments for their positions. Mere assertions of preference don’t go very far. And their writers and editors are well versed enough in politics to be able to distinguish partisan hackery from what actually happened or was said by political players. That should be the editorial page standard, not the exception that it now is.
In our time the most serious journalistic ethical breach is the deep political bias of our media. Can the problem be solved? In theory, sure. But while it is theoretically solvable, the odds that that will happen are approximately zero, especially when figures as unpopular and easily criticized as Donald Trump are involved, and when Democrats have a serious stake in suppressing political stories about how they obtain and hold power. The more one side has to hide, the stronger the incentives to stick with now routine biases. This, of course, is a tragedy, and a very serious political problem. We need the return of real, even handed, journalistic ethics for our two party system to work.
