MSNBC host Joy Reid made blatantly false statements about media bias over Twitter on Monday, claiming the media always backs Republicans.
Reid’s remarks were in response to the media’s correct reaction toward the government shutdown, blaming the Democrats who prioritized illegal aliens over American citizens.
Reid tweeted:
Reid’s statement is so blatantly false that it is laughable. Take, for example, the media’s reporting on President Donald Trump:
- A Harvard study from May 2017 found that news organizations like CNN and NBC gave Trump 93% negative coverage during his first 100 days in office which was significantly higher than any of the three previous presidents.
- A study released just last week from the Media Research Center revealed that the media gave President Trump 90% hostile coverage in 2017, nearly half of which was not even centered on policies.
- Late in December, Pew Research Center found that the media gave President Trump three times more negative coverage than they did President Obama.
A 2014 study found that there are four times more Democrats working in the media than there are Republicans, The Washington Post noted. That study is reaffirmed by a 2017 report that showed how the concentration of media organizations is increasingly in Democratic areas, Politico reported:
The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county—odds are that you reside in one of the nation’s most pro-Clinton counties. And you’ve got company: If you’re a typical reader of Politico, chances are you’re a citizen of bubbleville, too.
The “media bubble” trope might feel overused by critics of journalism who want to sneer at reporters who live in Brooklyn or California and don’t get the “real America” of southern Ohio or rural Kansas. But these numbers suggest it’s no exaggeration: Not only is the bubble real, but it’s more extreme than you might realize. And it’s driven by deep industry trends.
Even leftists like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have admitted that the overwhelming majority of the media is Democratic. A recent report from the Washington Examiner also found that the media’s polling averages are weighted nearly 30% in favor of Democrats.
Reid’s outlandish comments are nothing new and appear to be part of a larger pattern of behavior from her, which is intentionally distorting truth and reality in order to change the narrative. The most recent example of this happened on Sunday when Reid refused to use the legal term “illegal alien” because, as she stated, “we’re trying to change the conversation.”
Those are the words of a propagandist.
Just last week, Reid was forced to apologize to conservative columnist David French for falsely smearing him over something that he did not write, and blamed another publication for her actions, saying that they mischaracterized his writings and that’s why she said what she said.
Another gem from Reid came late last year when she continued to spread the debunked talking point that “17 American agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community” all agreed that there had been Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
A common reaction from many who hear about Reid’s absurd claims is to call her “stupid,” “dumb,” or “clueless,” which could not be further from the truth. Reid went to Harvard and has her own TV show; those accomplishments require intelligence and are not attainable by exhibiting incompetence.
Reid knows exactly what she is doing.