Medium is a leftist utopia
I’ve been on Medium for several months now. I check it at least daily; my smartphone dutifully delivers updates and new stories regularly, whenever I check. So does my browser. I’ve seen lots of good stuff, especially once I filtered out the thousands of life hack articles that don’t do anything for me.
I just read an article from elizabeth tobey about how she reads everything tagged with Medium Suggestion Box. All right, Elizabeth, I’ll take you up on that, because there’s one thing about this platform that drives me crackers: it’s got a potent left-wing bias.
I’m a proud conservative, with values closely aligning with the Tea Party movement. I think we need a strong national defense, that national security is a prerequisite for anything else we want to do, and that corporations are the engines that drive our economy. I oppose the kind of rampant political correctness and “social justice” diversity-for-its-own-sake thinking that is weakening our society. I believe that the United States is truly exceptional and that those who want to turn us into just another European state are fundamentally wrong.
And whenever I look at the front page, I have to fight off the feeling that there is no place for me at Medium. Every time I see an article Recommended by Medium Staff that has a political viewpoint at all, it’s invariably hard left. Never once have I seen them recommend an article with a conservative viewpoint.
My particular interest is in firearms policy. I’ve been fighting those who want to restrict and eliminate the right of the people to keep and bear arms for at least 30 years. I’ve heard all the arguments, had all the discussions, answered all the objections, watched as every tragedy is turned into a political frenzy by the gun grabbers, for longer than I care to think. I am proud to say I helped defeat then-Congressman Jack Brooks for his acquiescence to the 1994 ban on so-called “assault weapons”.
But the only articles Medium staff ever recommend are those from folks who think “sensible” gun regulations will solve everything and we gun owners should just lie down and take yet another screwing. Just before reading Elizabeth’s story, I finished up one, An Open Letter to Congress, that was recommended by Medium staff and 9 others. Usually, Medium staff recommends articles that hundreds of others do, but not in this case. (I’m not sure of the chicken and egg effect here.)
Medium has a conservative outreach person, Jack Gerard. He’s gotten several conservative think tanks and publications here, and I’m glad to see them, for they lessen the intense desire to facepalm whenever I see one hard-left article after another on my front page. Still, it doesn’t seem he can crack the staff’s left-wing bias by himself.
Facebook recently got lots of news coverage by realizing and working to correct its own leftist bias. It’s time Medium did the same.
