The origins of liberal bias
Listen to any conservative talk about politics for long enough, and you’re sure to hear some mention of liberal bias, either with regard to the media, academics, or perhaps even society in general.
Richard Spencer, founder and spokesperson for the alt-right, referred to the US media by the German word “lugenpresse”, which means “lying press” during his speech in Washington D.C. celebrating Donald Trump’s victory. Germans in Nazi Germany used the same word to complain about what they saw as the Jewish controlled media, and it’s still popular today among the far right in Germany. Donald Trump himself has not resorted to German, but he says the same thing in English, calling the mainstream US media the “fake media” and “the enemy of the American people”.
Meanwhile, liberals are fond of the expression “reality has a liberal bias”. Whenever conservatives complain about liberal bias, it seems to the rest of us that the conservatives doing the complaining are out of touch with reality, projecting their own biases onto others. So who’s right?
Part of the confusion here is the ambiguity of the term “liberalism”. The concept of “liberal bias” was originally invented by socialists to suggest that because much of the media is owned by corporations, there is a pro-capitalist bias built into the media, especially in the US.
If you ask people like Noam Chomsky (a libertarian socialist), this is still the argument they make. One of his most famous books is called Manufacturing Consent and deals with the subject of media bias. I haven’t read the book but I enjoyed watching the documentary based on it and learned a lot from it. He makes the case that seemingly neutral news organizations like the New York Times have a built in rightwing bias to them which silences opinions on the left and obscures the facts to promote a pro-capitalism pro-war pro-imperialism agenda. Other books like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States claim to expose what many on the left see as rightwing bias in academia.
Many of my friends are fans of the political analysis of socialists like Chomsky and Zinn. But personally, I haven’t been very convinced by their arguments. Admittedly, this is possibly because I haven’t spent as much time looking into them to fully understand them. But it seems far more plausible to me that if there is some serious bias in the mainstream media, it’s in this direction rather than the opposite direction. Overall, my opinion is that the mainstream media, typified by outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, do a pretty decent job of reporting the news. They may make mistakes here and there, but I do not believe any of them are intentional. Unlike explicitly partisan news outlets such as Fox News or MSNBC, they don’t intentionally try to spin the news to fit an ideology.
A conservative may be confused at this point by my statement that the concept of “liberal bias” was originally something used by socialists as a way of pointing out a pro-capitalist bias in the media. This is because the term “liberalism” has acquired somewhat different popular associations in the US than it has globally and as it’s used by academics who study things like political science.
Many conservatives seem to think that liberals are anti-capitalist. But this is a misunderstanding of what liberalism is. Liberalism has always been a pro-capitalist stance, and often has been associated with extreme forms of capitalism (now usually referred to derogatorily by socialists as “neo-liberalism”).
One of the reasons the term liberalism is so confusing in the US is because most of the founding principles of the nation, enshrined in the constitution, were so explicitly liberal that for most of the history of the country it’s been considered profoundly un-American to go against any of the basic ideals of liberalism. Included in liberalism would be a commitment to democracy, capitalism, individual rights, restrictions on government tyranny, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and a tolerant attitude toward immigrants and other cultures. All of these principles are now being directly challenged by Donald Trump, and many are rightfully calling him the first truly illiberal President.
So if both parties for a long time were liberal, then why is there any difference at all? As I’ve detailed in Democrats are the new Republicans, the Democratic party was the more conservative party in Lincoln’s time while the Republicans were the more liberal party. What do I mean by that? Both of them supported the basic ideas in the constitution, but the Democrats interpreted the rights enumerated in the constitution in a more narrow traditionalist way, as only applying to white men, while the Republicans interpreted it in a more broad, more egalitarian way. Both gave lip service to liberal ideas but they differ in their interpretation of them — the same is still mostly true of the Democratic and Republican parties today, but the sides have reversed. And even before the rise of Trump, Republicans had started demonizing the term liberalism and trying to twist it into meaning something it never has — in part by borrowing socialist narratives about how the US media has a liberal bias.
The heart of liberalism has always been tolerance and respect for individual liberty, but other important aspects such as egalitarianism have been present since the beginning as well. By egalitarianism I don’t mean what many conservatives think the term means (forcing everyone to be equal) — I mean treating everyone equal in the eyes of the law, as opposed to giving special privileges to specific groups of people. And making sure everyone has a voice in democracy and that the government serves all of its citizens, not just a select few.
Support for free market capitalism has always gone hand in hand with liberalism, and support for at least some form of capitalism is a requirement for all liberals. However, most modern liberals have come to support some kind of social safety net and some degree of central planning (such as breaking up monopolies, fiscal stimulus, or adjusting interest rates to keep the economy on track) that help capitalism function more efficiently and avoid some of the obvious pitfalls that early forms of capitalism led to (which put the whole system in danger of either collapsing on its own or sparking a socialist revolution). The liberals who still support perfectly unfettered capitalism — laissez-faire capitalism — are the ones derided as “neo-liberals”. This accusation is often lobbed at moderate liberals like Bill and Hillary Clinton, but in my opinion it’s unfair. Ronald Reagan was a neo-liberal while Hillary Clinton is not — despite what many of my socialist friends think, their economic views are significantly different. She is well aware of both the great virtues of capitalism as well as the pitfalls which need to be guarded against.
In addition to capitalism, science and technology have also historically gone hand in hand with liberalism and are closely associated with it. It’s no coincidence that the founder of liberalism, John Locke, was also the founder of empiricism. Empiricism is the doctrine that true knowledge can only be gained by observing and measuring the world, not via intuition, divine revelation, appeal to authority, or just abstract thought divorced from experience.
Science is the industry best known for carrying out empirical observation, taking data, making measurements, forming hypotheses, and testing them to evaluate their validity rather than simply assuming it ahead of time. As such, it differs sharply from other epistemological models, such as the paradigm of religious faith, where a sacred text serves as the source of true knowledge, and any questioning or doubting of it is considered blasphemous. In science, questioning and doubting everything are encouraged. And changing one’s mind in the face of new data is seen as a virtue rather than a vice.
Attitudes of conservatives and liberals toward science have always been at odds. Conservatives attack the teaching of evolution in schools, refuse to believe in climate science, refuse to fund stem cell research, birth control, or abortion, reject mainstream (Keynesian) economics, and now with Trump they have even begun adopting some elements of the incredibly dangerous vaccine denialist movement (previously associated more with the far left). To be fair, socialists also sometimes criticize science on some issues, although in my experience their criticisms are usually more well thought out and not just blatant myths and conspiracy theories as the conservative criticisms are.
The 18th Century is often referred to as the Age of Enlightenment. This refers in part to the scientific enlightenment where science began to replace faith as the primary means of understanding the world, and in part to the political enlightenment where scholars began questioning and criticizing the divine right of kings and nobelmen to rule over peasants with absolute authority. These two sides of the enlightenment, scientific and political, empirical and liberal, have always been tied together and are interrelated.
The ultimate origins of both liberal and conservative ideologies were in 17th and 18th century England, where a battle raged between the Tory party who argued in favor of absolute monarchy and the Whig party who supported separation of church and state, and a strong Parliament which could serve as a check on the power of the king. Liberalism was often associated with protestantism, and the belief that England should tolerate many different religions, while the anti-liberal Tories were associated more with Catholicism and with the belief that the Church of England should be the only official state religion.
Conservatism, sometimes known as traditionalism, has its roots in Toryism. To this day the terms Tory and Conservative are seen as mostly interchangeable in countries like Canada and the UK. However, most modern conservatives are not as extreme and (usually!) no longer believe in the divine right of kings to rule with absolute power. In the US, the term conservative has also borrowed and absorbed many liberal principles. Because the founders of the US were extreme liberal revolutionaries who saw the Tories as the defenders of tyrants, few during the first century of US history would have admitted to being a political conservative. Only later in the mid 20th century, with the rise of the religious right, did conservatism emerge as a serious political force here. (Again, there were plenty of conservative movements in the US, like the Democratic party during the civil war, they just didn’t usually call themselves that.)
Because conservatives believe in the authority of tradition, and there are different traditions in different parts of the world, it should be no surprise that it takes somewhat different forms in different places. The reason most conservatives in the US accept liberal principles like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press is because liberalism has always been a large part of the American tradition of governance. Similarly, in Muslim countries, being a conservative means supporting Sharia law, which is a large part of the tradition of governance there. (I should mention however, that from my liberal point of view, I have noticed that often American conservatives say they accept some things — like religious tolerance — but in practice they don’t fully accept them.)
While conservative ideology differs from country to country, liberal ideology is pretty similar no matter where it’s found in the world. One can argue about what the most important core ideas of liberalism are, but in my personal opinion, most of it boils down to one simple idea: tolerance. Liberals talk a lot about individual rights and human rights, about freedom of speech and freedom of religion, about equality and justice, and about multiculturalism and diversity. But the real reason why liberals talk about all of these things is that we believe fundamentally that government should not impose one way of life on everyone — instead, government should create space for a wide variety of lifestyles, cultures, beliefs, ethnicities, and genders to flourish harmoniously and peacefully, coexisting with each other and learning from each other, rather than fighting with each other or dominating or oppressing each other.
There are of course plenty of debates that go on about politics within liberal circles. We don’t always agree with each other on every issue. But for myself, whenever I go to the polls: the reason I am voting for whomever I do is because I want people in power who are going to work to achieve the vision I’ve put in bold above. That’s my basic motivation, and that’s why I prefer to be called a liberal as opposed to a progressive or a socialist, neither of which I fully identify with but both of which are often confused with liberalism (and sometimes overlap with it).
When I hear conservative politicians speak, whether they are from a Muslim country in the Middle East, from the UK or Canada, from Israel, from Latin America, from Asia, or from the United States, I always hear a person who wants to impose his or her narrow view of what life is supposedly about onto other people through coercive means. Sometimes they are trying to impose a view of life I personally agree with, and other times it’s one I passionately disagree with. But either way, their disrespect for other people and other ways of life disturbs me, and it makes me want to fight like hell against that sort of unjustified imposition.
So returning to the main question: how right are conservatives when they say that academics or the media have a “liberal bias”? And what exactly do they mean by that? The phrase was clearly borrowed from socialist critiques of the US media. But when they use it they mean something different. Instead of meaning that the media is overly pro-capitalist, they mean that the media is more tolerant than it should be towards other ways of life besides their own. It has become too “politically correct” they say.
Like the socialists, they also sometimes link this to corporate control of the media. Many corporations have learned that discriminating against certain kinds of people is bad for business. Making their employees feel welcome no matter what their cultural or religious background helps productivity. This is more true for large multinational companies and less true for small businesses. But it’s generally the large multinational companies who run the media, not small businesses. So for example, both these companies and the media in general have begun to use phrases like “Happy Holidays” to wish their employees or their viewers well during the December holiday season. This is a break from past practices in the US of using explicit Christian language like “Merry Christmas”. Conservative outlets such as Fox News cite this as a prime example of liberal bias and refer to it as the “War on Christmas”. Same goes for whenever the media tries to draw attention to the disproportionate number of unarmed African Americans who are killed by police officers on duty. For conservatives, liberal bias is more about not supporting an explicitly pro-white pro-Christian agenda, as opposed to being about economics as it is for the socialists.
At every stage of development of the US, there has been a battle between the liberal founding ideas and those who have been suspicious of immigrants bringing new cultural and religious ideas here. At first anti-immigrant sentiments here were directed against French, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Catholic immigrants. Later as more people began to arrive from different parts of the world, there have been anti-Polish, anti-Asian, anti-Hispanic, anti-Muslim, and many other types of anti-immigrant movements.
All of them involve the same kinds of fears: that the specific way of life common to people in the early US will be somehow corrupted or eroded by newcomers who have different cultural practices and habits. But many of the people complaining about Muslims and Hispanics today don’t seem to realize that the co-existence of different cultures does not inevitably lead to conflict or require anyone to give up their traditions. If anything, more of the immigrants who have come to the US have adopted our cultural practices rather than the other way around. Of course, any melting pot is an amalgamation of different cultures, not a single “pure” culture, so you should expect the sharing of best practices to go both ways. Culture is not fixed, and when different cultures meet often new and interesting hybrid cultures form. Despite what Breitbart news will tell you, diversity has always been a strength, not a weakness.
What about academia? Why do they seem to have such a “liberal bias” to conservatives? A big part of it I think is because the US has the world’s greatest university system which attracts the best and brightest scholars from all over the world. This means the cultural backgrounds of people working in academic fields here is far more diverse than what it is in most of the country, or even most corporations. Because there is a richer set of personal experiences feeding in to the system, they don’t share the same narrow prejudices that most of the white Christian American bubble is used to sharing.
Even people working in academic fields who grew up here and are white and Christian find themselves working side by side other people from different backgrounds, so they naturally end up getting to know them better; they share experiences of what growing up was like, and they hear about how different people live and see things in different parts of the world. This makes them more aware of the particular biases Americans tend to have. So when they teach or write about things related to social issues, they often come across as having a different perspective than the typical white person living in middle America. From my point of view, this seems like it is because they are more well informed and more culturally aware than most people here are. I know in my case, I feel like I have become more culturally aware, both from working in academia where I was around a lot of international students and professors, and from dating and ultimately marrying someone from Latin America. If I hadn’t gone through those experiences, I would likely still have more socially conservative views today.
What about economics? In terms of economics, the US has a reputation of being one of the most rightwing countries in the world. So again, having more of an awareness for how other countries live and how their economic policies work gives them a greater awareness for what might be a pretty severe bias here. Any of us who have a lot of international friends have heard them complain countless times about the backwards healthcare system in the US, and how ridiculously expensive health care and medicine is here. About how militarily imperialistic the US is and how much it serves corporate interests instead of defense, and about how disturbing it is that we have so many homeless people wandering around missing teeth and limbs, urinating and defecating on things. As my wife often points out, in Latin America there are plenty of poor people, but they don’t live miserably like they do here — they are generally pretty happy and have their basic needs met. They don’t look like zombies that just stepped out of a horror movie. If they need dental care or mental health services, those are readily available. There is still plenty of economic inequality, but being at the bottom of the pile isn’t nearly as brutal. And in much of Europe, even social mobility — the ability for a person to be born poor but work themselves out of poverty — is much better than it is in the US. Ironically, what used to be referred to as the “American dream” is alive in Europe but is on life support here, if not already dead.
People who live in big cities, like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Francisco are also often accused of having a liberal bias. Why is this? Some of it is the same reason academics are— these are cosmopolitan cities where living there you come into contact with people from all over the world. People living in big cities are much more aware of different cultures and lifestyles. They don’t automatically label anyone who is different from them as weird or suspicious or dangerous like people are prone to in suburban and rural areas. They also have to more directly confront the effects of economic inequality, as they see not just the middle class but all classes living together. On any street corner of New York City, it’s easy to find yourself standing next to a fashionista in a fur coat holding hands with a Wall Street tycoon on your right, and a guy on your left who is missing teeth, drooling on himself, has baggy pants and underwear hanging out, and smells like he just urinated on himself. This kind of tragic inequality is just not as openly on display in less urban areas. Most of the effects of our chosen system of economic inequality are hidden from the suburban middle class — out of sight, out of mind.
On top of this, academics working in areas of science feel especially attacked by conservatives, who openly reject much of science. And even in the cases where they say they accept science, they almost always have a very distorted misinformed view of it. They see it useful so long as it helps inform medicine or build better fighter jets and bombs, but do not seem to understand the genuine intellectual curiosity that drives science as a way of understanding the world.
Academics working in humanities usually get attacked even more by conservatives, who dismiss entire fields of study as a useless waste of time and money, or even as harmful political propaganda. Sociology, anthropology, womens studies, gender studies, queer studies, feminist studies, cultural studies, post-structuralism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, critical theory, art history — most of these are frequently attacked by conservatives as worthless and many are seen as a direct threat to their inborn understanding of the world. In general, the conservative view is that the academic pursuit of knowledge was fine and dandy up until a certain point — the point at which the “Western canon” solidified — but any new knowledge gained in the 20th or 21st centuries (which has been characterized by efforts to incorporate a wider range of voices and perspectives than just European white men) is automatically suspect and seen as illegitimate.
I’m always amazed at the arrogance of conservatives who say — without ever having studied a particular subject — that just hearing a few brief statements made by a professor is enough to tell them that for sure this person is biased and not looking at the world in a neutral or objective way. Never does it seem to cross their minds that perhaps if they spent as much time as an expert on the subject has, delving into it and reading hundreds of books and other writings on it spanning centuries of work, they might become convinced of the very same things.
As a scientist by training, I hear these kinds of arrogant statements all the time from people who haven’t studied science themselves but whose pre-existing religious or spiritual beliefs tell them that things which I believe (based on my scientific understanding of the world) are surely biased. People tell me I’m close-minded for not believing in astrology, psychic powers, or miracles. They tell me I’m gullible and biased for believing in the scientific consensus on climate science. So I have a lot of sympathy for social scientists and people working in the humanities who tell me they have had similar experiences when talking with laypersons about things relevant to their work like race, gender, or culture.
Bias is hard to measure because there are such different levels and types of knowledge found in different communities of people. But one thing is for sure: if spending more time around people from different cultures tends to give people a different perspective, that is not an indication that the people who happen to have done that are biased. And if spending many years studying a particular subject tends to give people a different perspective on that subject than most people have, that doesn’t mean that the people who spent the most time studying each subject are biased. The only way I see that conservatives could be right about political bias is if they think that the more time you invest to understand something, the less trustworthy you are about it. And that’s exactly the opposite of what I believe as a liberal and as an empiricist.
Any reasonable measure of bias needs to be weighted by how much experience someone has with a particular subject. And that includes both direct experience (being in or near a culture) and to a lesser extent more indirect experience (reading about it and learning about it through books). And by these measures, I am certain it is those who live in regions almost exclusively dominated by white patriarchal Christian culture who have a serious bias problem, not people who live in big multicultural cities, or the media, or academics.
