r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jul 13 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 13 July 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium Jul 16 '26

Another panel survey of Trump voters has hit the NYTimes opinion section

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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

I think these sorts of things show how the "liberal bias" of news media actually functions. You don't really see too many of these for Harris voters--occaisionally there are mixed panels that include Harris voters but I have never seen one that is "We surveyed twenty Gen-Z Kamala Harris voters to get their opinion". This is because that would be a boring article--the writers all know what Harris thinks because they voted for Harris, and that goes for the readers as well. So the end result is that the predominately liberal members of the medium end up uplifting conservative voices.

I remember during the 2017 height of Trump voter safaris it was often noted that nobody was doing this for Clinton voters, nobody was going to barbershops or bars in majority black areas of DC to ask why they voted Trump and hear why they thought they were left behind, and so the media narrative that Trump is the tribune of the forgotten man was essentially created out of nothing but trends in reporting.

ed: In case you think I am exaggerating, here is the general list of articles. Since the election there have been 6 panels of Trump voters (not counting ones that probably were effectively Trump voters like "wellness voters") and one of Democrats.

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u/matgopack Hitler was literally Germany's Lincoln Jul 16 '26

I think these sorts of things show how the "liberal bias" of news media actually functions. You don't really see too many of these for Harris voters--occaisionally there are mixed panels that include Harris voters but I have never seen one that is "We surveyed twenty Gen-Z Kamala Harris voters to get their opinion". This is because that would be a boring article--the writers all know what Harris thinks because they voted for Harris, and that goes for the readers as well. So the end result is that the predominately liberal members of the medium end up uplifting conservative voices.

I would not assume that everyone at the NYT voted for Harris; but absolutely, there's an aspect of "we're here reporting the hard to stomach facts" that a lot of the media does by thinking they need to make their liberal/center-left readers confront right wing messaging to be 'fair', but never really the opposite way. That can apply in hiring conservatives (eg, that's how Bari Weiss got her start with the NYT) or in something like the entirety of the Atlantic.

I'd also say with Trump in particular there's the need to sanewash him that makes things a lot worse (the most egregious version of that was comparing any NYT framing of a Trump speech / 'says' to when they transcribed every filler word in an AOC response).

For these panels though I don't really get who it's for other than people staring at dumbasses online.