Ace knocks one out of the park.
The bias I mean is the bias of perspective. The novelistic technique of making one “character” (in this context) the active character, making decisions that advance the “plot,” with whom the audience is “with” and through whose eyes the audience sees the world. And making the rest of the world, whether fictional or real, either objects of the hero’s action, or opponents for him to contest against. The press has a strong tendency to frame political stories from the vantage point of the heroes of their stories, who are, almost inevitably, Democrats.
Political stories are almost exclusively written “with” the Democrats, from the point of view of the Democrats. They are the Nouns who perform Active Verbs in the MSM’s sentences; they are the heroes whose travails we are invited to sympathize with.
For example, a polling story about Democrats on top will always be headlined like this:
Democrats Reverse Conventional Thinking on Defense; Win Public Approval Over Republicans on National Security
They’re the active-verb heroes in that sentence. The Republicans are the objects and the opponents.
And thus the NYT’s headline about the troops in Iraq. The headline could have made the troops the active-verb heroes…
Troops Greet Obama with Military Cheer
… but the NYT does not identify with the troops. The troops are not heroes in the NYT’s narrative, making their own decisions based on their own psychologies and agendas and drives and wants. No, in the NYT’s narrative, the troops are objects of the hero Obama’s actions, chips for him to win in a high-stakes game of geopolitical poker. And in their headline, he wins them.
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