Liberal bias among prominent news outlets has been well-known for decades.  As a consequence, there has been a mass exodus of conservatives away from "legacy media" outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post to right-leaning news sources including Fox News, the Daily Wire, and the Federalist.  Unsurprisingly, this mass migration has also led to a partisan split as to how trustworthy the public views mainstream media: a summer 2021 poll by Pew Research indicates that 78% of Democrats trust the national news media, compared to just 35% of Republicans.  Meanwhile, growth among right-leaning news outlets has skyrocketed.  While this cataclysmic shift in the way in which the American public consumes media may be common knowledge, a recent job posting by the New York Times seeking a politics reporter on "right-wing media" provides a telling look at just how openly biased the mainstream media have become.

The job posting opens with a somewhat chilling mission statement, noting that the media empire seeks to "help people understand the world."  The wording indicates that the newspaper does not simply report factual news, but also interprets that news, almost always through a leftist lens.  The advertisement goes on to list the specifics of the position, seeking a reporter to "cover the news outlets, online communities and influential personalities making up the right-wing media ecosystem that now serves many conservative Americans who no longer rely on the mainstream media to inform themselves" — a tacit acknowledgment that conservatives no longer read the New York Times.

The job description notes that applicants should be "prepared to inhabit corners of the internet that popularize far-right or extremist ideas, providing our readers with a critical listening post on those ideas before they achieve wider circulation."  In other words, the sole job of the reporter is to spy on conservative outlets and attempt to discredit and censor any new ideas coming from the political right before they can gain traction.  The New York Times implies that ideas arising from conservative media are "extremist" and "far-right," perhaps deliberately forgetting that right-wing media outlets are often among the first to break important national stories — a few recent examples including a sexual assault cover-up in the Loudoun County school district, the possibility of COVID-19 emerging from a Wuhan laboratory, and corruption within the Biden family.

In addition, the New York Times seeks an applicant who "can successfully research and report on the people behind [right-wing] ideas, shedding light on their motivations and sources of funding, mapping the connections and networks and analyzing how these ideas are being received and acted upon."  The language implies that conservative ideas are not developed through logical or sincere means, but rather are the result of manipulation by some wealthy, maleficent organization — which is interesting, considering that George Soros has been doing exactly that, but for the benefit of the political left.  Of course, the newspaper may have more nefarious intentions for collecting information on individuals or businesses who fund right-wing causes, given its history of doxxing conservative voices and publicly listing companies that don’t fully embrace leftist orthodoxy.

"You should be able to build and maintain source relationships even in adversarial situations and collaborate with colleagues covering politics, disinformation, technology, religion, national news and other subjects," the job description continues, again emphasizing that coverage of right-wing media must inevitably involve disinformation.  The mention of "religion" here also has derogatory implications, as it is brought up in the context of far-right extremism.  Technology, too, is likely listed here due to the leftists’ goal of Big Tech censorship of conservative voices under the guise of "fighting disinformation."

The political motivations of the position are stated in even stronger terms when the advertisement ends by stating that "experience covering right-wing media, disinformation or political extremism would be ideal, and a robust list of reporting targets would be highly attractive[.] ... Prerequisites include the backbone to withstand aggressive blowback, impeccable journalistic ethics and the ability to report accurately, critically and fairly on people with extremist views."  This statement strongly implies equivalencies between "right-wing media," "disinformation," and "political extremism."  Right-wing media figures are smeared as "people with extremist views."  Stunningly, the job posting suggests that prospective applicants must be able to "withstand aggressive blowback" for reporting on conservative media, an ironic assertion, given the left’s history of physically attacking reporters.

In a few paragraphs, the New York Times ad for a politics reporter succinctly captures not only the left-wing bias infesting our mainstream media sources, but also how the left views conservatives (e.g., as extremists) and their game plan for destroying them (e.g., through censorship).  Perhaps a sister position may be created to target the spread of far-left ideology in the U.S. and the organizations that fund such ideas?  Given the current state of the mainstream media, I won't hold my breath.

J. Allen Cartwright is a chemical researcher in the energy sector.  His interest is in the interplay of politics with cultural and scientific institutions, and he can be followed on Parler at @jallencartwright.

Image: Adam Jones via Flickr (cropped).