Boy has the legacy media outdone itself this year. Here for your reading pleasure are five examples of legacy media bias they pass off as “reporting.”
1. “House GOP eyes trans care as newest battleground issue”
What should have been just a standard update on Congressional Republicans’ priorities after the new Speaker, Mike Johnson (R-LA-04) took the gavel, unfortunately, became a headlong dive of ideological propaganda for the publication Roll Call.
The “trans care” term this article focuses on doesn’t begin to describe what Republicans are fighting. Nor does the next descriptor used — “gender-affirming care”. These are propaganda terms used to give the reader a “good” feeling — not descriptions of the treatments’ or procedures’ factual realities. Eventually the author does define these terms as “anything from hormone therapy to surgical care to insurance coverage of either.”
Let’s break those down. This “hormone therapy” he’s speaking of means prescribing puberty blockers to minors. This has very real and serious, long term biological effects on children. Stunting puberty is harmful no matter when or how much it’s done, but Roll Call wants you to believe it’s simply “therapy”.
The “surgical care” term ranges from removing young women’s breasts or mens’ genitals and cutting out sections of someone’s limb to make a fake penis. But in the eyes of Roll Call, this is “care.”
You see how factually stating what is physically happening to these minors rather than using ideological terminology changes how you look at the topic?
2. “Axios Explains: The myth of a U.S.-Mexico ‘open border’”
In this article, Axios EXPLAINS to us mere peons: “By using the term ‘open border,’ conservatives…are suggesting that anyone can get into the U.S. without much hassle. But the reality is that the southern border is more fortified than it’s ever been.”
I can’t believe this has to be said but this is not what critics of the federal government’s actions on the border mean. Of course it isn’t literally open.
There are some barriers across the border and patrols monitoring the vast expanse of no-man’s-land along with ports of entry. But even so, there were 227,000 apprehensions of illegal border crossers in September 2023. In September 2022, there were 269,000 apprehensions.
And that’s just the ones who got caught.
Regardless of semantics on the meaning of “open,” the border is still crossed illegally hundreds of thousands of times every month.
Axios should simply report the numbers and allow the reader to decide whether that term is applicable or not. It is not their job to determine that for you.
3. “Family legacies and the state’s Jim Crow past underlie a fight over mineral rights on a stretch of South Texas scrubland”
Of course, the Austin based Texas Tribune cannot write about a fight over mineral rights without imbuing racial undertones into it.
Two Karnes County families, one long since uprooted out of the area and the other still there, are in a feud over the rights to the minerals in the disputed-ownership property. By all accounts, it’s a knock-down drag-out legal fight with all the kinds of personal jabs typical in such cases.
“Theirs is a story of a land dispute but it’s also about legacy,” the Texas Tribune author writes. “About one family wanting to hold on to the investment of generations and another seeking justice over what went missing in the days of Jim Crow.”
This is hard-hitting journalism taking a contemporary legal fight and making it about…racism of course!
And once again, the Trib takes an interesting story and shoves undertones of bygone eras to push their own ideological narrative.
4. “Austin suspends partnership with state police after trooper pulls gun on 10-year-old”
This headline eventually changed, but its original version was such a display of Fake News that I still struggle to believe it was published.
In July, a tense traffic stop resulted in cancellation of the City of Austin’s partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety. The driver, Carlos Meza, alleged the officer pulled a sidearm on his 10-year-old son who was in the passenger seat.
The Tribune, along with many others, ran with the statement as fact rather than waiting for the video.
When the video came out, it became clear that the officer pulled his sidearm, but did not point it at anyone, let alone the passenger.
At least the Tribune changed its headline, but it was too little too late.
They maligned the officer and DPS as a whole, not to mention causing the sorely needed partnership to end prematurely.
This is public DISservice journalism that is more focused on getting kudos for themselves for getting the story first, rather than getting the story right for the reader.
5. “White supremacist propaganda is spreading at an all-time high, and Texas is at the epicenter”
Does this Houston Chronicle even need to be pared apart?
“White supremacist propaganda is spreading at an all-time high.”
Really? Higher than either of the last two centuries? Higher than in the lead up to, during, or aftermath of the Civil War? Higher than during the height of the Ku Klux Klan’s influence.
Come on now. This is not reporting, this is a clickbait headline focused on getting clicks so they can sell more ads for their bottomline — and makes the reader dumber for having read it.
These and so many others are the exact reason why my husband and I founded The Texan, which has provided fact-based journalism about issues important to everyday Texans without the opinion or narrative pushing we see from the legacy media.
If you want news you can trust for yourself or to share with your friends, get an annual subscription or gift subscription to The Texan half off this weekend only.
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