Media bias isn’t just about which party a newsroom seems to favor; it’s about which stories, structures, and people are consistently centered or ignored.
Jamelle Bouie, opinion columnist at The New York Times, has argued that much of the press still clings to a distorted idea of neutrality. As he put it, “The problem with the mainstream political press is less that it is ‘biased’ in favor of one party or another than that it is biased in favor of a particular view of politics that obscures power, sanitizes extremism and treats the most vulnerable as abstractions rather than people.”
That insight lands hard in today’s environment, where “both-sides” narratives often flatten real asymmetries in power and stakes. If we want better coverage, we have to demand journalism that names power clearly, resists euphemism, and treats affected communities as central, not peripheral.