Journalist Matt Taibbi argued on Thursday that many media outlets have deviated in recent years from former standards of accuracy and fairness, and often fall in line with the Democratic Party.
“I think people miss journalists who just want to give you the straight dope and not add something else,” Taibbi said during an appearance on Hill.TV’s “Rising.
Taibbi, a host of the “Useful Idiots” podcast, emphasized that many outlets no longer use a view-from-nowhere approach in pursuit of objectivity.
“Everyone knows what Fox is, it’s undisguised in its attitude towards all these issues, it doesn’t have any embarrassment whatsoever about coming out with a point of view,” Taibbi said.
But he argued that mainstream outlets that put forward a center-left perspective don’t convey those biases as clearly.
“It’s kind of openly in sync with the Democratic Party consistently and the social justice movement secondarily,” he said of mainstream outlets.
Taibbi added that many people take issue with stories focusing on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) posing opposition to certain elements of President Biden’s massive social spending package, saying the coverage has a disconnect with the real issues faced by ordinary Americans.
“People are just sort of suspicious of that kind of news and that sort of infighting. It just seems to them fake,” Taibbi said.
“Ultimately, neither party really delivers on the stuff that they care most about,” he said.
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