Welcome, this is Charley from Common Sense News. Today, I’ll address one of my key concerns: the consistent failure of our Mainstream Media to uphold true journalism. Their job should be to report news accurately, free from bias—a standard they often do not meet. My research into journalism integrity and reporting standards highlights this pattern and its impact.
So, let’s get started. Since I’m retired, I spend a lot of time watching the news throughout the day. A few years ago, I used to flip through channels to get different perspectives, but quickly noticed pervasive bias across both broadcast and print media. Eventually, I settled on Fox News, but still periodically check Newsmax and OANN.
This gives me a trio of conservative news outlets to watch. While conservative, I believe these outlets attempt to show multiple perspectives, even if their coverage leans right. In contrast, ABC, CBS, and NBC, especially before Trump was elected, rarely featured conservatives and were often confrontational rather than providing opportunities for open discussion. To me, this behavior does not meet the standards of journalism.
Given this, I’ve given up on watching mainstream news because the bias is infuriating due to misinformation, censorship or just plain lies. I’ll admit that puts me in a glass house myself, but I am to the point that I refuse to watch a bunch of progressives standing on a soapbox. However, I do peek in every once in a while.
Now, let me state that Fox is not innocent; they, too, have bias, but I feel able to form my own opinions with their reporting. Mainstream Media, on the other hand, not only censors but also spins news, especially when it paints conservatives in a good light. I argue that Mainstream Media purposefully pushes a progressive agenda through their reporting, which distorts public perception.
The bias I will focus on involves how stories concerning Islam, Muslims, and various gender identities are reported, sometimes limiting information to avoid offense, which changes the narrative. There’s a reason mainstream media takes this approach, and I’ll address it.
Media bias is evident in how stories are reported, starting with the language in headlines. Why is there caution when reporting on Islam, particularly with extremists, while the approach changes drastically for Christians, conservatives, or Jews? I argue that the media’s use of selective reporting shapes narratives on religion and sex, using journalistic standards as justification that distorts reality.
When the media reports on Islamic extremists, they often portray the individual attacks as a lone wolf. Really? The guy who just killed a National Guard woman and seriously wounded a male is identified as a loner. What made this guy kill? He was radicalized and did the job his radicalizers wanted. So, this is not a lone wolf attack; others are still out there trying to get their next person to kill for Allah. They are all complicit in the crimes of the so-called lone wolf.
Some of the bias may stem from the sensitive nature of reporting on Islamic ideology, because negative coverage can have broad international implications. In contrast, coverage of Christians, conservatives, and Jews appears open for journalists to criticize without discretion. The specific reasons for the differing treatment of various groups in news coverage remain a concern to me.
Another area of reporting that bothers me quite a bit is the hiding of the sex when it comes to reporting, and why they focus on gender, which is fluid, you know, one day you are male and the next you are a woman.
To understand why these changes occur, you have to look no further than the published journalism guidelines that set the standard. So, let’s go over some of these:
The AP, or Associated Press, is a major news agency founded in 1846, so it has been around for a long time. This group is known for setting widely used media standards as documented in the AP Stylebook.
But there is one more organization journalists adhere to: the Society of Professional Journalists, which has been around since 1909. This group sets the code of ethics for Journalists to follow.
These guides are written for like-minded journalists, and while I don’t agree with all the standards, understanding their reporting framework clarifies why there is bias in news reporting: it’s embedded in the current standards.
Let’s review some of these published standards:
One standard advises avoiding the use of race, gender, and religion in reporting unless they are relevant to a motive or investigation. So, basically, they ignore factors that many of us need to know as part of the story, and do not hear about it until weeks later, while conspiracy theories evolve. But the reason is to protect the person being reported, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.
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So, the media is following their professional guides and standards—standards that have changed over time and that many of us baby boomers are not aware of, at least I wasn’t. Let us cover when and why these journalistic standards changed.
In the 90s, the media used sex when describing people and events, and the police and our legal communities followed suit.
The shift from reporting sex to gender appears to have developed in academic settings before influencing journalism. During the period when gender-based reporting became more common, it reflected evolving perspectives on identity. Decisions made during this era affected reporting standards, underscoring the influence of academia on media practices. The debate over gender and sex, especially regarding children and medical practices, continues to generate strong opinions.
Financial incentives may also play a role in shaping how certain issues are discussed, such as the commercialization of transgender surgeries in the United States. This development has prompted questions about the motivations underlying medical practices and media coverage. There is an ongoing debate on how best to approach sensitive issues involving youth, and media approaches to these subjects continue to evolve. In the meantime, our children are confused, not knowing what is real and what is not when it comes to gender.
Our Universities take the next step in pushing gender ideology and begin offering studies and degree programs on gender, which leads to a man being able to be a woman. Really? Gender is one thing, but you can’t change your sex by operation or fantasy, and this is why the left doesn’t use biological sex as an identifier.
As we roll into the early 2000s, the Associated Press Stylebook begins to address gender-related topics in the news, and the transgender issue comes to the forefront. Even so, gender is still not widely used for reporting, though it is beginning to move in that direction.
Moving on, the AP Stylebook begins updating its guidance for journalists covering gender issues, including transgender individuals. During this time, gender usage begins gaining traction, and the media gets confused and concerned about the misidentification of a person’s gender over biological sex. Over time, the narratives changed, and the public was like the frog in a pot of cold water, slowly being brought to a boil without realizing it was being cooked into a meal. In this case, the public is in the pot, and the media did the slow boiling until their goal was achieved, gender over sex reporting.
Around 2010, we began to see legal shifts, and states updated their laws to require gender identification on IDs. I’m ok with this as long as sex is included as well, but that is not what progressives want. They want a sexless society guided by gender and people being whatever they want to identify as. Crazy if you ask me.
In 2013, the Associated Press added transgender as a term and encouraged the media to avoid referencing biological sex unless needed. This is something I didn’t know, and it explains a lot about the journalists using gender, not sex, when reporting.
Once this trend caught on, the reporting of sex declined, with standards shifted to support gender-focused narratives. I contend that as the media adopts these evolving standards, reporting increasingly reflects ideology, cementing bias with the very rules journalists follow.
Given all these developments, the media ultimately adopted gender as the basis for reporting instead of sex, and here we are.
So, why did the media go down this path? The answer is that they have reasons.
Specifically, using gender in reporting reflects the person’s desired identity—not sex—to avoid implying biological information. In practice, this means your biological information is considered private and cannot be reported, similar in some ways to HIPAA. Oh my gosh, you can’t make this up.Sex-at-birth reporting is considered inaccurate, and gender is considered more accurate. So, what happened to science? It seems it went out the window.The progressives then become super woke and don’t want to offend anyone, so reporting now becomes woke, and we never know the details of the news, as we should. ============================================================Finally, the states, primarily blue states, allow police and court documents to use gender over sex. And now we have men raping women in prison because they identify as women. Our girls are in bathrooms with men and losing opportunities in sports to men who should not be allowed in girls’ sports. Give us a break. This is wrong in many ways. It seems common sense went out the door with progressives.
Now, here we are, and nobody knows who is really a man or a woman when it comes to reporting, and after researching this issue, I somewhat understand the move to gender, but not on steroids. We have lost common sense and are pampering many with mental problems caused by the acceptance of this craziness. Our kids now believe all of this is normal, and it is not. While we can accept people being what they want to be, there are common-sense restrictions that should apply, because a man cannot be a real woman, no matter the number of surgeries.
We need to return to common sense and protect our children until they are mature enough to understand their own biology. But instead, our schools push this woke ideology on them, with many lives now destroyed with irreversible surgeries, and of course, the media doesn’t report on the damage done, so they don’t offend others. What about the real girls and women who are offended? It seems they no longer matter.
Let me wrap this up by saying I used to post a lot of negative comments about why the news was hiding the shooter’s sex when the Trans school shootings were going on. But I now know why: it is a published standard for Journalists following the AP Style Guide. Something is wrong when the sex is dropped like it doesn’t exist, which is what the left wants you to believe. We still need transparency because genders are fluid, and you can be anything you want on any given day. But you can’t change your sex; it is permanent. The bottom line is we should know the sex of the person at times, and the cover-up by the media is censorship. If questions are asked, the truth should be provided. Remember the multiple Trans shooters who were protected, even to the point of not releasing the truth until it basically came out from leaks. This is a bit far out, but if all school shooters were Trans, or even if multiple shooters were Trans, should we not know their sex? Why? Maybe there is a mental condition that is trending, and by not providing all the facts, the media allows other lives to be destroyed. The truth matters, and the media should be able to discuss genders and sex. But, they don’t.
Thanks for tuning in, and I hope you learned something as I did. Be safe and be informed. This is charley from Common Sense News, signing off.
