The mainstream media’s coverage of President Biden’s plan to shift $400 billion in federal student loans from borrowers to taxpayers has been called into question. Many news outlets failed to provide unbiased coverage of the issue, instead offering a one-sided view that favored the White House’s position.
A recent study examined how five major newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal, covered the story.
The study examined 100 news stories drawn between May and the November midterms and found that the coverage was heavily tilted in favor of the White House.
The study found that supportive quotes from the White House and its allies dramatically outnumbered skeptical ones by a ratio of 62% to 24%, which was far out of line with public sentiment.
The vast majority of quotes were provided by Democratic officials, progressive advocates, or borrowers, while less than one-fifth were offered by policy or legal experts. Republican officials or taxpayer advocates accounted for just 12% of quotes.
The bias was also evident in the sources quoted in news stories. When public officials were quoted on Biden’s proposal, Democrats accounted for 81% of quotes, while Republicans made up just 19%.
This means that on a high-profile, polarizing debate in a closely divided nation, news accounts quoted Democratic officials more than four times as often as Republican officials. In fact, Biden administration sources accounted for more than half of all quotes from public officials.
The study found that news accounts paid remarkably little attention to the legality, fairness, or potential inflationary impact of the White House proposal. After Biden’s announcement, just one-in-five news stories even mentioned the 2003 HEROES Act, which the White House used to justify its unprecedented action.
Just 34% of news accounts even alluded to concerns about its regressive nature, 24% its inflationary impact, and only 6% that those who’d borrowed for graduate or professional degrees were also eligible.
The study suggests that the media failed to provide responsible coverage of the issue, instead choosing to quote the White House and its allies far more frequently than the critics and failing to acknowledge key objections.
This lack of unbiased coverage may contribute to the declining trust in the media, particularly among those on the right. News outlets should strive to provide balanced coverage, quoting both sides of an issue and acknowledging concerns raised by critics, to ensure that their reporting is fair and unbiased.