‘You never see that point of view in mainstream press.’

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/opinion/you-never-see-that-point-of-view-in-mainstream-press.html

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The Trump presidency has sparked a debate about which voices are — and aren’t — reflected in the national media. Many publications have been criticized for publishing too narrow a range of opinions. And several publications, including The Times, The Atlantic and The Washington Post, have recently made high-profile conservative hires.

I recently asked Times readers for their thoughts on the issue: Which opinions are underrepresented in the national media? And which if any should remain underrepresented because they’re beyond the pale of productive discourse?

We have received almost 1,000 responses, via email and social media. Here, we describe some common themes from those replies:

This was perhaps the most common response. There should be more writing from both pro-Trump conservatives and Jacobin-level socialists, as one reader, Andrew Ross, put it — “even though” (or maybe especially because) “elite readers may find their arguments objectionable.” Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab, called for a better airing of the “views of people whose politics are more than one standard deviation from the national mean.” A Twitter user named Rust Belt Jacobin summarized the missing as: “Leftists; Trump supporters; Latinos; working-class people.”

In the 2016 Democratic primaries, for example, Bernie Sanders excited millions of people and won about 43 percent of the popular vote. Yet most national publications employed few if any opinion writers who preferred him over Hillary Clinton. Only a smattering of editorial boards endorsed Sanders: The San Francisco Examiner, The Seattle Times, The Daily Iowan and several alternative weeklies.

The same broad point is true about Donald Trump. The Trump problem strikes me as trickier to solve, because so much of Trump’s political style depends on — and there’s no other accurate way to describe it — lying. I don’t think a publication would serve its readers by publishing columns arguing that Trump’s inaugural crowd set a record or that voter fraud was widespread.

But the particular Trump phenomenon is different from a broader issue, as the next section shows.

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Nearly every major publication employs conservative voices. There is also a conservative media industry with an enormous combined audience, including Fox News, Sinclair, talk radio, The Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages and smaller magazines like National Review and The Weekly Standard. Outside of conservative media, though, many of the conservative voices fall into a single category: anti-Trump, socially moderate writers. Readers say they also want to hear other conservative arguments.

On immigration, for example, Bonnie Gauthier said that she wanted to understand what drove support for border-security measures, including a wall. Jeffrey Marsh wants to hear more defenses of Trump policies. Patricia Valiton wants to read more pro-gun arguments. Even many readers who say they disagree with these arguments said they would like to understand them better.

“While I am pro-choice, science continues to push the boundaries of fetal viability to earlier and earlier stages. As that happens, when does an abortion constitute the taking of a viable life?” — Jeremy Leonard

“Opposing views on #MeToo, even though those are harder to root in facts, because it’s interesting/important to me to see what others think on these divisive cultural issues, even when I vehemently disagree.” — Rebecca Holland

“Pro-Israel, pro-life, pro-gun, pro-capitalism, pro-republic, anti-regulations.” — @austin_j_murphy, via Twitter

The political left is enjoying something of a resurgence. It’s not evident in electoral politics, at least not yet: Republicans control the White House, Congress and most state governments, while the Democratic Party’s leaders remain fairly moderate. Yet there is clear energy on the left.

Still, most major publications lack a proudly socialist voice, or anything like it — someone arguing for single-payer health care, a sweeping crackdown on Wall Street, a return to a top tax rate above 80 percent and the like. This absence is a mistake, multiple readers argued. The media, as one reader put it, should include “points of view taken for granted as just and necessary by hundreds of millions of citizens in other countries. You know, backwaters like France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Japan?”

“According to polls, a third of Americans like socialism. You never see that point of view in mainstream press.” — Jeet Heer, The New Republic

“Voices for aggressive government-organized action to stanch/slow climate change are entirely unrepresented.” — Michael Hoexter

“Currently underrepresented: Atheism.” — David Galiel

“The views of Palestinians and pro-Palestine activists have always been sidelined in U.S. media.” — @planoneck, via Twitter

Joshua Benton, the Nieman Journalism Lab director, made this point as part of his largest critique. Too rare, he wrote, were: “The views of African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans. The views of women. The views of people who don’t live in cities, don’t have a college degree, and don’t live in the nation’s media centers …. The views of people who lack the digital savvy, media savvy, or means to push their views into the national discussion. The views of poor people.”

The lack of these voices creates an artificially narrow conversation, especially given the country’s demographic trends. A debate dominated by white men is problematic enough in 2018. It will become all the more so in coming years.

“People who have recently immigrated to the U.S. or who are here as refugees, people who are Native American, people who are poor/working minimum-wage jobs, people who are members of established or recently formed unions, people addicted to opioids, people on S.S.D.I.” [federal disability] — Jeff Elrod

“Women who support Donald Trump” — Cathy Weiss

“Koreans! Especially when discussing the Korean conflict.” — David R.

“The views of rural African-Americans in the South are underrepresented. Rural = white in the national discourse. But there are many rural African-Americans in the South whose voices are never heard in the national media.” — David Darmofal

Not surprisingly, readers disagreed about which arguments should be considered beyond the pale. And some argued that no argument should be. “No matter how reprehensible the idea, I would like to know the thinking behind it,” a reader named J.S. told us.

One common view among readers was that any position deserved a hearing so long as it was backed up by facts. But I’m not sure this standard is as clear as many people think. The factual accuracy of many statements are matters of great dispute. Consider: How have tax cuts historically affected an economy? How successful has the education-reform movement been? Why does the United States have the world’s most expensive health care system? To me, every one of these factual disputes — and many others — are vital subjects of debate, even if I sometimes disagree with the factual basis of the argument.

But many readers also were willing to suggest some standards that are clearer — whether or not one agrees with them. Shelley Kempner Vaden said there was no place for “pro-genocide” writing. Jonathan Sprague said the same about “Holocaust denial and white racial supremacy.” John Hess said that the media shouldn’t publish “any argument or opinion calling for violence against a group with which the author disagrees.” As an example, he cited Kevin Williamson, whom The Atlantic fired partly for advocating the execution of women who receive abortions.

“Global warming is a hoax? The earth is flat? Pyramids and crystals have healing powers? Evidence, please. We’ve become so ignorant and gullible that someone’s opinion, no matter how misinformed, is deemed equal to empirical fact.” — Lisa L.

“‘Obama was born in Kenya’ is out. ‘Obama was a bad president’ can be in if it’s accompanied by supporting facts. ‘Obama was a bad president because it’s a bad idea to put African-Americans in positions of power’ is out.” — Joel Bergsman

“Here’s what I’d like to suggest as a line of demarcation between what ought and ought not to be engaged with as an opinion: whether a point of view is manifestly disingenuous or not. For example, take Williamson’s ‘position’ on capital punishment for women who have abortions. He knows perfectly well that nothing vaguely resembling the American public would ever tolerate such a thing; he also knows that it is a deeply offensive and attention-getting thing to say.” — William Levine

Do you think we have missed anything important in this roundup? Let me know, at leonhardt@nytimes.com