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By Christopher Roberts
Vice President, Publishing & Subscriber Strategy
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In the mid-1980s, Stanford researchers made 144 students watch 36 minutes of network coverage of the Beirut massacre. Pro-Israel students detected anti-Israel propaganda. Pro-Arab students detected pro-Israel propaganda. The neutral students apparently watched without detecting anything. What a time to be alive. The researchers called it the “hostile media phenomenon,” which, arguably, became the “hostile media business model.” It wasn’t about ignorance. The more knowledgeable people felt, the more bias they perceived.
Photo illustration by Newsweek/Getty
My mind turned to the question of ignorance and whether there is any bliss to be found therein when you, dear readers, assessed a Newsweek article headlined, “AOC’s Chances of Beating Newsom and Harris in New 2028 Michigan Poll.” Fifty-five percent called it fair. Yet 36 percent said it leaned left and 9 percent said it leaned right, making it a rare example of a story where bias to either side approached the fair votes. Weirdly, zero votes came from Michigan. The people whose political judgment the story purported to explain remained silent. Pleading the Fifth—like Anthony Fauci, everyone’s at it nowadays.
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The timing was perfect. Michigan Democrats later chose AOC-backed Abdul El-Sayed over Haley Stevens after an AIPAC-affiliated group spent more than $30 million intervening in a primary that became an argument about Israel and who speaks for Jewish Democrats. Four decades after the Stanford experiment, Michigan supplied another Israel-flavored political Rorschach test. Perhaps conservative readers saw “AOC” in a headline about a hot-button race and reached for the left-bias button. So, for those readers, here is the right-leaning version. I haven’t had to change a single fact.
AOC Trails Buttigieg by Double Digits in New Michigan Poll
The progressive congresswoman received 10.7 percent, less than half Pete Buttigieg’s 24.2 percent. She also trailed Jon Ossoff at 13.9 percent, while 21.7 percent were undecided. Her 0.7-point advantage over Gavin Newsom was comfortably inside the four-point margin of error.
All true. Also true: AOC beat Newsom and Kamala Harris in the polling. The original article headline simply compared her with the candidates below her rather than those above her. A woman in third place became the protagonist of a story about winning, above a potential candidate—Harris—whom Newsweek once described as illustrating “the insanity theory” of Democratic politics. That does not make the article false, but it makes “but every fact was accurate” a fairly flimsy defense. Facts do not select their own protagonist, comparison or headline. More often, bias hides inside a preposition: AOC was ahead of Newsom; AOC was behind Buttigieg. It was Newsweek that called the angle.
The hostile-media phenomenon is real. But it can also become a magnificent escape hatch for journalists: If readers perceive bias, that merely demonstrates how biased the readers are. Heads we’re objective; tails you need therapy. Perhaps the voters crying “left” were partisan cranks, but perhaps they also noticed the frame. The poll put AOC in third place. That’s far from enough for a victory speech.
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