Op-ed: Media handling of Biden student loan giveaway reveals glaring bias

February 23, 2023

If you're curious about media bias, you don't have to look far to find it. Let's take a look at how the press handled one particular Biden handout that will cost $400 million.

"Imagine major media outlets covering a school voucher bill not by focusing on legal debates and potential concerns but under the headline, 'Here’s how you can go get your kid a voucher.' Or covering Republican tax-cut proposals not by exploring exactly who will benefit but by offering lots of quotes from would-be beneficiaries about how much they need the tax cut," a recent op-ed written for Fox News posited.

"It’s tough to imagine because it’s normally not how the legacy media does things. And that’s OK. It’s not the job of news reporters to be PR flacks," wrote Frederick Hess and Caitlyn Aversman.

"Yet, that kind of credulous enthusiasm is exactly how the major press wound up covering President Joe Biden’s unprecedented attempt to shift $400 billion in federal student loans from borrowers to taxpayers," they write.

"As the Supreme Court prepares to take up the legality of this action, it’s worth appreciating just how badly the mainstream media failed the nation in its coverage of Biden’s dubious maneuver," the authors said.

Last year, Biden announced he planned to use executive action to cancel up to $20,000 per borrower in federal student loan debt.

"Biden claimed he could unilaterally act via a novel reading of the 2003 HEROES Act (originally enacted to ease burdens for military families and those impacted by the post-9/11 War on Terror)," the Fox News piece explains.

Fox News "examined a random sample of 100 news stories from those outlets, drawn during the period between May (when the White House said it would be acting on student loans) and the November midterms. We want to emphasize that we looked only at news coverage — not at opinion pieces, editorials or the like."

"The results were troubling," the outlet notes. "The coverage was heavily tilted in the White House’s favor and generally ignored significant concerns raised by critics."

The authors of the Fox News piece reported findings of the very clear media bias:

Across the 100 articles examined, there were a total of 459 quotes, with supportive quotes dramatically outnumbering skeptical ones, by 62% to 24% — a pattern far out of line with public sentiment.

More than two-thirds of all quotes were provided by Democratic officials, progressive advocates, or borrowers, while less than one-fifth were offered by policy or legal experts (just 12% were provided by Republican officials or taxpayer advocates).

The moral of the story is, you just have to dig and find the truth, because the media is not feeding you the full story.

Source: Fox News