In case you wonder why the right is suspicious of the mainstream media...

 

...consider the title of this article in the Washington Post: “A transgender girl struggles to find her voice as lawmakers attack her right to exist.”

Unless somebody in Congress is suggesting compulsory euthanasia for transgender folks (they're not), that's not merely an inaccurate headline, but an inflammatory, shrill, and hectoring example of how to destroy a publication's reputation for objectivity while convincing absolutely nobody. And it's the kind of thing that's been going on in most of our nation's great newspapers for decades.

We all view the world through the lens of our own backgrounds, experiences, and prejudices. But all of us- and perhaps professional journalists most of all- must try to be aware of and to transcend them to whatever degree we can. The mainstream media have miserably failed to make much of an attempt in that direction for a very long time, and it's not only legitimate but necessary that we, the consumers of the news, call them out on it. 

I don't expect the MSM to clean up its own house any time soon, given our society's polarization. But its apparent lack of objectivity drives people into the arms of the wild-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth alternative media of the far-right, which has little if any grasp of reality at all.

The lurid title to that article only underscores all reasonable people's obligation, regardless of their politics and social attitudes, to consult media all across the political spectrum and do our best to escape the ideological echo chambers in which most of us are living. And it would be nice if, along the way, folks could make a gesture once in a while in the direction of at least aspiring to objectivity.