From The Hill, about as non-partisan as it gets
The Hill may be unbiased but what you cited is an editorial, the very point of which is to argue a specific point of view. Editorials are by definition biased.
As for media bias, if you care to make a point about it, than do so using something that is at least objectively developed and critically analyzed as your basis for making your claim. That you'd use an editorial to make a claim about bias is preposterous; that's just your being too damned lazy to find out the facts for yourself. The facts are, however, available if you but look for them:
Public Perceptions of Media Bias: A Meta-Analysis of American Media Outlets During the 2012 Presidential Election
You also may want to
consider this.
From the charts above, one can see plainly that in the 2012 election cycle, most news major organizations presented more negative content pertaining to Obama than to Romney. Did Obama gripe about the negativity of the coverage he and his campaign received? I don't recall him making a major issue of it, although it's possible he did mention it at some point.
Researchers have found that the
media tend more often to note the ideological bent of various think tanks when referring to content published by those think tanks. The study's "most surprising result is that the self-identified conservative newspaper The Washington Times attaches ideological labels to conservative think tanks at a higher rate than it does to liberal think tanks." The thing to note about that is that adjectivally identifying an organization as liberal or conservative when said organization is indeed liberal/conservative can't be seen as more than disclosing a fact. Put another way, there is no bias associated with saying a skunk stinks; it does stink, and the skunk knows that as well as you or I.
To be newsworthy,
information must be reported in context, and it is the journalist’s task to provide the background and interpretation necessary to give events meaning. But what is media bias? It seems there is at best a plurality of answers to that question. Bias means many things to many people.
The ASNE found:
- 30 percent of adults see bias as “not being open-minded and neutral about the facts.”
- 29 percent say that it’s “having an agenda, and shaping the news report to fit it.”
- 29 percent believe that it’s “favoritism to a particular social or political group.”
- 8 percent say bias in the news media is “all of these.”
In terms of the economics of producing biased news, the following have been empirically shown (note that the language below is that of economists, not laymen):
- Bias reduces the demand for news because individuals are more skeptical of reports from news organizations that tolerate bias.
- A profit-maximizing news organization tolerates bias only if that allows it to hire journalists at a lower wage.
- When it tolerates bias, a news organization lowers its subscription price. Price and bias are thus negatively correlated.
- With competition between like-oriented news organizations individuals self-select with the more risk averse subscribing to the publication with the greater bias.
- With competition between two like-oriented news organizations the one with the greater bias has a lower price but can have higher profits. Moreover, average bias can be greater with competition than with a single news organization. Lower quality (more biased) news commands a lower price, but lower quality news can be more profitable than higher quality news.
- With news organizations with opposing biases individuals sort based on which news report leads them to change their prior decisions. High risk aversion individuals subscribe to the publication biased toward greater precautions, and low risk aversion individuals subscribe to the publication biased toward fewer precautions. The news organization with the greater bias can have higher profits.
- In public politics media bias results in less stringent regulation conditional on a news report, but the news report leading to the more stringent regulation is more likely. The expected stringency of regulation is increasing in media bias toward greater precautions.
The impact of the media on political attitudes and behavior has been studied empirically, and rather than develop the implications of the present theory for those studies only one observation will be offered. Some studies of elections have shown that individuals’ beliefs are not affected by news reports, and the model has this feature in the sense that individuals adjust their beliefs anticipating bias. Empirical testing using ex post data; i.e., after a story has been published, would show that bias reduces the number of individuals taking precautions, i.e., ˆαL is increasing in σ. Moreover, individuals would report that they took bias into account and adjusted their beliefs appropriately. The journalist’s decision to bias her news report, however, is an ex ante decision; i.e., when preparing the news report, and bias results in a higher probability of a particular story being reported. Media bias thus would not be found using ex post data but could be found using ex ante data on the frequency with which particular stories appear.
As for the specific examples cited in
The Hill editorial, one is about public allegations of criminal behavior on Trump's part made by the alleged victims of that behavior and the other is about the content of private emails, emails that were (1) stolen and (2) not at the time confirmed or denied as to their authenticity. Moreover, when Bill Clinton was accused of similar acts, a full on investigation, special prosecutor and all, was held to determine their validity. You may not recall it, but that investigation was daily news for the entirety of the Starr investigation.
You seem to care so much about balanced news...Fine, that's good, so if you, you should watch PBS, listen to NPR and watch CSPAN. That will give you loads of unbiased or at least balanced coverage of news and events.