He Fought Liberal Bias in Media But Then Realized He Didn't Understand Journalism

<p>Matthew Sheffield fought against liberal bias in the news media for years. He grew up in a fundamentalist Mormon family, one of 10 children. His street preacher father watched CBS News. And in the late 90's Matthew started getting into blogging, as we called it then, mostly pointing out examples of media biased. He started a site called Rather Biased, inspired by CBS News' famous broadcaster. And in 2005 he and his brother started Newsbusters.</p><p><br></p><p>A few weeks ago, Matthew wrote out a remarkable thread on Twitter, where he <a href="https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1324909098828132352" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wrote</a> that he “was part of a decades-long tradition of complaining about media elites being ‘unfair’ to conservative views.”</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>And Sheffield doesn’t dismiss the notion of liberal bias in the media. “There is still much to that argument,” he wrote, “but eventually I saw that I was missing context.”</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>After Sheffield went to work at the Washington Examiner, where he was the newspaper’s first online editor, <a href="https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1324909413161865221" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">he says he realized</a> that “U.S. conservatives do not understand the purpose of journalism.”</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>“I didn't understand that journalism is supposed to portray reality,” <a href="https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1324910355538014215" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sheffield wrote</a>. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The Examiner was the first place where Sheffield says he saw the kind of standards that differentiate “actual media and reporting institutions” — that may have inherent or even conscious bias — from right-wing websites for whom partisan bias is the north star, the guiding principle.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>“Truth for conservative journalists is anything that harms ‘the left.’ It doesn't even have to be a fact,” he <a href="https://twitter.com/mattsheffield/status/1324912797658963968" rel="noope