The Associated Press this week features a series evincing both what is wrong with liberal establishment media today and also how misinformation needlessly exacerbates racial tensions.
From an organization still advertising itself as “the most trusted source of … unbiased news,” the very framing of the series is shameful. In the series of promotional materials that the Associated Press sent to news organizations, every single element takes sides, tendentiously, rather than taking an unbiased position. Worse, the side it takes actually misrepresents key, indisputable facts.
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The promo begins like this: “It has been a decade since the U.S. Supreme Court issued a milestone ruling that overturned the heart of the Voting Rights Act.”
Really? Surely not a single person who voted for the act in 1965 considered the excised portion to be the legislation’s “heart.”
The law’s purpose was to force the elimination of tactics, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, used by some states and localities to keep black citizens from voting. The Supreme Court decision 10 years ago, Shelby County v. Holder, merely struck down one small provision in a much larger act. That provision, Section 4B, provided a formula by which another controversial provision, Section 5, was to be applied. Section 5 requires that certain states which habitually limited black voting rights must have any change in their election laws “pre-cleared” by the Justice Department. Section 5 itself, in the original law, was specifically designed to expire after just five years. Each time Congress subsequently renewed that provision, it applied a new time limit. If a small part of a much larger law is designed to expire while the rest of the law continues in force, the small section obviously is not “the heart” of the law.
An “unbiased” news report might say many analysts consider the provision an extremely important part of the law, while other analysts adamantly disagree. That would be unbiased. To state as fact, however, that the time-limited provision is the heart of the law is to choose sides from the beginning.
Those on the other side from the Associated Press can cite numerous other incontrovertible facts not only to support their opinion on the provision’s (un)wisdom but also to refute the Associated Press's assertion that the provision is the very heart of the Voting Rights Act. Logically, of course, the true “heart” of the act included all the other provisions, still entirely operational, that eliminated the illicit tactics that kept black people from voting. Long gone are the days when only a tiny percentage of minority voters could cast ballots.
Moreover, the simple fact is that in the 10 years since the Shelby County decision, many states have dramatically expanded opportunities for mail-in voting, early voting, and online voter registration and created new methods, such as drop boxes, to make voting easier still. Indeed, many of the most dramatic expansions (when compared to 10 years ago) have occurred in Southern states that would have continued to be covered by the now-nixed “pre-clearance” formula. States that were not covered, such as President Joe Biden’s Delaware, have lagged behind.
The court decision certainly didn’t deter black voter turnout. The two intervening presidential elections saw higher black turnout than in any other years in U.S. history except the two where former President Barack Obama led a ticket. And in the non-presidential federal elections since then, black turnout hit record highs in 2018 and in 2022, remained at what had been the pre-Shelby percentage of 2010. Those statistics hardly indicate that the law, or its beneficial effects, has been gutted.
Alas, the Associated Press wasn’t finished with its bias. Its promotional package says the Supreme Court is now considering “a case that could weaken another pillar of the Voting Rights Act.” Weaken? Without delving into abstruse legal theory, suffice it to say plenty of people of goodwill believe a “conservative” outcome to the case actually will strengthen black voting effectiveness while better upholding the original intent of the Voting Rights Act.
Well, today the high court took the Associated Press's side, so the alarmism was doubly misplaced.
As it is, the first iteration of the Associated Press's six-part series features 18 paragraphs clearly taking the Left’s view of the law and 12 neutral paragraphs (other than two random sentences providing solace to the Right), all before a mere four paragraphs finally allow conservatives their say. Those four paragraphs were followed by two more neutral ones and four more pro-Left ones.
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Not only is this outrageously biased reporting, but it also raises racial tensions by positing that only one side cares about voting rights while the other is strenuously trying to disenfranchise minorities. Nowhere is there any nod to the possibility that those in favor of the Supreme Court’s recent trend lines actually think minority voters will benefit from the rulings — much less any suggestion that what the court is doing is dictated not by policy preferences but, yes, by the actual language of the Constitution and statutes.
Serious and thoughtful differences of opinion, with plenty of good intentions on both sides, exist on these matters. The Associated Press instead presents the topic as a battle of evil assaulting the good. This isn’t unbiased reporting; it is societal arsonism.
