Media Bias and the Staffing of an Administration

President-Elect Trump is busy staffing his team these days, and I have been generally pleased with many of his selections. The whole process has--as these things tend to do--raised in my mind questions of media bias, or at the very least, media affinity/groupthink.

PEOTUS has the responsibilty to pick people to run the various agencies and departments in his administration, many of whom must then be confirmed by the Senate. These agencies and departments have missions and regulatory functions, some of which fall directly into the ideological push and pull of the roll of government in the lives of Americans. Determining who will lead them is in effect, a statement on how active or intrusive a President would wish that agency or department to be. Where the bias comes in is the degree to which the media has focused its attention on how some of Trump's picks seem to hold views that reflect an ideological desire to restrain the bureaucracy they would head. We see this reaction to his Secretary of the Interior, his EPA Director, and his rumored FDA Director. In each case, the man nominated has taken positions publicly that question the expanse of power exercised by the organization he will head. These stances are reported with great trepidation, with various and sundry environmentalists, patient rights advocates, and other fans of a greater role for the government loudly decrying the choice.

Where the bias comes in is that when a liberal President stocks his pond with people who would presumably use the power and authority of the offices they are granted to increase the regulatory state, the reporting is matter of fact, as if it is quite natural for an environmentalist to be appointed as the Secretary of the Interior or the head of the EPA. Only when someone is appointed who might rightly restrain the state does the media go into its collective rush to the fainting couches.