The liberal news media treat U.S. violence and oppression as aberrations from the country's founding ideals rather than expressions of its fundamental character as a settler colony, empire, plantation, and concentration camp.
Short overview: Each installment features a literacy guide on a particular issue, institution, or journalistic strategy to help readers understand the ways that liberal media outlets frame the news. “Liberal,” here, is used broadly to include: (1) liberal in the original sense: commitment to free markets, free trade, private property, individual rights, and the rule of law (e.g. The Economist); (2) liberal in the U.S. sense: social tolerance, the Democratic Party, the administrative state, defending the same economic order — only with better manners (e.g. the New York Times); and (3) liberal in the plainest sense: what U.S. liberals read or listen to (e.g. NPR).
Introduction
This past summer brought extensive reporting and meditations on “America at 250” from various liberal media outlets. The New York Times invited readers to recognize the “flawed genius” in the country’s founding. NPR had a special call-in asking listeners, “What Does The U.S. At 250 Mean To You?” The prompt read, “250 years ago, the founding fathers were days away from adopting the Declaration of Independence. Fast forward to July 4, 2026, two and a half centuries later, has America lived up to those lofty ideals?” Meanwhile, The Economist ran its own interactive feature aimed to “assess America’s complicated relationship with its founding ideals.” The publication even promoted it heavily on social media. “America was founded on Enlightenment ideals: natural rights, the rule of law, government by consent,” read a post from The Economist on X (formerly Twitter). “It has spent 250 years living up to them—and falling short. Introducing our review of the great liberal experiment.”
The liberal media plays a significant role in shaping what we believe about this American “experiment,” how we justify all the violence the U.S. perpetrates around the globe, and how we dismiss any “missteps,” “failures,” and “regrets” along the way as a departure from who we really are as a nation. This installment isn’t about the anniversary. It’s a way of writing about the U.S. itself. And the “America at 250” coverage is just one place where we see it. The move goes like this: a liberal media outlet admits some of the bad stuff and then treats it as an instance of the country falling short of its ideals. So the ideals stay good — they’re always good — and the bad stuff is a sign of a gap still left to be closed.
The coverage of the supposed values and ideals of the U.S. doesn’t just shape our beliefs. It also shapes our attachments, loyalties, and solidarities. “Two centuries ago,” wrote Frantz Fanon in 1961, “a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness, and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.” So when one’s heart is devoted to the “idea of America,” when one’s pride is placed in the City Upon a Hill, when one’s primary allegiance is to the Red, White, and Blue — it makes it all the harder to see the U.S. for the monster it is.
Decoder
A few words to look out for…
“Complicated”: As in America’s “complicated relationship with its founding ideals,” or the founders’ “complicated” legacy, or our “complicated” history with race. It’s a word that sounds a lot like humility. When you drop it in a sentence it shows you’re a person who admits difficulty, that you recognize the world is more complex than those radicals would have you believe. You embrace nuance. You refuse easy answers. Oh, and this word typically shows up when a clear answer would sting quite a bit.
“Fall short of our values”: Torture, massacres, coups, and bombing hospitals. When the U.S. does it, it’s processed as a “betrayal of American ideals” or a “dark chapter.” When its enemies do it, it’s just who they are.
“Mistakes”: Our bad actions boil down to “mistakes,” “dark chapters,” and “unfortunate events” that we must “reckon with.” Their bad actions are not mistakes — it’s part of their character. They don’t have “dark chapters” — they’re dark all the way through. Their bad actions weren’t “unfortunate” — they knew exactly what they were doing. And it’s impossible for our enemies to “reckon” with their past. Only a good person feels bad about what they’ve done.
Imperfect-but-well-meaning vocabulary: The U.S. is “flawed,” “imperfect,” or “still grappling with.” Enemy nations are “brutal,” “repressive,” and “aggressive.”
“said” vs. “claimed”: Government spokespeople from the U.S. can be trusted. That’s why Pentagon officials “said.” An Iranian or Chinese cabinet member can’t be trusted. So those officials “claimed” or “alleged.”
“violated” vs. “shows disregard”: The U.S. violates some international charter or ethical norm. It’s a punctual verb, signaling a discrete act and aberration. It doesn’t reflect America’s character. Its enemies, on the other hand, “show a blatant disregard for human life and international law.” This is a dispositional phrase, signaling a country’s inherent nature.
“interests” vs. “ambitions”: Another example of the liberal media having two vocabularies for the same act. And it all depends on who’s doing it. We have interests. Russia has ambitions. We respond. Iran provokes. We seek freedom and stability. China seeks domination. Think hard about the last time you heard this from your favorite NPR anchor: “The U.S. once again moves aggressively to destabilize the region.”
The dog, the salad, the reading list. The tender detail about a U.S. President, allied Prime Minister, or an EU leader, that has absolutely nothing to do with the story. It could be his weekend hikes, his kid’s favorite lullaby, or the soup kitchen where he volunteers. Sometimes it’s a subtle slip into a piece about the drone program. Sometimes it’s an entire profile about what this woman does on her day off from running a country. It serves as character evidence. They love dogs, so they can’t be war criminals.
“Within the bounds of”: The founding documents of enemy countries are not treated in the same way as the United States’ governing laws and ideals. So even though the Iranian constitution, for example, speaks of freedom and equality, you never see the liberal media claiming that one of Iran’s actions is “failing to live up to its founding ideals.” It’s even more common to concede that, yes, their constitution might use language of freedom and equality, but let’s not forget an important qualifier: only within the bounds of Islamic law. Of course, you will never find a similar qualifier when appealing to language found in the U.S. constitution. No liberal journalist would write: “Freedom of speech, as long as it doesn’t threaten capital or empire,” or “Freedom of religion, as long as it’s shaped by Protestantism;” or “Gender equality, as long as it protects white womanhood.”
What the Coverage Assumes
Some brief examples of the assumptions that drive the coverage…
Someone can be great and a slaveholder.
Obama put it like this earlier in June: “It is possible for me to be a great admirer of George Washington and also acknowledge he was a slaveholder. And that does not negate his greatness.” It’s safe to say the liberal media holds the same assumption. You can be a slaveholder and still be great. A genius even. Now of course, in some outlets, you won’t always get the “slaveholder” caveat. When The Economist invited a historian to reflect on “America at 250,” he decided to take it in a different direction: “The founders envisioned an American political system of honesty, candour, competence, high ethics, compassion, decency and self-sacrifice.” You didn’t read that wrong. Apparently, those are the virtues held by Washington and Jefferson. So in both statements, the goodness of the founders is a given. The only difference is that Obama acknowledges the slaveholding and then moves past it, whereas the historian doesn’t slow down at all. Either way, you’re still perfectly within the bounds of acceptable liberal opinion.
That the U.S. is fighting the good fight.
The Times would never come right out and say: “America is fighting the good fight.” It has about three dozen ways of communicating this. It’s basically their unstated motto. And when it turns out the U.S. was on the wrong side of a fight? Not to worry. We’ll be told the U.S. meant well. In case you’re wondering, no one in the newsroom would be thinking: “Iran is fighting the good fight.” It’s just not something that occurs to anyone there. And on the off chance that it did — well, let’s just say that’s not really the kind of person who ends up working at the Times.
That we mean well.
The liberal media’s starting point — their baseline assumption — is that the U.S. is fundamentally good. It means well, it repents for its sins, and it is always trying to be better. It has a conscience. This is the starting point that the outlets never state and never doubt. For people who don’t share that starting point, most of the coverage stops making sense. Doubting the liberal media’s assumption here may require you to find your news elsewhere. And it also puts you in the same company as Kwame Ture. “In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience,” he said. “The United States has none.”
What the Coverage Does
How the coverage’s assumptions become yours…
It makes it harder to recognize a war criminal when they’re on our side.
This was briefly mentioned earlier in a “Decoder” entry, but it’s worth a deeper look. NPR runs a piece about “first dogs” Champ and Major Biden. Both the Times and NPR cover Obama’s Spotify playlist. Former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel is described by the New Yorker as a “quiet German,” while PBS recounts how, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, she “popped into her local supermarket to pick up food, wine and toilet paper to take back to her Berlin apartment.” Just to give two more examples: we have the Times writing about Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron staying up late talking about sausages at a state dinner, and publishing a piece about the Prime Minister of Canada being a “magnet for cameras.”
No one writes about the Iranian President’s dog — or his Spotify playlists, favorite wine, or shopping habits. If an Iranian newspaper were to write such a thing, the Times (and Congress) would immediately call it state propaganda. But it’s not simply a matter of, “Well, we just don’t call it propaganda when we do it.” Another reason it’s not seen as propaganda is that liberal media treats propaganda as painting a bad person in a good light. Biden, Obama, Trudeau, Macron, and Merkel are good people. So when they’re painted in a good light, it’s not propaganda. It’s reporting. Pretty convenient way to “report” on people whose governments wreak so much havoc on this planet.
It pressures us to frame our arguments in a patriotic way.
The liberal media makes it seem like anyone who’s going to critique the U.S. must do it from a position of love for their country. Which leads to statements like “That’s not the America I believe in” or “They don’t speak for America” or “America means different things to different people!” We can even see how attempts to reclaim patriotism are prevalent in leftist publications, leading to embarrassing takes like arguing that Harriet Tubman and Malcom X were “driven by love for their fellow Americans.” That observation would come as a shock to many people, especially Harriet Tubman and Malcolm X.
It shapes our loyalties and attachments.
The coverage keeps you loving the country, which is exactly what makes it harder to love the things Harriet Tubman and Malcolm X actually loved.
It prevents us from examining what the US really is.
Because the answer might be a country you can’t keep loving.
The Range
The range of dissenting opinions that’s permitted by the liberal media to appear balanced — and the perspectives it excludes, dilutes, or metabolizes.
The liberal media’s attachment to the country’s ideals, aspirations, and inherent goodness makes total sense because they don’t believe the U.S. is structurally and fundamentally a settler colony. Or an empire. Or a plantation. Or, as former prisoner of war at Attica Herbert X. Blyden argued, “one whole concentration camp in and of itself.” If the media — or its readers — did believe any (or all) of these things, then the language of the U.S. “failing to live up to its ideals” would start to sound a bit silly. After all, if we’re talking about a settler colony, then dispossession is the plan, not some “stain.” If we call the U.S. an empire, then its violence and terror make up its very ambition. We know what an empire aspires to do. If you start to believe, as Malcolm X did, that “what you experience in this country is one huge plantation system,” then someone has to say out loud what it means for a plantation to “live up to its ideals.” And finally, you won’t see the U.S. called a concentration camp by the liberal media, because concentration camps don’t really have ideals to fall short of. They just have a function. A very specific one at that.
Once you start taking these other starting points seriously — the U.S. as a settler colony, empire, plantation, concentration camp — you get a sense as to why rhetoric like the following should trouble you. In his remarks at the grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center, the former president said to the crowd: “…because it hadn’t been done before, the success of this experiment was never a given.” Similar sentiments were shared by poet Amanda Gorman at Biden’s inauguration, proclaiming the United States as “a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished.” If your starting point is that this is a settler colony, you’re not hoping it gets finished. If America is a plantation, you’re not hoping the experiment succeeds.
Of course, none of these claims would ever get taken seriously in a liberal media newsroom. To describe the U.S. in these ways would lead to charges that you’re not a serious journalist and that you lack political “nuance.” It may be okay to say we’ve done colonial things or acted in imperial ways. But remember: this isn’t who we are.
A common theme throughout these literacy guides is that the liberal media pre-selects what kind of Black critique is allowed. Herbert X. Blyden does not get taken as a credible source on what America is or isn’t. Nikole Hannah-Jones does. Let’s not forget that her 1619 Project originated in the New York Times Magazine, with the opening essay leading with: “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.” You can critique the United States as long as you stick to the grammar of ideals, aspirations, and redemption, and as long as you say that all the horrible things the country has done is not part of its true character. In short, as long as you prove you’re a patriot.
The Times and NPR would be less inclined to feature a perspective from Dr. Charity Clay, who in her critique of the 1619 Project documentary writes: “It bothers me that Black people in the United States would rather align themselves with one of the most violent, imperialist western nations, than strengthen the ties with the African diaspora, just for a shot at a cash payout and to have a metaphorical seat at the table of brotherhood with their oppressors.” And although the Times may have invited her to comment on the criminal legal system in 2019, today it would probably care very little for the perspective of Derecka Purnell, who in response to Beyoncé’s pride in the American flag reminds us that many enslaved people “who built the US also refused and rejected it. Some sought to destroy it.”
For the liberal media, Black people are (in part) the ones who hold America to its promise. So they have the 1619 Project, Barack Obama, and Beyoncé ready and available to help Black Americans reclaim the flag, and to convince them that the founding ideals are real and worth redeeming, that the nation is unfinished and perfectible. This is what the coverage looks like, and you’d never know from reading the coverage that so many Black communities refuse this framing — and refuse this propaganda — in their everyday lives. “As much as Beyoncé’s fans could wear star-spangled outfits at day parties this summer because their ancestors built the US, they could just as easily burn all of them if they choose to honor different ancestors,” Purnell writes. “It is a choice. Hopefully, we are not so desperately flagless that we are willing to cling to an empire that is killing us, and many others around the world, for aesthetic pride.”
Roberto Sirvent is Editor of the Black Agenda Report Book Forum. He is co-author, with Danny Haiphong, of the book, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News—From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror.
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