"Surveys have shown going back as far as you and I can remember that people have perceived a leftward tilt in the basic coverage that they get on TV news"
About this Quote
Hume’s diction is careful. He doesn’t say TV news is left-tilted; he says people have “perceived” a leftward tilt in the “basic coverage that they get.” That phrasing shifts the debate from accuracy to sentiment and from institutions to consumers. It’s a rhetorical sidestep that protects the speaker: if challenged, he can retreat to public opinion. Yet the subtext is clear: if the public perceives bias for decades, the bias must be real - or at least politically actionable.
Context matters: by the time Hume became a defining voice on Fox, “media bias” had evolved into a durable identity marker on the right, a way to pre-emptively discredit unfavorable facts. The line functions less as diagnosis than as permission structure: it tells viewers their distrust isn’t paranoia, it’s history. And once distrust is framed as rational, the alternative ecosystem - partisan commentary packaged as correction - becomes not a choice but a civic necessity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hume, Brit. (2026, January 17). Surveys have shown going back as far as you and I can remember that people have perceived a leftward tilt in the basic coverage that they get on TV news. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/surveys-have-shown-going-back-as-far-as-you-and-i-50385/
Chicago Style
Hume, Brit. "Surveys have shown going back as far as you and I can remember that people have perceived a leftward tilt in the basic coverage that they get on TV news." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/surveys-have-shown-going-back-as-far-as-you-and-i-50385/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Surveys have shown going back as far as you and I can remember that people have perceived a leftward tilt in the basic coverage that they get on TV news." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/surveys-have-shown-going-back-as-far-as-you-and-i-50385/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.


