Every so often, an internet graphic of a political nature goes viral, and serves to propagate an opinion that many incorrectly present as “fact.” One such, a graph that plots various news sources against two axes (journalistic quality/standards and partisan bias), has been shared by more than a few of my friends, and is approaching 4 million hits on Imgur. Some shared it with a nod and concurrence, others shared it with skepticism, memesplaining, or an invitation to deconstruct.

This particular graphic places NPR, BBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC News, ABC News, the Associated Press, Reuters, USA Today and CNN smack-dab in the middle of the “partisan bias” axis, overtly declaring that these organizations are essentially non-partisan news sources of varying degrees of journalistic depth. That list represents what many call the “mainstream media.”

If you are a follower of the political landscape and are not of a liberal inclination (whether you have conservative, libertarian or some other leanings) you’re snorting coffee out your nose at the declaration of these organizations’ political impartiality. If you lean liberal and have some intellectual honesty, you, too, are rolling your eyes at the assertion that these ten organizations are “non-partisan.” You might be perfectly content, however, with their partisanship because you believe, as one Internet commenter put it, “facts lean liberal.” Setting that comment aside with little more than a nod to Wolfgang Pauli’s observation “This isn’t right, this isn’t even wrong,” it is generally liberals, in my experience, who believe that their preferred news sources don’t have partisan bias.

Rather than memesplain this graphic further (there really is no need to go beyond what I already wrote – you either agree with me or you don’t), I’ll instead sorta-but-not-really coin a term similar to memesplaining: meme-orialize. The term isn’t original, but a Google search doesn’t show widespread use in a political context, so I’m going to stake a claim to it here and now.

Something happens when people take the time to shape their opinions into the multimedia text+graphics format. As I wrote in memesplaining, a graphic seems to convey a greater sense of authority, inducing us to give greater weight to its content than to an equivalent block of text. If the crafter of this graph had simply listed “these are liberal sources, these are nonpartisan sources, these are conservative sources,” we’d likely recognize his list as opinion. However, by turning the list into a graphic, there’s a greater chance we’ll consider the information contained therein as fact rather than opinion. This is aided by the fallacy of overprecision that’s conveyed with all those data points so carefully placed in their locations.

Thus, putting opinions into a graphic format (colloquially but incorrectly dubbed a “meme”) tends to add undeserved and unjustified weight and validity to those opinions. When such a meme goes viral, we can deem the opinion contained therein meme-orialized.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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