A Primer on Media Bias in North Carolina
October 11, 2025
| Media bias in North Carolina’s legacy outlets manifests as a subtle yet consistent tilt toward anti-agriculture narratives, often at the expense of farming perspectives. This primer explores how such bias plays out in coverage of environmental regulation, labor unions, and energy generation, particularly in the least unionized state in the U.S. (with just 2.4% union membership). These topics are weaponized to create division, using race, class, and education as divisive topics to motivate urban district voters in swing-state elections, deepening polarization. Ratings from AllSides confirm these outlets’ anti-agriculture stance, prioritizing equity and sustainability over economic growth. Understanding this playbook empowers readers to discern framing that influences voters, as we saw in the 2024 presidential contest, where North Carolina was pivotal. Environmental Regulation Bias: Legacy media often champions strict rules as essential for “environmental justice,” framing business-backed deregulation as harmful to low-income groups—effectively throwing the class card to stoke division and rally base voters in close elections. For example, in 2025, Carolina Public Press reported on a new law limiting regulations with high economic impacts, emphasizing how it ignores pollution’s health costs on consumers without balancing business concerns over job losses, job opportunities, or compliance burdens. WRAL’s past critiques of fracking boards for “drill bias” align with this, calling out pro-industry appointees while downplaying economic benefits like energy independence. Such stories amplify activist voices decrying “environmental racism” in hog farming, portraying it as systemic oppression to motivate turnout among urban liberals, rather than exploring regulatory overreach’s toll on agriculture and the local economy. This selective emphasis erodes trust in business solutions, tilting electoral discourse toward progressive mandates. Labor Unions in a Right-to-Work State: Despite North Carolina’s anti-union laws and low organization rates, legacy media pushes pro-union stances, highlighting worker protections and equity to counter business-friendly policies. Outlets like NC Newsline, rated left-biased by Media Bias/Fact Check, advocate for unions in environmental and energy sectors, such as campaigns for heat protections among city workers or defending immigrant labor in clean-energy transitions. In 2025, NC Newsline covered advocates urging Sen. Thom Tillis to preserve clean energy tax credits, unifying labor and environmental groups against GOP repeals that could raise costs and cut jobs—framing it as a fight against corporate greed. This narrative downplays unions’ economic drawbacks, like higher business costs in a state reliant on non-union manufacturing, and uses division (e.g., portraying anti-union laws as class warfare) to energize voters in tight races, as seen in 2024’s heated contests. By amplifying union events, the media influences turnout without equivalent scrutiny of union overreach. Energy Generation Coverage: Bias here favors rapid renewables, critiquing utilities like Duke Energy for fossil fuel reliance while minimizing reliability issues. The News & Observer notes Duke’s slow solar growth (just 5% in 2021), portraying it as a climate failure amid demand spikes, and references analyses of post-2030 gas doubling over green expansions. In 2025, reports on Senate bills undoing climate goals frame them as setbacks that allow for rate hikes, stressing equity for low-income areas without business counterpoints on avoiding blackouts. Pro-union angles weave in, supporting labor’s role in transitions and criticizing anti-renewable lobbying as “gaslighting” by fossil interests. This downplays natural gas or nuclear as viable bridges, labeling them denialism, and uses fear of environmental harm to divide voters—motivating liberals in elections by tying energy policy to economic justice. Tying It to Elections: In close races, this bias influences outcomes by shaping perceptions through ads, news, and social posts, as Rutgers research notes. Legacy media’s emphasis on division—class inequities in pollution, union suppression as injustice, energy inequities—rallies urban bases while alienating rural business supporters. Post-2024 analyses highlight how such framing amplified tensions in North Carolina’s contested races. To counter, diversify with sources like the North State Journal or The Carolina Journal for balancing views. Agriculture has faced unrelenting media bias for decades. The same tactics are being expanded towards the business community with union organizing and sustaining adequate energy sources in our fast-growing and changing state. This primer underscores that while bias isn’t overt fabrication, its patterns create a sense of normalcy for extreme agendas, especially in pivotal states like North Carolina. We all should stay alert for biases and question narratives to foster informed decisions. The NC Ag Partnership will call the balls and strikes! Best regards, |
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| Peter Daniel Chairman, North Carolina Ag Partnership |