By Johannes SortoCONTRIBUTOR

For the last several years, we have seen Republican candidates constantly blame the media for being biased when they get bad coverage.

In the last GOP debate, moderated by CNBC, we saw clear evidence that this is not just political rhetoric, but also that our media does have a bias and that bias can greatly harm our democracy.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) was correct to cancel the February debate with NBC because of the terrible performance by one of its networks. CNBC broke the trust it had with Republican candidates, and now those candidates are very skeptical that they will get a fair shake by that network.

It has become obvious that NBC is a liberal network by having its two branches, MSNBC and CNBC broadcasting liberal propaganda. Of course the Right has its own network, that being Fox News, which tries to counter NBC.

But the greater concern here is that journalists are supposed to hide their political leanings. Today, we see the exact opposite, which has in turn ruined the trust that we had in journalists. We are seeing journalists become more political than ever before, and that has then led to news networks that only provide biased news to help a specific political party.

This is destroying our current democracy and is also destroying the integrity of an entire career field. News networks need to go back to just reporting the news and need to treat all candidates equally.

Until that happens you cannot blame Republican candidates for not being willing to debate on a liberal network. And you cannot blame Democrats for wanting to only do interviews on liberal network while refusing to do it for a conservative one.

Debates are never going to be perfect, and they will always likely focus more on politics than on substance. However, the debates can improve greatly if moderators can leave their political beliefs at the door.

If they are unable to, we might as well just have all Republican debates be moderated by Rush Limbaugh and all Democratic debates moderated by Chris Matthews.

Johannes Sorto is the president of the Hofstra University College Republicans. 

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