It has been said that ideologies are like accents. Everybody has one, even if they swear they don’t.

This is especially true where the U.S. news media is concerned. Ostensibly, American journalism is a pursuit of the truth. Its purpose is to reflect reality rather than shape it. Reporters pride themselves on a commitment to fairness and accuracy, and they are quick to defend their employers against accusations of bias. In some sense, they regard the objectivity of their profession as self-evident. But no matter how upstanding these individual reporters might be, they are but one part of the corporate media machine. A larger system that is fiercely ideological.

Put in simpler terms, most news outlets uphold the status quo. Call it what you like: orthodoxy, common sense, conventional wisdom. It all boils down to the dominant views held by the ruling class. Namely, the rich and powerful.

The ideology that results from this is pro-war, pro-business, and most importantly, pro-capitalist.

A cursory look at the mainstream media is enough to prove it. James Bennet, the editorial page editor for the New York Times, explicitly stated that the outlet was “pro-capitalism” in a closed-door meeting with staffers. The Wall Street Journal is a mainstay of the free market, with an audience that consists of financial elites. Their editorial board smearing leftists like Bernie Sanders for “siding with a dictator” when he urged against intervention in Venezuela. And FOX News bombards the airwaves with a right-wing, anti-socialist message on a daily basis.

As much as the mainstream news informs and educates, it also distorts and omits. It upholds truisms and tunes out dissident voices—sometimes when those voices are needed the most.

Some of this can be blamed on the nature of these outlets. They are profit-driven businesses, after all. Owned by some of the richest people on the planet. As such, we can reasonably assume that they wouldn’t be used to spread an anti-capitalist message.

But mere self-interest can only explain so much. As noted by Adam H. Johnson, a media analyst at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), there is also an ideological factor at play. The media class, he argues, believes that “capitalism is a non-negotiable good.” And the idea “that there could be another way of looking at things, or that these assumptions should be challenged on a fundamental level, is tantamount to Flat-Eartherism.”

In the news, this outlook manifests in a variety of ways. From the framing of left-wing political candidates to the depiction of the poor — which often lacks context. But it is their portrayal of organized labor that warrants particular discussion.

Not content to be simply pro-capitalist, the corporate media is also overwhelmingly anti-labor.

The academic research on this topic leaves little room for denial. When it comes to labor unions, media coverage is consistently negative. The news focuses on strikes and violent confrontations, often exaggerating their frequency, and pays little attention to successful negotiations or community outreach programs. Providing their audience with a distorted picture of labor activities. One particularly egregious example concerns the portrayal of Teacher’s Unions during the No Child Left Behind Program. Rebecca Goldstein, an Associate Professor of Secondary and Special Education, concluded that Time Magazine and the NYT both painted an extremely negative image of Teacher’s Unions, framing market reforms and the NCLB program as the only solutions that could fix public education. A shameful campaign against the interests of teachers. To many, this kind of union-bashing in the media will come as no surprise. Organized labor is often marginalized in the political discourse. It receives very little coverage in the mainstream press (as James Berger wrote in 2015), pushed to the side so that more focus can be paid to the business world. A topic of far greater importance—at least according to conventional wisdom. And so, what is considered the sensible view in politics is echoed by the media. A full-throated defense of capitalism, the primacy of business over labor, and, of course, unquestioning obedience when it comes to the foreign policy establishment.

Earlier this year, William Arkin, a veteran national security reporter for NBC, resigned from the network. And in a parting email to his colleagues, he criticized the network for its pro-war turn and valorization of the security state.