Media bias
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Media bias is a real or perceived tendency of journalists and news producers within the mass media to approach both the presentation of particular stories, and the selection of which stories to cover, with an unbalanced perspective. In essence, "media bias" generally refers to accusations of either censorship or propagandism on the part of particular news sources, where such content is framed in the light of a preconceived agenda.
Categories of bias are:
- Ethnic bias: Includes nationalism and regionalism.
- Corporate bias: Including advertising, political campaigns, the reporting of issues to favor a station's corporate economic interests.
- Social bias: Social and class divisions, within the context of a report, or the overall bias of reporting to favor the status class.
- Political bias: Regarding the split in political slant.
- Sensationalism: Which tends to supersede other biases, and manufacture or distort news as a purely commercial "product."
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Motivations
Bias has a long history in the mass media, from the early days of the printing press, where it would be used -- famously -- as a tool of advocacy. Almost all newspapers were openly partisan in nature, with editorializing deeply integrated with the reporting of current events.
Not until very recent times did the notions of unbiased reporting and neutral point of view become an integral part of journalism. Even today, however, journalism's most objective and balanced reporters cannot completely avoid bias.
The broadcast media (radio and television) has been used as a mechanism for propaganda from its earliest days. One early example occurred during the 1926 General Strike in the UK. The fledgling BBC Radio News attempted to sabotage this strike by broadcasting reports of the workers breaking the strike in many areas, reports which were largely fictitious.
Media bias is studied at schools of journalism, and by several independent watchdog groups from various parts of the political spectrum. These are generally focused on issues of a conservative/liberal balance in the media of the United States, but others carry a broader focus of international differences in reporting.
Mass media, despite its ability to project worldwide, is limited in its cross-ethnic compatibility by one simple attribute -- language. Ethnicity, being largely developed by a divergence in geography, language, culture, and similarly, point of view, has the potential to be countered by a common source of information.
Language differences represent to a large extent the only real barrier to a world community of opinion, similar to that within the U.S., as an example. The effect, however is not homogenizing; there still remain strong differences, but the overall trend is that the moderate views are bolstered, drawing a common view from the extremes. In the United States, the national news to a large extent contributes to a sense of cohesion within the society, that comes with similarly informed people. Most views within the free society are freely expressed, and the mass media tends to reflect the spectrum of opinion, with some accountability.
The accountability that tends to come with a responsible balancing of news to a wide spectrum is still limited to that local perspective: Mass media is rarely an international phenomenon. It is a product of the culture for which it is for; a mirror of and for the society, some say. Critical thinkers often point out that mass media is the single most powerful device for controlling and appeasing the masses, and it is naturally exploited in any number of ways for its persuasive power. Advertising, political persuasion, special interests, and avoidance of controversial issues, are several ways the media acts in biased ways, as part of its normal function.
International media organizations, despite being cosmopolitan, will often still flavor their different presentations to fit different regions, and perceptions in that region. World political divisions often fall in line with a West and East duality. But the meaning of these terms is vague, and can refer to the duality in European and Asian cultures, or to American and former Soviet cultures - being different in socio-economic identity.
Liberal versus conservative
Liberal media bias
In the United States, some claim that a liberal media bias exists. People who believe in a leftist media biased often also believe that most individual journalists and news producers hold left-wing or liberal political views.
To argue that the views have been pushed, those who believe in a liberal media bias say that the media has a tendency to inflame stories which suggest that guns in the hands of private citizens are responsible for crimes (and ignore when a gun has been used for positive purposes in law enforcement or self-protection). Some have argued that the media tends to portray Republican leaders as less intelligent, compared to their Democratic counterparts. Some argue that even asking politicians about their plans to solve social issues is a form of liberal bias, since such a question is based on the liberal assumption that government has a role in solving social or economic problems.
The editorial pages of many large U.S. newspapers such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, are perceived by some as typically arguing from a liberal point-of-view.
Conservative media bias
On the other hand, liberal journalists could try so hard to avoid any hint of liberal bias in their work, that some claim that their work ends up having a conservative bias. A study from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) claims that journalists actually are not particularly liberal on most issues anyway[1] (http://www.fair.org/reports/journalist-survey.html). FAIR (and others) have also argued that accusations of liberal media bias are part of a conservative strategy, noting an article in the 8/20/92 Washington Post in which Republican party chair Rich Bond compared journalists to referees in a sporting match: "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time."
Conservative media bias is said to exist for two reasons. First, the owners of media corporations are alleged to be conservative, like many business owners. As owners, they can dictate editorial and hiring policies. The second reason traces media concentration. The mass media are owned by a small number of very large diversified media corporations. Such a uniformity of ownership means that stories which do not somehow benefit these large corporations may not be run. Examples of conservative media bias might include the media's failure to cover, for example, many of the early anti-globalization demonstrations or to depict the protesters as troublemakers and prone to violence.
Conservative bias is seen by many in the editorial stance of several major newspapers such as the Washington Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Sun-Times.
Hostile media effect
Accusations of conservative media bias tend to differ from accusations of liberal media bias in the sense that the "conservative bias" is said to be fundamentally economic in tone, while the "liberal" biases deal more with social and cultural issues. It is therefore possible that there can be some overlap within these alleged biases, for it could be possible for a news producer to be economically conservative, yet still favor liberal social policy.
In either case, however, it should be noted that it has been found that partisans consistently perceive media coverage as being biased against their side. This has been called the hostile media effect by psychology researchers.
National and ethnic viewpoint
Many news organizations reflect or are percieved to reflect in some way the viewpoint of the geographic, ethnic, and national population that they primarily serve. Media within countries is sometimes seen as being "boosteristic" or unquestioning about the country's government.
Western media is often criticized in the rest of the world (including eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East) as being pro-Western with regard to a variety of political, cultural and economic issues. Al-Jazeera has been frequently criticized in the West about its coverage of Arab world issues.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wider Arab-Israeli issues are a particularly controversial area, and almost most coverage of any kind generates accusation of bias from one or both sides.
Other influences
We might also consider another form of media bias, which is not specifically political in nature. The news media tend to cover stories which give higher ratings, which means that stories that are important are neglected in favor of the latest sensational mass school shooting, celebrity wedding, plane crash, or similarly glamorous or shocking story. Millions of people can die at the hands of some African dictator with hardly a moment of notice by the news, but the shooting of 5 people with a handgun in a high school is analyzed endlessly. The reason may not be political, it is said, but simply a function of what the public wants to watch. Nonetheless, this is a form of bias if the function of the media is regarded as the presentation of a relatively balanced and factual explanation of the state of the world.
Bias has also been claimed in instances referred to as conflict of interest, whereby the owners of media outlets have vested interests in other commercial enterprises. In such a case, it has from time to time been observed that stories which favor the commercial interests of the media owners or are detrimental to their competitors and opponents have not only been favored, but even at times invented whole-cloth from manufactured evidence. The conflict of interest here is between the perceived interest of the media in impartially informing the public, and the hidden interest of someone who controls a media organ in misleading the public to his own benefit.
See also
- Yellow journalism
- Objectivity (journalism)
- Hostile media effect
- Propaganda Model
- Cultural bias
- Liberal bias
- Culture of fear
- Anti-American sentiment
- Metanarrative
Organizations monitoring bias
Liberal
Conservative
- TheMediaReport.com
- Media Research Center
- Accuracy in Media
- TimesWatch.org (http://www.timeswatch.org/) "Documenting and Exposing the Liberal Political Agenda of the New York Times"
- RatherBiased.com (http://www.ratherbiased.com) "Documenting Dan Rather and CBS News"
Further reading
- Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~speech/bias.html) by professor Jim Kuypers
- Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News by former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg ISBN 0-06052-084-1
- Arrogance: Rescuing America From the Media Elite by former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg ISBN 0-44653-191-X
- What Liberal Media? by reporter Eric Alterman
- Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by satirist Al Franken.
- Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman
External links
- What's Wrong With the News? (http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=101) - Analysis of what is wrong with the media today.
- Content Analysis (http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v613/sri.htm)
- Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~speech/bias.html) (book claiming to document liberal bias in mainstream news)
- The Memory Hole (http://www.thememoryhole.org) (site for the preservation of FOIAed documents and material removed from government websites)
- The Media Awareness Project (http://www.mapinc.org/) (site about drug reform)
- Honest Reporting (http://www.honestreporting.com) (site about purported anti-Israeli media bias)
- "Those Aren't Stones, They're Rocks" -Seth Ackerman (http://fair.org/extra/0103/not-stones.html) Article concerning pro-Israel bias
- Blinded By Science: How ‘Balanced’ Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality (http://www.cjr.org/issues/2004/6/mooney-science.asp) by reporter Chris Mooney
- "A Measure of Media Bias" (http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.8.htm) - a paper-in-progress attempting to analyze media bias by looking at sources statistically
- Media Matters (http://www.mediamatters.org) - Website updated daily that provides examples of Conservative bias and misinformation in the news.
- MediaLens (http://www.medialens.org)es:Sesgo mediático