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."
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, a liberal media bias is said to exist mainly because most individual journalists and news producers hold left-wing or liberal political views. One particular survey found that 89% of journalists voted for Bill Clinton in the 1992 U.S. presidential election [1]. Such a uniformity of political opinion among journalists may tend to give rise to a tendency to cover or not cover particular stories, or to cover them with a particular slant whether intentional or not.
Those who accuse the media of liberal bias also point to polls that consistently show that journalists are overwhelmingly not members of a church or synagogue and hold views to the left of the general public. E.g. one detailed survey of the political and social beliefs of producers, editors, writers, and staff in the television industry showed that two-thirds of them believe the structure of American society is faulty and must be changed, 97% say women should have the right to decide whether they want to have an abortion, 80% believe there’s nothing wrong with homosexual relations, and 51% see nothing wrong with adultery. Further, they argue that it's right to push their ideas into the programs they create for their audiences. (Lichter, S.R., Lichter, L.S. and Rothman, S., 1992. Watching America: What Television Tells Us About Our Lives.)
To argue that the views have in fact been pushed, accusers of liberal bias alleged examples such as:
- a tendency to inflame stories which suggest that guns in the hands of private citizens are responsible for crimes (and ignore when a gun in the hand of a private citizen apprehended the same criminals[2]),
- or as some have argued, a tendency to portray Republican leaders as less intelligent, compared to their Democratic counterparts.
- Using the preferred self-describing term of supporters of legal abortion, i.e. pro-choice rather than "pro-abortion", but refusing to use the preferred self-describing term of opponents, i.e. pro-life and instead calling them "anti-abortion". One example where this bias became absurd was in the Los Angeles Times, when a reviewer described a 19th-century opera by Richard Strauss as "pro-life". The reviewer meant that it celebrated and affirmed life. An over-zealous editor followed the newspaper style-book's recommendation, and changed "pro-life" to "anti-abortion", giving the opera a whole new theme.
- Some argue that even asking politicians about their plans to solve social issues is a form of liberal bias, since such a question might suggest that government has a useful role in solving social problems.
- Many Christians argue that there is an anti-Christian bias, where reporters say derogatory things about Christians that would never be tolerated if they were said about Jews, African-Americans or homosexuals.
- Conservatives have argued that the media was largely hostile to the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth and their claims against John Kerry, while Dan Rather and CBS were only too eager to believe forged Killian documents against George W Bush.
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 many as typically arguing from a liberal point-of-view. Many prominent American conservative authors and pundits have written many books and articles chronicalling examples of what they believe to be liberal media bias in action, and accusations of a biased "liberal media" remains a common complaint among Republican politicians.
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.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has done a study claiming that journalists actually are not particularly liberal on most issues [3]. They 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. However, those who claim liberal bias argue that many of these wealthy business owners are limousine liberals , so great wealth does not entail conservatism. They point to Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, who is commonly regarded as ultra-liberal, as well as other liberals who are multimillionaires or even billionaires such as George Soros, John Kerry, Jesse Jackson, Teddy Kennedy, John Edwards and many Hollywood stars.
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. Another would be the media failure to cover the massacres in East Timor by the right-wing Indonesian government during the period of oil extraction, contrasted to the heavy coverage given to massacres by the left-wing Pol Pot regime in Cambodia during the same period. However, CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, admitted that they refused to report many of Saddam Hussein's atrocties in Iraq which they knew about, in return for being allowed to stay there.[4]
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.
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.
Directly contradicting FAIR's assertions is a 2002 study by Jim Kuypers of Dartmouth College: Press Bias and Politics. [5] In this study of 116 mainstream papers, Kuypers found that the mainstream press in America operate within a narrow range of liberal beliefs. Those who expressed points of view further to the left were generally ignored, whereas those who expressed moderate or conservative points of view were actively denigrated or labeled as a minority point of view. In short, if a political leader, regardless of party, spoke within the press supported range of acceptable discourse, he or she would receive positive press coverage. If a politician, again regardless of party, were to speak outside of this range, he or she would receive negative press. Kuypers also found that the liberal points of view expressed in editorial and opinion pages were found in hard news coverage of the same issues.
National and ethnic viewpoint
Many news organizations are either perceived to or actually do reflect in some way the viewpoint of the geographic or ethnic population that they primarily serve. Western media are often criticize by people 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 Jezeera has been frequently criticized in the West concerning its coverage of Arab news and 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
Organizations monitoring bias
Liberal
Conservative
and CBS News"
Further reading
External links
