As a graduate student in English and Rhetoric, I earn my stipend in part by teaching a few writing classes. At some point we are allowed to propose ideas about a possible class, and by some strange stroke of luck, my proposal was accepted. So this year, I have been teaching a class called the “Rhetoric of Media Bias” – though I felt “Rhetoric about Media Bias” would have been a more accurate title.
I think this issue has some LDS resonance, what with the L.A. Times giving front page coverage to the “debunking” of the Book of Mormon and the trumpeting of Mitt Romney’s mormonness in the media (whereas Harry Reid’s goes nearly unmentioned – an exhaustive Lexis Nexis search reveals that in the news media Romney’s religious affiliation often takes center stage, whereas Reid’s membership occasionally gets mentioned in an offhand manner).
Anyway, in order to start a discussion (but please be civil) I figured I’d give a rundown of my textbook list, with some brief comments. The first thing I should mention is that I don’t allow debates about whether the news media is/are biased for the first two units of the course. The first two units are about the rhetoric of the debate, but not about its truth claims.
The books I have them read are:
The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment by Darrell M. West: A good short history of the American News Media. It makes no judgments about bias (except for one off-handed comment), but it gives a clear idea of where the news media came from and how it got to its current “Fragmented” status. Despite any claims made today, the news media is clearly not as partisan and biased as it was in the days of Washington and Jefferson. It also focuses on how the idea of “Objectivity” is a relatively recent (and somewhat uniquely American) ideal for the news media.
Coloring the News by William McGowan: This is probably the fairest of the 3 books on media bias I have my students read. McGowan’s thesis is mainly that the news media is so focused on “diversity” that it slants coverage and refuses to rigorously investigate any story that might upset a minority group. Unusually, McGowan makes a few early rhetorical moves that try to ameliorate any backlash – he says he has no problem with affirmative action hiring because it is a needed step in addressing and correcting historic wrongs. He also says that while conservatives may like this book it’s not really aimed at them: He hopes liberals will read it and realize that their ideas deserve open and honest debate, rather than the culture of oppression and silence that seems to prevail.
What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman: Very well researched but deeply dishonest. This book makes no attempt to reach any audience other than a squarely far left audience. Many of his main claims are asserted with no attempt to prove them (mainly because his far left audience already agrees with him). For example, he claims all rich media owners are conservative and thus pressure reporters to slant the news media to the right (somehow he avoids discussing the liberal founder of CNN, Ted Turner) and that George W. Bush was “unqualified” for the presidency (not “less qualified than Gore” or “under qualified” but straight up “unqualified”). It’s an angry book meant to galvanize the troops, but it doesn’t attempt to expand the fold. Books like this one exist not to win debates, or even to be read closely. It exists so liberals can go “Well, Alterman’s book proves there is no liberal bias in the media!” (It’s also not a good sign when, on the second page of his book, he says all conservatives are either stupid or liars).
Weapons of Mass Distortion by L. Brent Bozell III: Just change “liberal” to “conservative” in my description of Alterman’s book above. Well, not totally true. Bozell does make some attempt to reach moderates, so some of his rhetoric is not as extreme. Bozell also makes good use of brevity, and has found some pretty damning quotes by the bigwigs in the news media establishment. If I had to stack the two together, Bozell does a better job of proving a liberal bias in the media than Alterman does with the reverse, but both books left a bad taste in my mouth – all that anger and agony seem out of place in what should be a rational debate.
Disinformation by Richard Minter: I use this book to model research papers. While this book leans to the right, many of the “myths” it exposes aren’t really conservative or liberal (is the question of whether Osama Bin Laden is on dialysis or not a liberal or conservative question?) A nice book – I think it should be read by anyone who wants to be taken seriously in a debate about the War on Terror, even if they disagree with some of the findings. In either case, each chapter does a good job of modeling short research papers – how to introduce an argument, how to assert a thesis, and how to integrate different types of evidence into a larger argument.
As for my thoughts on media bias? Well, I’ve come to two conclusions:
1. The only real, consistent bias that comes through is a fear of/strong distrust of right-wing religious movements. Even Eric Alterman admits this (though he chalks it up to reporters being part of the educated elite, who are just too smart for that stuff).
2. Other than that, the picture I got was one of a deeply incompetent media. Reporters and editors deal with issues (science, economics, etc.) they have little or no training in. Thus, they often have no idea what questions need to be asked. Instead of being the objective, rigorous and cynical press that questions everyone and everything, we have reporters who follow whatever meme pops up and who generally have no true understanding of the issues at hand. But that’s my current take. Maybe this semester’s batch of student papers will change my mind.
Incompetance and bias can easily result in the same article being written.
Thanks for the reviews.
How do your students handle the class? Can you make any generalizations about their own views (ie. predominantly liberal/conservative/traditional/whatever) or are they a good mix?
Ben:
For the most part, my students are overwhelmingly liberal. However, they generally are very unnuanced in this. Since my class mostly serves freshman and sophomores, their liberalism usually amounts to a more libertine libertarianism (i.e. they like abortion rights because it allows them to sleep around without consequences, and they want the drinking age lowered so they can party without the fear of getting arrested).
Some are very conservative – I am teaching in Texas after all. Even then, their conservatism is also unnuanced: They’re conservative because all good Christians vote Republican and therefore liberals are evil.
That’s one reason I don’t allow discussions about the actual bias the media may or may not have until the third part of the course – I hope to have instilled some nuance in them by then.
Oh my—
case in point:
http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2006_03_09.html#011114
Before you can ask “Is the media biased?” don’t you have to not only define bias, but come up with a method to measure it?
From the examples above it looks like you have choosen a right/left measuring stick. Media could also be biased on gender, race, pro-business (large or small), etc, etc.
Concerning the right/left yardstick most people use: That’s just downright stupid. Any scientist/engineer knows that a one dimensional line can only measure one variable (i.e., 0..100, acid vs base, etc). The right vs left is much more complex than one variable. So a much more better ‘bias’ is say, How much government is appriopriate? On one side is the Anarchists, then the Minarchists, then the Libertarians, then the Republicans and Democrats (in either order dependant on various conditions), and then socialists and communists (and I’ve probably forgotten a few).
ed –
well, I didn’t choose the right/left measuring stick: those who engage in the debate did. Nearly all the books written on the subject use that framing device. In a class that studies the rhetoric of the debate, I have almost no choice.
I do agree with you, as I have a class lecture where we try to define “liberal” and “conservative” and find out that the 1 dimensional model that frames the debate is almost useless. I then introduce the 2D political compass (which has a authoritarian/libertarian axis in addition to the liberal conservative one), but even that has limitations.
What people say about media bias tells you a lot about their personal party identification — but not much else. 42% of people who identify with the Republican party think the media have a pro-Democratic bias, whereas about 6% of Republican identifiers think the media have a pro-Republican bias and about 33% think the media have no bias (some say they don’t know, so the numbers don’t add to 100%). 29% of Democratic identifiers think the media have a pro-Republican bias, 11% of Democratic identifiers think the media have a pro-Democratic bias, and about 40% think the media have no bias. Political independents are about evenly split on the two bias categories (16% think the media have a pro-Democratic bias, 15% think the media have a pro-Republican bias), while a solid plurality of them (43%) think the media have no bias.
The source for this is a January 2004 Political Communication Survey by the Pew Research Center.
I think they have a pro-sensationalist and pro-lack-of-effective-research bias myself. Not to mention that pro-let-me-get-my-story-out bias.
Clark, I couldn’t agree more (with all three points).
I think they have a money bias. That is, they allow their journalistic integrity to be swayed by whatever will contribute to the bottom line. So we see the closing of foreign bureaus, because they are insufficiently “adding value”, and we get a big increase in tabloid-style nonsense.
Many also have a power bias. They have become sycophants, uncritically accepting of PR and unwilling to make powerful people uncomfortable for fear of losing “access”.
Bill –
I hear that “bottom line” line a lot, but considering that most news media right now are losing money and audiences by the fistfuls, I don’t see how that holds up.
The only cable news channel with consistent growth in an audience in FOX news, while the network news channels and all major newspapers seem to be hemoraging viewers/readers.
If the bottom line is the reason for it all, their even more incompetent than I thought. I think Clark is more or less right – it has more to do with sensationalism and a “break the story first” mentality.
Though I think you might just have something with the idea of a “power bias.” For example, I think Cheney’s camp blew how they released news of the shooting, but most of the anger from the press seemed to be over the fact of Cheney’s camp releasing the news to a small town paper first, rather than to the “big power journalists” who are SUPPOSED to get all these stories first. It wasn’t as much a “we hate Cheney because he’s conservative” but a “how dare they not tell us first!” moment.
I think it’s precisely because so many are losing money that there is such concern with cutting costs. It used to be that there was an entertainment division and a news division and one subsidized the other. Now entertainment values have seeped into the news, and corporate bosses who are mainly worried about the shareholder don’t want to prop up unprofitable enterprises. Much like the record companies who no longer want to make money-losing “prestige” classical recordings, the media conglomerates appear to have ceded “serious” new programming to PBS and other niche outlets.
Even newspapers that still do serious reporting are feeling the economic pressure. For an interesting recent article on how those pressures are being felt at the LA Times, see here
I wasn’t disagreeing with any of Clark’s points. I think the best example of what he was talking about was the media’s shameful performance on the night of the mine rescue, when they didn’t even bother to confirm their stories, so eager were they to get an emotional feel-good story on the air.
For power bias, I’m thinking especially of people like Bob Woodward or Tim Russert, who like to feel like they’re part of a club, and sit on important information, or refrain from asking any hard questions except to those who have no power.
It’s also on display on a channel like CNBC which I have to watch all the time, and is one of the few channels making money. The obsequiousness of most of the hosts is disappointing. I don’t know which is worse: the giddy ones who don’t even appear to be aware of it, or the cynical ones.
The Seattle Times was a huge proponent of the first Gulf War. They were owned 49% at the time by Raytheon, the maker of the Patriot missile. It is interesting to me that reporting in America avoids certain issues. It seems to me that these issues are tied to corporate power and since corporate power holds all the cards as far as media ownership goes, media stories seldom go against it in general.
Another interesting point made by Chomsky is that if you look at any given newspaper, it is probably about 60% advertising. Newspaper readers are not customers, they are the product. The customers are the businesses that advertise in the newspapers and one must always please the customer.
Does anyone have a good explanation for why coverage of Pol Pot’s atrocities were given so much attention in the USA media while at the same time atrocities on a similar level were occurring in East Timor and yet the coverage of these events was extremely lopsided towards coverage of Pol Pot. In fact, how many of you have even heard of East Timor? The only answer I can come up with is that Pol Pot was a US enemy while Suharto was a US ally. The atrocities in East Timor led to big profits for big businesses such as oil companies etc in the USA. Putting 2+2 together, big business owns the media, big business profits from oppression far away, oppression doesn’t get reported so that big business can keep their money.
It’s a simplistic view, but it roughly explains the bias I see in the media.
Any serious study of media bias needs to consider several different variables:
1)The actual product that is produced on a consistent, daily or weekly basis (not just the occasional stories used to bolster one theory or another).
2)The motivations and opinions of newspaper reporters and editors. They are, after all, human and will see events and report them through their lenses of experience and opinion, creating different kinds of bias.
3)The actual number of times that business interests have interfered with the newspaper’s published product (not the conspiracy theories about this happening — the actual number of times). In most media, there is a strict separation between business and editorial and business simply does not interfere in the product that is produced.
There are other variables, obviously, but these are the most important for this discussion.
When considering these variables, objective observers, when being honest, will come to the following conclusions:
A)The product that is actually produced has a bias in favor of sensationalism and is often poorly researched and incomplete. If there is a political bias, it is usually toward the left because by far more reporters are on the left.
B)Business side interference is extremely rare and ends up being well-known and widely denounced when it happens.
Ivan, do you spend any time talking about how you might construct an empirical approach to the question? I mean, it’s a writing class, but it seems like even in college most people don’t get that we live in a society saturated with information that can be organized meaningfully — they depend on anecdotes to give support to their ideas. Drives me insane; we have the ability to compare the texts of literally millions of news stories, sorted by author, publication/venue, and date, and still people would rather moan about their perceptions, even in an actual debate. Argh.
(my favorite study so far is the one where they tried to determine bias by counting appeals to authority — citations of NGO comments in news stories sorted by the political position of those NGOs, basically — which made a bunch of my friends mad, because the “bias” counts didn’t wind up looking like what they wanted to see)
Sarah –
we do a bit, but since we only have a semester, we discuss more how to find bias in small things: a single article, a certain reporter – rather than “the whole media.”
Bill –
The American media has always been sensational a dependent on advertising. Your claims about this show that you apparently think the “objective” ideal is how the news media has been for most of history. In fact, it wasn’t until the early to mid 20th century that it ever caught on.
I’ll put it this way: West divides American meida into the following historical periods:
1. Partisan: The days of Washington and Jefferson. Newspapers were created in the service of political parties and reported rumor and sensationalism as fact. They were also (almost) exclusively read by the rich and elite.
2. Commercial: Eventually, Newspapers spread to the common man and spent all their time in search of the most sensational stories possible in order to boost circulations.
3. Objective: Reporters started coming from the ranks of people with college educations. For awhile, reporting was homogenous and every media outlet basically reported on the same things and in the same style as every other media outlet.
4. Interpretive: The rise of the pundits. More opinion began to be included, often with competing “experts” on news programs.
5. Fragmented: That’s today – with the net, coverage is hetergenous and the possible sources of the news are varied.
This framework shows a few things:
1. Those who complain about “big media consolidation” are ignorant of history: in the golden, objective age, there were only 3 or 4 major media companies and their coverage was homogenous. Nowadays we have 6 or 7 and they are so huge that it’s impossible for any controlling board at the top to make everything the same. We now have more varied types of coverage than ever before.
2. Though the current media is sensationalist and headline grabbing, it is not as bad as the 19th century Commercial media, where commercial interests nearly always trumped the truth.
3. Given all that, today’s news media still falls short of what it really could/should be.
Geoff B., you say that, “If there is a political bias, it is usually toward the left because by far more reporters are on the left.” As per my comment #6 above, this statement provides a great deal of evidence that you are somewhere on the political right. However, your comment is unlikely to be persuasive to centrists or leftists, who have different preconceptions.
One problem, which has been extensively demonstrated, is that people with an ideological or partisan identity see bias whenever the news reports material that is unfavorable to their “team.” Hence, Republicans consistently saw coverage of Watergate as biased, when, in retrospect, that coverage was basically on the level. Likewise, Democrats consistently saw coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal as biased — even though, once again, it was for the most part on the level. By the same token, current Republicans tend to see coverage of Abu Ghraib, wiretaps, etc., as biased. In fact, the brains of people with strong political identities actually process the new information contained in media stories differently than people with weaker commitments.
One implication of this biological fact is that you shouldn’t trust your own judgments of when a story is biased against Republicans/the right, any more than I should trust my own judgments about when a story is biased against Democrats/the left. Both of us are programmed to see bias in any unfavorable information about our own “teams.” But rather than using our perceptions of bias as evidence about the truth about the media, it would perhaps be productive for both of us to second-guess our initial responses and to try to more fully consider the contradictory information…
RT –
while your stance has much to commend it, it has one serious problem: It ducks the issue entirely, and leads to the default position that there is no problem with the media: the problem lies entirely with the audience.
I think the truth lies somewhere in between: The audience often sees bias when none (or only a little) is present, but those who report on the news are often blind to bias in their own ranks.
I think there are times when bias does creep in (or even takes over) but except in a few cases (such as Reuters, which I have decided is run by asylum inmates) it is not blatant, deliberate or pervasive. It more often comes from the incompetence: an inability to be self-aware and to ask the hard questions about their own coverage.
Instead, in the rush to grab headlines, be the first, or follow the meme, they often skip crucial steps like fact-checking and revising, thus allowing bias (or mistakes that create an appearance of bias) to creep in.
As one who has worked in journalism I can say there is bias on both sides. Usually there are journalists who you can tell have more of a liberal or conservative bias and then there are journalists who are more objective and tend to share both sides of an issue.
The problem with bias is the spin or light in which a scandal is portrayed. For example during the Democratic convention one of the networks invited the Swift Boat Veterants representative and with a liberal journalist to counter the SBVs assertions. Both the host and the journalist made numerous attempts to discredit the SBVs but to no avial (the SBV representative was well prepared). The journalist constantly talked about the SBVs lack of hard hitting journalistic integrity and yet every question they asked he answered. He didn’t dodge or “Stay On Message” like both Bush and Kerry did throughout the campaign.
I’m not saying anything about the veracity of the SBV claims, I think they can be argued both ways and since I can only rely on the claims by the men who were there (pro and against) I will probably never know. The point is that these “experienced” journalists didn’t want to apply their hard hitting journalism to Kerry’s Vietnam claims, only to the SBVs claims. Yet they had no problem going over Bush’s record with a fine tooth comb.
In addition to the content of a news article, it would be interesting to factor in the amount of coverage a story gets. For example, the Cheney hunting incident is probably newsworthy; I think the amount of coverage is what would reveal a bias there (and generally, I think that’s what most people think; conservatives don’t think it should be treated as such an important story; liberals seem to think it deserves all the attention).
A lot of times, I’ll be watching/reading the news, and, even though there is little or no bias in the story, I find myself thinking that the real bias was making such a big deal about the story.
But, as mentioned above, covering what seem to be non-newsworthy stories may not be because of some bias, but just because the media thinks it’s what we want to hear about or that the other networks are covering this, so we must too.
Ivan-
I do agree with you that there is a reality underlying questions of media bias. My point is simply that people with political allegiances are unequipped to judge it. Psychological work has, as I mentioned, been done on this. And people’s political identities account for the large majority of the variance in perceived media bias. So the reality is that there are two issues here: 1) real media bias, which almost certainly exists; and 2) people’s perceptions of media bias, which are largely not connected with the reality of bias at all.
RT, everyone has political allegiance if they are smart enough to form an opinion. Perceived media bias will be biased by political views, but there are often objective ways to see bias. For example, headlines often betray the political bias of a newspaper. When you see the same story with an aggressive or passive headline you can usually tell the slant of that particular paper. It has nothing to do with perception because anyone who is willing to try and look at these issuse objectively can see political bias.
The war in Iraq is a terrific example. You see some healines that portray Bush being wrong as a “lie.” You might say a liberal sees this as accurate, but I’ve spoken with liberals who acknowledge that being wrong about something you previously thought is a lie. Its not that Bush wasn’t wrong or that the story isn’t newsworthy, its how the facts are portrayed. President Bush’s subjective knowledge before going into Iraq is not factual, there is evidence both ways that he believed there were WMDs and that he had some evidence presented that he was wrong.
When the media portrays their opinion as fact because of bias their credibility suffers. Certainly perception matters, but the biggest complaint I have about the media is their propensity to conflate facts with opinion as if they were the same thing. It happens on both sides, but because there are many more reporters and editors (around 80% plus) that voted for Gore and Kerry, it seems like the media leans left on the whole. Sure the 20% of conservative reporters and editors slant the other way, but they’re fighting an uphill battle and often characterized in a negative light (listen how people on other networks characterize Fox).
Heli, actually, roughly half of Americans have no real political allegiance. This includes some quite educated people. However, from your statements, I would feel some confidence in stating that you have an allegiance to the political right.
Obviously, political identities aren’t a univariate explanation of perceptions of media bias. But research suggests that they account for more variance than anything else — including the actual tone of media coverage.
Most of the time I can step back and look at an issue objectively and as a reporter I always tried to present both sides of an issue.
The idea that people cannot be objective is false, people chose not to be objective and decide their issue/agenda is more important than the process or the marketplace of ideas. The objective journalist like Rush Limbaugh are the ones who suffer. Hehe. Sorry, it was too funny to pass up on that one.
Regarding media bias, I believe a study of the media’s political contributions tell it all:
CBS 100% to Democrats
NBC 100% to Democrats
ABC 100% to Democrats
Fox 70% to Democrats
Which network would be more “fair and balanced”?
I bought Oprah’s magazine and Vanity Fair at the airport. I enjoy both, but this time both seemed to be very biased, Oprah toward selfish feminism (I don’t think all feminists are feminists, but this struck me as selfish for some reason) and Vanity Fair’s every article slammed President and Laura Bush, it seemed.
The problem is people might take these things as facts rather than opinions.
I used to love CNN, until the election, the first one between Bush and Gore. I liked both men and could have voted either way, but chose Bush as a protest against Clinton’s immorality. I was so glad because I thought Gore behaved abominably. And I had no political affiliation, none, I’d even supported Clinton at first.
From then on, I started watching Fox. They bother me, as well, sometimes, but at least you sort of get both sides.
RT,
If people “are programmed to see bias in any unfavorable information about [their] own teams,” as you say, then the fact that around 90% of journalists admit playing for the Democratic “team” when they’re in the voting booth should make us question the information they report seeing. Like everyone else, they are programmed to overlook information unfavorable to their team.
Bot #24,
Out of the networks named, which donated to one of the major parties while not donating to the Nader campaign? Now we’re talking about a true bias.
Re 16, response to Bill –
“Your claims about this show that you apparently think the “objective” ideal is how the news media has been for most of history. In fact, it wasn’t until the early to mid 20th century that it ever caught on.”
Hence my favorite newspaper nam: the “Unterrified Democrat” of Linn, Missouri.
Update from The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s State of the Media 2006 href=”http://media.nationalreview.com/092244.asp”>Media Blog)
and
and some good news:
Here’s an article from the Washington Times on media bias:
Obviously, journalists believing in God are not welcome in the “Mainstream Media.”
Bot:
I would be interested in where you got your stats from #24.
As for #30: Well, I did address that in my post. The only clear, consistent bias I see in the media is one against right wing religions (especially Christianity).
There are other biases, of course, but they tend to be more scattershot, random and often caused more by ineptness than any real desire to throw elections one way or another (though that happens sometimes as well).
Ivan, I do think there is a distinct bias towards an American point of view. That is American news doesn’t seem too concerned at presenting or understanding views significantly out of the mainstream of American politics. Add in the bias against international news coverage and that is a significant bias that goes well beyond religion.
What?
There are other points of views beside the American ones?
I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you! 😉
Actually, that’s a good point Clark. The American media, for all of it’s claims of being “citizens of the world” they do tend to focus on international news as a byproduct of American news.
Ivan: Some very nice comments on the issue. I generally agree with your assessment of the Bozell, McGowan, and Alterman books. You might also check out Out of Order by Thomas Patterson and News that Matters by Iyengar and Kinder. Both books, but especially the latter, are good at examining what exactly we could mean when we talk about bias. And News that Matters actually attempts to test various hypotheses about how the media can actually change outcomes in an unfair, slanted, or irrational way. It’s not at all evident to me that even clear bias has the effect that people think it has on them. For the most part bias is used to explain, not one’s own viewpoint or views convergent with one’s own, but the divergent views of others. E.g. ‘people are turning against the war because the media aren’t telling the “true story” about it’ (which we know from listening to certain political officials). In fact the popularity of the media bias meme probably has as much to do with its actual truth as it does with the fact that it’s a perfect way for politicians or partisans to explain the political failure of their policies without admitting any substantive flaws in them.
“consistent bias that comes through is a fear of/strong distrust of right-wing religious movements”
This is an intruiging, unique conclusion. It does seem to be at least close to the truth. Of course, it’s worthwhile asking what constitutes bias toward, e.g. Pat Robertson. He has said some nutty things, and frankly he is out of the mainstream. Republicans don’t even want to touch him right now. Moreover I don’t think I’ve heard a single story about HBO’s Big Love that doesn’t mention that the LDS disavows polygamy. I think that (assuming for now that a least from the media’s perspective we could fall into the category of “right wing religious organizations”) we get treated very well by the media today. We still have beliefs that most Americans would find ridiculous or creepy, but they don’t get mentioned in the media very often. In Canada a year or so ago there was an Evangelical who ran for an important office, and got absolutely hammered by the media about whether he really believed that the Earth is only 6000 years old, etc. That would *never* happen here. Sure some in the media criticize Evangelicals, but mostly for the political effects of their beliefs, not the beliefs themselves. I think of Elise Soukup’s interview on this very blog, where he reported that his Newsweek editor remarked how hard his quesitions for president Hinckley were. We’re used to much more, and not from the MSM. And while some liberals like Maureen Dowd said some irresponsible things about the Catholic church during the height of the abuse scandal, I think that the media was pretty responsible considering the massive scope and seriousness of what actually happened.
My own sense has been that the media has a kind of urban-affluent bias that involves little more than the kind of work they do, their education, the location of their homes, etc. Sure they think differently than people in Hurricane, UT or Ashford, NC, but those aren’t centers of information and political power.
I think that today the lack of faith in media institutions, as well as the manipulation of media-bias hysteria by politicians is a worse problem than is actual bias (which is itself only one potential problem among several). It must be pointed out that there is more to the virtue of news than merely avoiding bias. Cable news outlets have heard the voice of consumers who have demanded a reprieve from liberal bias, but it’s hard to think of one good, complex investigative story that any of them have produced over the last several years. Most of it is very cheap commentary. Meanwhile papers like the NYT, Washington Post and the WSJ continue to produce good journalism on the whole. There are also foreign publications that ‘editorialize’ in almost every news article, where the quality is still better much of what we have here. The Economist is a great example of this.
Bot: “Regarding media bias, I believe a study of the media’s political contributions tell it all”
No, I don’t think that they do. The most it does is establish a possible motive for bias. But the motive is not the crime. This is a big problem in some forms of media criticism. People assume an intent to propagandize and then interpret the news to fit the supposed intent, as if it were a coded leftist text (even though the code is impossible for everyone but conservatives to decipher!). E.g. a Washington Post story about Utahns support for Bush must be an attempt at charicature (no matter what it actually says), because as we all know the Post is populated by a bunch of liberal elitists who hate Mormons and the conservative Mountain West.
Jeremiah:
I would love to include several dozen more books in my class (I read about 25 trying to determine a reading list), but there’s only a semester to teach in – and it’s a writing class, so I have to spend a good deal of time teaching writing (for which I use Richard Lanham’s Revising Prose).
To ameliorate this problem, I have a unit where each student reads a different book related to the subject and then write a rhetorical analysis of a chapter or section in the book. After that, they have to do a presentation/book report on the entire book for the class. In that way the class gets a bit more exposure to the wide ranging debate.
As for your comment:
My own sense has been that the media has a kind of urban-affluent bias that involves little more than the kind of work they do, their education, the location of their homes, etc. Sure they think differently than people in Hurricane, UT or Ashford, NC, but those aren’t centers of information and political power.
That’s how Alterman excuses the bias towards religion in his book: It’s ignorance on the part of reporters and editors who are too smart and too affluent to care for that stuff. Religion is for the lower classes, apparently.
I don’t think the bias agianst religion is hostile, but it is the area of news I find the most errors in. It mostly comes in the form of an unconcious (or concious) assumption that, in the words of Michael Weisskopf of the Washington Post, conservative religous people are “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”
Another thought:
As I mentioned above, after an exhaustive Lexis Nexis search a few weeks ago, I discoverd that Mitt Romney’s membership in the church is somewhat of a media obsession: it is often the focus of reports, even showing up in headlines.
Harry Reid’s membership sometimes gets mentioned in an offhand way in an article about something else (like an article on the anniversary of Joseph Smith’s birth).
Harry Reid is arguably the most powerful (in a politcal, secular way) Mormon in the USA right now and not one mainstream media outlet (that I could find) has bothered to care about this.
Mitt Romeny is the Gov. of Mass. – but he has yet to declare candidacy for President. He’s way down on the rung in terms of political power. Why the obsession?
I don’t really know. I could concoct a half dozen stories to explain why, but I would have no idea if any were right. I could claim since Reid has liberal bona fides, the media doesn’t care, but their distrust of conservative religous types means they have to make an issue of Romney’s religon.
Or it could be an attempt to help Mitt, since Reid isn’t likely to run for President, so Mitt’s friends in the Media are trying to get that issue out of the way before the actual run, so that it is less of an issue when the actual race occurs.
Or it could be the following of a meme: someone decided it was an issue, and the rest of the media followed suit, not because it was important, but because it was the thing to do. No one seems to have thought about it in much detail: most reporting on the issue is facile and superficial.
I have no idea which is right, though I lean towards the third. But there are quite a few more possibilites I could come up with. Which is the reason? I have no idea how to find out, really. I can’t read minds.
Ivan, I think in general because Republicans are in power that the media simply goes after them more. However I also do think there is a bit of a media bias here where Republicans are judged with a double standard. i.e. a Democrat makes a racist remark and they are treated quite differently than if a Republican does. Being the party in power only goes so far to explain this.
I think a Mormon Republican is viewed as more of a threat than a Democratic Republican. Why is a good question. Perhaps because of the media bias towards superficiality. A Democratic Republican doesn’t fit the preconception and thus doesn’t make a good story whereas a Republican Mormon lets them bring up all the stereotypes. Stereotypes are a big source of bias in the media. Look at Katrina and all the frankly horrible racial stereotypes the media played up for months.
I look at Katrina and see the media still congratulating themselves and handing out awards for their coverage of it.
Even though they got nearly every single detail wrong. We now know more whites than blacks (per capita wise) died. Rich, poor and middle class died in equal numbers. The reported death rates were completely wrong. The reports of rape, cannibalism, etc. were wrong, false or exagerrated to an idiotic degree. In fact, as far as I can determine, other than the fact of a Hurricane and some levee breaching, 95% of what was reported in the initial weeks was dead wrong.
That’s one reason I see incompetence in the media. They screwed up big time, yet keep congratulating themselves on what a good job they did.
“That’s how Alterman excuses the bias towards religion in his book: It’s ignorance on the part of reporters and editors who are too smart and too affluent to care for that stuff. Religion is for the lower classes, apparently.”
I’m not saying the same thing as you attribute to Alterman; I’m frankly surprised that you think I am. “religion is for the lower classes apparently”? That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying that the biases of the media map onto the experiences of the kinds of people who run it. That’s not anti-religious hostility, and it’s not an ‘excuse’, but a sound empirical generalization. It is a fact that the demographic that constitutes most of the media is not as religious as the country as a whole.
About the Romney example. Sure Romney is not nearly as powerful, but he does have serious clout and is a legitimate contender (he came in second at last week’s straw poll). Potential presiental candidates are “personalities” whose family and personal life gets talked about, whereas congressional leaders are treated like boring policymakers. This is true of both parties. Besides, it’s not at all clear that media emphasis on the religion of Republicans is evidence of any bias against conservative religious people, especially if it’s not critical of any aspect of it. It could just as easily be a reflection of the popular canard that Republicans are really religious whereas Democrats must be faking it. What if the media made a big deal about Harry Reid’s religion? I’m sure it would be just as easy for the Right to slam them for aiding and abetting the Democrats’ efforts to rehabilitate their image regarding religion. The point is that time after time, many of the charges of bias simply don’t work unless people bring a number of assumptions about intent to the interpretation.
Jerimiah –
well, I wasn’t trying to somehow blur the distinction between you and Alterman, so sorry if it seemed like it.
However, the fact of most news reporters not being religous and not knowing anyone who is religous is going to slant the coverage in some way or the other, no matter what. If this were a discussion about race, and it was shown nearly all reporters were white males (as they were up until the last few decades), there would be cries of discrimination and slanted coverage that ignores the voices of those not represented by the vast majority of reporters.
You showed a few examples where the media is fair to the church. Yet I could easily come up with half a dozen counter examples (the recent front page L.A. Times article being one example) where a clear bias against Mormons or conservative Evangelicals entered the coverage.
As I said, it’s telling even Alterman admits that news coverage of religion is slanted. But I’m not sure where we can take the discussion from here.
However, overall I do agree with your statement The point is that time after time, many of the charges of bias simply don’t work unless people bring a number of assumptions about intent to the interpretation. That’s why I said in the case of Reid/Romney that since I can’t read minds, I don’t know what the reason is.
I do know that in every news story I’ve had first hand knowledge of (Nothing BIG, though), the news media often got basic facts wrong and/or misquoted key figures. Most of the books on bias mostly show that the news media left out/distorted/made up/ignored some facts or other and then concoct some reason this shows a liberal or conservative bias.
That’s why, overall, Bozell’s book does the job a bit better than Alterman’s, since Bozell spends a lot of space to rather damning quotes by media bigshots, whereas Alterman relies more on unproven assumptions (though Bozell does that as well).
McGowan does the best job overall, but one gets the idea he isn’t trying to grind any political axes: he just wants better reporting.
Others, like Bernard Goldberg, Ann Coulter or Al Franken seem more interested in creating catchy soundbites built around a cult of personality rather than providing substance. etc. etc. I could go on.
Ivan, I understand better what you are saying now. It is true that me giving a bunch of anecdotes is largely unproductive if it doesn’t give any glimpse of the whole. My sense is that if Romney gets attacked because of his religion, it won’t be by the mainstream media, but perhaps I’ll be surprised there (one thing I’m even more confident of is that he is running and that he does have a chance at the nomination). I love my hometown newspaper (the Wash Post), but I remember when Pres. Benson died, shortly after Nixon did. Just as the paper had finished letting bygones be bygones and singing the praises of Nixon, they took the opportunity of the prophet’s death to bash the church–in the middle of the prophet’s obituary.
“Others, like Bernard Goldberg, Ann Coulter or Al Franken seem more interested in creating catchy soundbites built around a cult of personality rather than providing substance. etc. etc. I could go on.”
Couldn’t agree more. And now Franken is looking for a *senate* bid…
Ivan,
I don’t know if you have seen what Drudge is reporting today. Apparently John Green, a senior producer for ABC’s Good Morning America, sent some email to others at ABC where he disclosed that the president “makes him sick” and he “is going to puke”. When the email came to light, he described himself as being “mortified”.
I think this goes right to the heart of your discussion here. Of course there is bias, the only question is whether it will be acknowledged. After all, the opinion Mr. Green expressed is a perfectly legitimate opinion, held by lots of reasonable people. He has nothing to be ashamed of as far as that goes. The only reason he is mortified is because it strips away his network’s pretense to impartiality.
Mark –
Personal opinions don’t mean much, I think. More troubling was the ABC memo directing reporters to be harder on Bush than Kerry.
Although John Green’s use of official company e-mail to make that opinion known shows a lack of judgement, I don’t think the mere fact news reporters have opinions means too much.
Ivan, this is an old thread, and I can’t remember if it’s been mentioned above, but wouldn’t it be more honest for American media to simply proclaim their biases from the beginning? I much prefer reading the Washington Times to any American newspaper. One reason is I agree with the slant they take — they are a conservative newspaper and make no bones about it. The reason the Wash Times even exists is that the Wash Post is a decidedly liberal newspaper (although not as liberal as the NY Times), and there is a market for the alernative.
In Europe, newspapers usually take a certain line, and that seems much more honest. If you read the Daily Telegraph, you know you are reading a Conservative newspaper. I worked for American newspapers for many years, and I know the reasoning behind creating “subjectivity,” but it just seems highly dishonest to me. I had a lot of biases when I was a newspaper reporter, and I know all reporters do have biases. So, why don’t we do away with the pretense and just acknowledge the biases? The NYT is the official “liberal” newspaper of New York. The WSJ editorial page is the conservative alternative. The NY Post is mostly conservative. The Daily News is in between. There, we have settled the matter. We know the biases, we know what to expect when we read them. No more reason for controversy.