NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm making the basic claim in a paper for my political psychology class that a belief in media bias is little more than a trick of the brain to protect our own values from information that contradicts our current beliefs. Instead of having to face up to potential flaws in our beliefs that internalizing the information would require, we write it off as 'biased'. Once we do that, we no longer feel that we have to pay attention to the information, and it is irrelevant to our current beliefs.

Any criticisms? I want to actually write a good paper, and if you can see any flaws in my claim that I'm blind to, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, let's see a good old fashioned left v. right brawl about media bias!

edit: The title is to be eyecatching!

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/02/020402_Liberal_Bias_A_Myth.html
I admit it: the liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.
I've gotten balanced coverage and broad coverage -- all we could have asked . . . For heaven sakes, we kid about the liberal media, but every Republican on earth does that.

Mmm... the media has often been criticized for being too liberal. But it really depends... some stations like Fox are conservative.

But for media to be truly unbiased they have to present the facts straight up as they are. And thats what I think is more important, just for everyone to see the world head on and get exposure.

You are very right, that many people dismiss facts, like global warming, so as to fuel their sanctimoniousness. But the moment you put your pen on paper, you are writing biased material because you, a flawed homo sapien, wrote it. Bias is real; it just doesn't make facts obsolete as many people tell themselves.

I expect things to be biased, because I expect the writers of articles to have opinions. Articles without bias tend to be dry, witless. It's okay to listen to a biased media -- just make sure you also openly listen to the other side.

Mmm... the media has often been criticized for being too liberal. But it really depends... some stations like Fox are conservative.
There aren't any mainstream conservative news media stations. While Fox may be a Republican propaganda machine, the Republican Party is essentially the opposite of the actual definition of conservative.

Is it bad that I'm tasting pennies?

*falls over"

Normnormnormnorm

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/02/020402_Liberal_Bias_A_Myth.html
While I certainly agree with the quotes, I disagree with the charge that the media portrays a right-wing or extreme corporatist picture. In fact, the media does indeed seem to quite independent of corporate masters, and instead beholden to taking a center ground relative to current public opinion (or more appropriately, to their respective audiences.)

Instead, it would seem that people will constantly view the media as hostile to their views as per the fact that they do indeed report all of the news that is relevant on a national scale. If their is a bias in the way it is reported, that bias differs from reporter to reporter, and cannot add up to something equating a conspiracy.

The media lives to sell. If they can get more money by covering trash, etc... Then they will do it. *shrugs* That may come out to mean, "liberal bias," to some. (That is not to say that there is no such thing as bias...everyone has it, including reporters.) So, bottom line (IMHO), media sells.

Once any media strays from reporting who what when and how of the things people do and tiptoes into speculating why people do things bias rears it's ugly head. It isnt impossible for bias to be injected into a purely who-what-when-where-and-how story, but it is more difficult. Unfortunately biased news is more interesting and encourages stronger emotions in folks.

While I certainly agree with the quotes, I disagree with the charge that the media portrays a right-wing or extreme corporatist picture.
And you'd probably be right. The real issue is not bias, but scope and presentation. "Infotainment" and total ethnocentrism are what makes US media unreliable, not bias.

The only thing worth watching as far as US news is concerned is the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, which I find very interesting and informative.

Perhaps I should clarify myself. I am referring to a sort of systematic bias in the media, as opposed to the natural individual bias any reporter would bring to a story, which they do try to eliminate.

And you'd probably be right. The real issue is not bias, but scope and presentation. "Infotainment" and total ethnocentrism are what makes US media unreliable, not bias.

The only thing worth watching as far as US news is concerned is the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, which I find very interesting and informative.
Which I would charge are more a facet of the twenty-four hour news cycle, and the need to fill the dull void times with stories that will keep dragging the viewers in. Media in which the twenty-four hour effect has been minimized, such as newspapers, tend to be far more reliable and effective at communicating the information. Even at that, most of the twenty-four hour networks do tend to be able to pull off multiple meaningful stories in the day.

Local news in the US, on the other hand, sucks really, really hard.

If you're trying to write a good paper, then there is one important factor you should address... namely, bias toward whom.

In other words, you are probably correct that one will find little persistent bias across mass media with respect to, say, Democrats or Republicans... or even with respect to "liberals" or "conservatives" within the casual meaning of these terms.

However, if you were to examine media depictions of social justice movements or other forms of broad social change, you would be likely to find a great deal of "conservative" bias against such groups and in favor of the status quo.

For instance, in a paper of my own I just did a content analysis of all major news magazine (Time, Newsweek, U.S. News) articles on the women's movement in 1995. (The reason for that year is not relevant to the present discussion.) While coverage of female politicians (e.g. Hillary Clinton) and women in political roles was overwhelmingly positive, I found a significant bias against women in economic roles and against "feminists" described in general terms.

Perhaps more to the point, I did a similar analysis last year of coverage from about 1968 through 1980... and I found quite obvious bias in the early years, panning out somewhat (but never disappearing) as women's rights became better accepted.

Finally, if you want to do content analysis for your paper (which you should... otherwise you are just theorizing without any empirical evidence), the news magazines are a good place to start. You can get recent issues online, and political scientists and communications scholars generally take them as representative of overall trends in coverage.

This is all speaking as a political science instructor who is used to grading this sort of paper... although, of course, I would never claim to know what your instructor is looking for!!

Good luck!

While I certainly agree with the quotes, I disagree with the charge that the media portrays a right-wing or extreme corporatist picture. In fact, the media does indeed seem to quite independent of corporate masters, and instead beholden to taking a center ground relative to current public opinion (or more appropriately, to their respective audiences.)
I wouldn't go that far that they're quite independent of their corporate masters. Just recently it came out that the Bush admin as well as several corporations planted fake News stories on American TV, with the stations passing them off as normal news.
Of course you could argue this is due to the laziness of reporters and desperation to push stories out asap without the interest and/or funds/time to check their accuracy before hand.
But there is a pretty grey area there. I don't know about US news, but elsewhere some segments are 'sponsored' by a major corporation and one does have to wonder how much influence that would have in deciding what runs.
Obviously not overt pressure, but say you're the chief of a small news station that has it's health report segment sponsored by Pfizer, and you have a story showing Pfizer in an incredibly bad light. Would you lead with the story, knowing that this might annoy them so much that they drop their support? Would you maybe tone it down a little so they don't appear as bad?


And that's where the bias comes in. It's not overt - there's no list pinned up in the newsroom telling the reporters what not to report (well, maybe in Fox, but nowhere else). But there's always the economic pressure to please the advertisers and sponsors.
Also, ppl hire and promote who they like. So it creates an culture in that media of specific political leanings. Do you think Murdoch would hire anyone from the Independent (or vice versa)? Do you think a extremely left-wing reporter who somehow ends up in Fox would ever get promoted?

The mainstream serious US media has a strong centrist bias, with perhaps a slight inclination towards right-libertarianism.

But for media to be truly unbiased they have to present the facts straight up as they are.Ah, but there is a difference between being unbiased and being "objective."

A journalist writes a biased story when they intentionally spin information to benefit a particular position, or when they omit obviously relevant information so as to benefit a favored position. They try to eliminate such bias by checking facts for accuracy, including "response" quotations whenever they quote a partisan source, and generally attempting to "balance" their reporting.

Most media scholars, however, would argue that even the purely unbiased observer is not necessarily objective. To be objective would be to report, as you say, "the facts straight up as they are." Yet there are potentially infinite facts to choose from, and there is seemingly no way to ground one method of selection as "objective." Journalists craft stories out of facts, and this process may tend to emphasize some facts while de-emphasizing or excluding others.

This is not the same as "bias." Often, the story is crafted a certain way to conform to professional standards, or to make a better narrative, not to promote a certain policy position. These practices must be taken into account, however, in understanding how the media shape our world... "Objectivity," for practical purposes, is a myth.

If you're trying to write a good paper, then there is one important factor you should address... namely, bias toward whom.

In other words, you are probably correct that one will find little persistent bias across mass media with respect to, say, Democrats or Republicans... or even with respect to "liberals" or "conservatives" within the casual meaning of these terms.

However, if you were to examine media depictions of social justice movements or other forms of broad social change, you would be likely to find a great deal of "conservative" bias against such groups and in favor of the status quo.

For instance, in a paper of my own I just did a content analysis of all major news magazine (Time, Newsweek, U.S. News) articles on the women's movement in 1995. (The reason for that year is not relevant to the present discussion.) While coverage of female politicians (e.g. Hillary Clinton) and women in political roles was overwhelmingly positive, I found a significant bias against women in economic roles and against "feminists" described in general terms.

Perhaps more to the point, I did a similar analysis last year of coverage from about 1968 through 1980... and I found quite obvious bias in the early years, panning out somewhat (but never disappearing) as women's rights became better accepted.

Finally, if you want to do content analysis for your paper (which you should... otherwise you are just theorizing without any empirical evidence), the news magazines are a good place to start. You can get recent issues online, and political scientists and communications scholars generally take them as representative of overall trends in coverage.

This is all speaking as a political science instructor who is used to grading this sort of paper... although, of course, I would never claim to know what your instructor is looking for!!

Good luck!

Thanks.

I've picked up several newspapers from my dorm, a copy of Time magazine and a couple of overlapping stories from the internet. Hopefully I'll be able to derive something sane from what I'm working on.

Which I would charge are more a facet of the twenty-four hour news cycle, and the need to fill the dull void times with stories that will keep dragging the viewers in.Actually, most research has found that the "fluff" quality of TV news has more to do with the fact that in-depth analysis simply does not fit into the bounds of the twenty-four hour news cycle. The situation is worse for network news, which must fit everything into about an hour. Newspapers offer a deeper analysis because they always have the ability to add more pages to accomodate longer stories. Media in which the twenty-four hour effect has been minimized, such as newspapers, tend to be far more reliable and effective at communicating the information.They may be more reliable, but they are actually far less effective. Check out Doris Graber's Processing Politics : Learning from Television in the Internet Age (2001). It's a bit of a misnomer in that it doesn't really deal much with the Internet, but it's a great study of the cognitive process of learning from a multimedia (audio, visual, print) source such as television as opposed to traditional print sources. People learn more from TV, and remember what they learn much better.

Local news in the US, on the other hand, sucks really, really hard.
No argument there!

It's very, very simple. If news media publishes a story critical of your fav position or person, they are obviously biased. If they publish a story that supports your poisition or person, they are obviously balanced and non-biased. ;)

I'm making the basic claim in a paper for my political psychology class that a belief in media bias is little more than a trick of the brain to protect our own values from information that contradicts our current beliefs. Instead of having to face up to potential flaws in our beliefs that internalizing the information would require, we write it off as 'biased'. Once we do that, we no longer feel that we have to pay attention to the information, and it is irrelevant to our current beliefs.

Any criticisms? I want to actually write a good paper, and if you can see any flaws in my claim that I'm blind to, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, let's see a good old fashioned left v. right brawl about media bias!

edit: The title is to be eyecatching!


I think that it would be a tough paper to write. It seems to me that your whole argument hinges on whether or not there is a media bias. But how could that be proven either way? It would be very difficult to do satisfactory, although it could possible be attempted. I think it would be difficult for a lot of reasons. First, it's hard to take the media as a whole and make generalizations about it. Also, I think it'd be hard to isolate one incidence of "bias". Biased compared to what? Biased against whom? A very left or very right individual might view news from a centrist source as "biased". Even "right" left" and "centrist" are somewhat subjective and changing terms. And what exactly is bias? Does bias occur any time that the news does anything more than just present the facts?


Your thesis that people "Instead of having to face up to potential flaws in our beliefs that internalizing the information would require, we write it off as 'biased'" is not proof that there is no media bias, it is one possible reason why IF there is no actual media bias that people claim there is. It's like me saying "the man didn't go for a jog because he didn't want to get tired" without me actually knowing if the man went for a jog or investigating any other possible reasons for him not wanting to jog. If I knew that the man didn't go for a job and could prove it, then I could start talking about his reasons for not jogging.

I think to write the paper, you'd want to create an argument as to why you feel the media bias doesn't exist. Only then explain why you think that people would make up a media bias. Also, I'd brainstorm other possible reasons why people would invent a media bias and then, if you want, explain why you believe your reason is more believable than the others. Or maybe you could acknowledge that there are many reasons why people would make up a media bias, but you are going to concentrate mainly on one.

I'm making the basic claim in a paper for my political psychology class that a belief in media bias is little more than a trick of the brain to protect our own values from information that contradicts our current beliefs. Instead of having to face up to potential flaws in our beliefs that internalizing the information would require, we write it off as 'biased'. Once we do that, we no longer feel that we have to pay attention to the information, and it is irrelevant to our current beliefs.

Any criticisms? I want to actually write a good paper, and if you can see any flaws in my claim that I'm blind to, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, let's see a good old fashioned left v. right brawl about media bias!

edit: The title is to be eyecatching!
Great idea. You're smart. I like you.