NationStates Jolt Archive

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12510893
A biased market

Skewed news reporting is taken as a sign of a dysfunctional media. In fact, it may be a sign of healthy competition

BARACK OBAMA recently told a writer for the New York Times Magazine that he was convinced he might be two or three percentage points better off in the polls for the American presidential election if Fox News, a right-leaning television station, did not exist. Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice-president, has made hay railing against the bias of the “liberal media”. Allegations of partial news reporting are common in American politics. But few stop to ask what leads to differences in the way the news is reported.

Bias can be thought of as a supply-side phenomenon that arises from ideology. Owners’ or employees’ political views will determine how a newspaper or channel slants its coverage of a piece of news. But this does not square with the assumption that readers and viewers value accuracy. If so, then competition should hurt media outlets that systematically distort the news (in any direction). The brouhaha about bias in America, as free a media market as any, suggests something else is going on.

The key to understanding why bias flourishes in a competitive market may lie in thinking more clearly about what readers actually want. Sendhil Mullainathan and Andrei Shleifer, two Harvard economists, argued in an influential paper* that it may be naive to think that people care about accuracy alone. Instead, they modelled the consequences of assuming that newspaper readers also like to have their beliefs confirmed by what they read. As long as readers have different beliefs, the Mullainathan-Shleifer model suggests that competition, far from driving biased reporting out of the market, would encourage newspapers to cater to the biases of different segments of the reading public. A more recent paper** (http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/matthew.gentzkow/biasmeas081507.pdf) by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro, two economists at the University of Chicago’s business school, set out to test this proposition.

To do so, they first needed a way to measure the political slant of American news coverage. Their solution was rather imaginative. The researchers ran computer programs that analysed debates in Congress and identified phrases that were disproportionately used by Republicans or Democrats. The list of frequent Democratic phrases, for example, included “estate tax”. While talking about the same issue, Republicans tended to use the phrase “death tax”. (This is not just coincidence. Mr Gentzkow and Mr Shapiro quote an anonymous Republican staffer as saying that the party machine trained members to say “death tax”, because “‘estate tax’ sounds like it hits only the wealthy but ‘death tax’ sounds like it hits everyone”.) Having identified partisan phrases, the academics then analysed the news coverage of more than 400 American newspapers to see how often they cropped up in reporting. This gave them a precise measure of “slant”, showing the extent to which the news coverage in these papers tended to use politically charged phrases.

Mr Gentzkow and Mr Shapiro then needed to assess the political beliefs of different newspapers’ readerships, which they did using data on the share of votes in each newspaper’s market that went to President Bush in the 2004 presidential elections, and information on how likely people in different parts of that market were to contribute to entities allied to either Democrats or Republicans. The researchers were now able to look at the relationships between circulation, slant, and people’s political views.

First, they measured whether a newspaper’s circulation responded to the match between its slant and its readers’ views. Not surprisingly, they found that more “Republican” newspapers had relatively higher circulations in more “Republican” zip codes. But their calculations of the degree to which circulation responded to political beliefs also allowed them to do something more interesting: to calculate what degree of slant would be most profitable for each newspaper in their sample to adopt, given the political make-up of the market it covered. They compared this profit-maximising slant to their measure of the actual slant of each newspaper’s coverage.

They found a striking congruence between the two. Newspapers tended, on average, to locate themselves neither to the right nor to the left of the level of slant that Mr Gentzkow and Mr Shapiro reckon would maximise their profits. And for good commercial reasons: their model showed that even a minor deviation from this “ideal” level of slant would hurt profits through a sizeable loss of circulation.

Have I got skews for you

Showing that newspapers have a political slant that is economically rational does not necessarily answer the question of whether ownership or demand determines bias. Here, the academics are helped by the fact that large media companies may own several newspapers, often in markets that are politically very different. This allowed them to test whether the slants of newspapers with the same owner were more strongly correlated than those of two newspapers picked at random. They found that this was not so: owners exerted a negligible influence on slant. Readers’ political views explained about a fifth of measured slant, while ownership explained virtually none.

None of this is particularly helpful to seekers of the unvarnished truth. These conscientious sorts still have to find the time to read lots of newspapers to get an unbiased picture of the world. But by serving demand from a variety of political niches, competition does allow for different points of view to be represented. After all, just as Mrs Palin does not spend her time condemning Fox News, Mr Obama is unlikely to have too many complaints about the New York Times.

So there we go. For the sample involved, made up of daily newspapers in the US, not only does ownership not determine political alignment, but political views of the likely readers do.

Taking a bit of a jump and generalising: media is not biased because of some conspiracy to usurp democracy, but because that's what people want to be exposed to. Which means that the obvious answer to not liking a biased source is: don't look at it.

Surprised? Amazed? Vindicated? Bored?

And in other news, the Pope is Catholic, water is wet, the sky is blue, and bears do indeed relieve themselves in woodland areas.

Surprised? Amazed? Vindicated? Bored?The bold one. I've always maintained that most news outlets service a target audience and plenty don't go for the crowd that desires accurate reporting.

*snip* and bears do indeed relieve themselves in woodland areas.

News at 11!

I totally unsurprised... and still bored :(. Someone entertain me!

Taking a bit of a jump and generalising: media is not biased because of some conspiracy to usurp democracy, but because that's what people want to be exposed to. Which means that the obvious answer to not liking a biased source is: don't look at it.

Surprised? Amazed? Vindicated? Bored?

Not surprised I already knew that, but of course the people do take what the news says as true despite it being presented bias.

Now I know that the media does do it to sell papers, but it would be better if the media didn't go around saying that they were presenting the truth and the facts when they don't.

That is what annoys me, well that and the fact that people believe the shit the media spouts.

That is what annoys me, well that and the fact that people believe the shit the media spouts.
Big question to be asked in reverse then: is the utterly incoherent* bile that boulevard programs like "Today, Tonight" show an accurate reflection of the beliefs of a large part of the TV-watching population?

*"Dole Bludgers" one day, "Poor person doing it tough because he doesn't get government help" the next, etc

Old News.

On April 13th 1844 The New York Sun published a sensational story about the European Monck Mason who sailed with his balloon across the Atlantic Ocean. The balloon 'Victoria' started its trip in England to fly to Paris but on its road an accident occurred with one of the propellers. It lost its course and crossed the Ocean to land on Sullivan’s Island nearby Charleston in North Carolina.

In reality the first balloon that crossed the Atlantic was 30 years later.

The journalist who committed this journalistic fraud was no one else as Edgar Allan Poe, who was not famous at that time, but broken and his wife was serious sick. He lived in great poverty in a ruined apartment in Greenwich Street and he was highly in the need for money.

The New York Sun liked to pay in exchange for strong stories. In those times The New York Sun was fighting with The Herald for having the strongest and weirdest stories. The winner sold the most papers of the day.

Old News.

*snip*

The journalist who committed this journalistic fraud was no one else as Edgar Allan Poe, who was not famous at that time, but broken and his wife was serious sick. He lived in great poverty in a ruined apartment in Greenwich Street and he was highly in the need for money.

*snip*


Thats how he spent his whole life too... probably had something to do with his laudinum addiction?

Taking a bit of a jump and generalising: media is not biased because of some conspiracy to usurp democracy, but because that's what people want to be exposed to. Which means that the obvious answer to not liking a biased source is: don't look at it.
Should people be allowed to decide what they are and aren't exposed to? It's not like you can just close your eyes and the rest of the world will make itself better.

Biased media is important because it gives a good account of one particular category of perspective. And every media is biased, because they're aimed at a user-base. But the answer is not to only look at the ones you like to see. In fact, if anything, exactly the reverse is true; people should get their media from sources they don't agree with, because only then can you get a complete picture of the way the world actually is.

The problem is not that there is biased media, but that particular biases are given too much power by people. The reason for that is that people think that you are justified in ignoring that which you disagree with, and consequently, opinion divides into media cliques empowered by their legion of supporters.

So I totally disagree that people should not look at it if they disagree with it. That's what gets you into these kinds of messes in the first place. People should read Fox; precisely because it represents a different perspective that many of us would rather was not there but that, inalterably, is.

Big question to be asked in reverse then: is the utterly incoherent* bile that boulevard programs like "Today, Tonight" show an accurate reflection of the beliefs of a large part of the TV-watching population?

*"Dole Bludgers" one day, "Poor person doing it tough because he doesn't get government help" the next, etc

No I don't think it does.

I would say that these programs have some influence in a (unfortuantly) large proportion of the populations beliefs and attitudes. The way the media present a story has an influence in the way people feel.

The media know they can have this sway over what the people think and feel and that is part of the reason why they do it.

I despise such shows as Today Tonight and ACA, I just can't stand them I used to sometimes have them on to laugh at the stupidity and ridiculous crap they broadcast but I started to become sick in the stomach and must ensure that I do not have it on at all.

If the hypothesis of Market Forces is true, then left-biased Media should be financially stronger than right-biased, since they can command more and greater advertising revenue, and will attract better and more competent financial management (as well as superior ratings).

So....

How's the New York Times, Sixty Minutes, Washington Post, MSNBC, and Air America doing compared to their "Conservative" competitors?

If the hypothesis of Market Forces is true, then left-biased Media should be financially stronger than right-biased, since they can command more and greater advertising revenue, and will attract better and more competent financial management (as well as superior ratings).

So....

How's the New York Times, Sixty Minutes, Washington Post, MSNBC, and Air America doing compared to their "Conservative" competitors?

Unless the "conservative" demographic panders more to people than the others.

Also as Kamsaki-Myu said they should be watching services like FOX to see what they are saying, as they are doing this this means greater ratings and circulation thus greater advertising revenue. It also fits into a study I read last year which was talking about how a large section of FOX news viewers side themselves with the left side on the political spectrum.

To my horror, I just discovered The View has a huge bias. So im switching to Oprah for all of my information.

To my horror, I just discovered The View has a huge bias. So im switching to Oprah for all of my information.

I don't think you're allowed to use 'Oprah' and 'information' in the same sentence.

:eek: Shit!

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12510893

Surprised? Amazed? Vindicated? Bored?

Unsurprised. If there's money in it, media corporations will dish up whatever shit the people want. However, it's also a circle of distortion. People want to be agreed with, but you also have groupthink, which is often reinforced by what people read, and their collective knee jerk reactions to it. This leads to the
utterly incoherent* bile
you describe so accurately. Most people have very few thought out, considered and lasting opinions. They just lurch between hysterical extremes based on whatever/whoever they feel a connection to.

Instead, they modelled the consequences of assuming that newspaper readers also like to have their beliefs confirmed by what they read.
That's why you can chose between The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. From where does it follow that catering to the tragically deluded with a channel like Fox News (that thankfully doesn't even have an equivalent in this country) is okay because they like being catered to? The internet is full of idiotic made-up bullshit of all sorts, just because the ones that came up with it would looove to have their own news channel sharing their distorted world view means we should be okay with it when that news channel bills itself as "fair and unbalanced" and becomes one of the most watched in the most powerful country in the world?


Edit: Forgot half of what I wanted to say, awesome:

The article seems to make the assumption that biased media doesn't have an influence on voter behaviour because it only tells people what they want to hear, meaning they would have voted the way they do anyway. Do you really think that's true? I, for one, think there's a tremendous difference between people who, like here, may read Bild (German tabloid with huge sales) and spout off at the Stammtisch (er, "pub politics", maybe?) but when they turn on the TV, they do in fact get fair and unbalanced news, even on the crappy channels, and similar people who turn on the TV to find a glossy "serious" news channel pretending to be fair and unbalanced that actually goes and "officially confirms" all the crap they hear and blab all day.

From where does it follow that catering to the tragically deluded with a channel like Fox News (that thankfully doesn't even have an equivalent in this country) is okay because they like being catered to?
Well, we do have BILD (unabhängig, überparteilich)...

And in other news, the Pope is Catholic, water is wet, the sky is blue, and bears do indeed relieve themselves in woodland areas.

Indeed.

It should come as no surprise whatsoever that the San Francisco Chronicle[I] is probably politically quite to the left of Redding's [I]Record Searchlight, or "The Wretched Flashlight" as my grandfather used to call it.

They do want to sell papers, after all. The Chronicle's readership is overwhelmingly liberal. It would be stupid to have a conservative slant that would piss off readers in the Bay Area. However, the Chronicle is hardly comparable to a socialist worker publication. Though they did indeed endorse Kerry and are endorsing Obama, they also endorsed Schwarzenegger.

Well, we do have BILD (unabhängig, überparteilich)...

See the rest of the post.

And Bild doesn't even pretend to be a serious daily newspaper (neither in look nor in content), let alone have its own scary 24 hour news channel.

Do you really think that's true? I, for one, think there's a tremendous difference between people who, like here, may read Bild (German tabloid with huge sales) and spout off at the Stammtisch (er, "pub politics", maybe?)

Slightly off topic, isn't Stammtisch meaning a sort of reserved table for regulars? In that when they enter the restaurant they are guaranteed the same table each time?

Back on topic, your post is hitting the point most media channels do have influence on the way people think and vote, while some may write with a bias to suit their demographic many do write with a bias to influence people into their way of thinking or to help promote their agenda. As the people think the media speak the truth they will take on that agenda and believe the crap, lies and bias that the media spout.

Slightly off topic, isn't Stammtisch meaning a sort of reserved table for regulars? In that when they enter the restaurant they are guaranteed the same table each time?
Yup, that's exactly right.

See the rest of the post.I did.
And Bild doesn't even pretend to be a serious daily newspaper (neither in look nor in content), let alone have its own scary 24 hour news channel.It doesn't? It certainly parades around the "lawyer of the common man" title in a fashion that is meant to impress. And it's still got Europe's largest circulation for any daily newspaper.

Like people have said, there isn't really a "liberal" or "conservative" media, but a commercial media.

And in other news, the Pope is Catholic, water is wet, the sky is blue, and bears do indeed relieve themselves in woodland areas.

Everyone knows the Pope is a secret Muslim.

Obviousness...Of...Article...Creating...Urge...To..Throw...Self...Off...A...bridge...

Should people be allowed to decide what they are and aren't exposed to? It's not like you can just close your eyes and the rest of the world will make itself better.

Biased media is important because it gives a good account of one particular category of perspective. And every media is biased, because they're aimed at a user-base. But the answer is not to only look at the ones you like to see. In fact, if anything, exactly the reverse is true; people should get their media from sources they don't agree with, because only then can you get a complete picture of the way the world actually is.

The problem is not that there is biased media, but that particular biases are given too much power by people. The reason for that is that people think that you are justified in ignoring that which you disagree with, and consequently, opinion divides into media cliques empowered by their legion of supporters.

So I totally disagree that people should not look at it if they disagree with it. That's what gets you into these kinds of messes in the first place. People should read Fox; precisely because it represents a different perspective that many of us would rather was not there but that, inalterably, is.

Excellently put, agreed completely.

I don't think you're allowed to use 'Oprah' and 'information' in the same sentence.

:eek: Shit!

Now those two words in the same sentence would be fine.

I'm actually going to take the article to task a little bit because I think that it takes too narrow a view in the hopes of creating a 'market knows all' approach.

First of all, the measure of bias they use, while clever, is as most models, imperfect. Even in their sample, a paper could become 'biased' by reporting on the use of the term 'death tax' as a way to motivate interpretation-the article itself could 'lean left' by criticizing the tactic but 'read right' by their measure.

One of the things that drives accusations of media bias is that it is notoriously hard to measure. This model may be better than others (the worse is the 'now say something nice about me' model), but imperfect still.

Second, it doesn't seem to establish cause and effect before making its conclusions. Conservative papers are read in conservative zip codes-is that the influence of bias or the preference of the readership? If you're creating a 'market explains it all' model, it's the preference, if you're trying to establish the effect of bias, it's the influence.

I differ with the 'blank slate' model of the consumer because they are marketed. It's not like they were put in a room and all choices were laid out in equal portions and they made a decision separate from influence. Political information is marketed as well, and the product is packaged and marketed. Not all wants are inherent, some are created and we have an entire industry that creates them, the news media is not separate from this, in fact it draws its bread and butter from it.

Further, it does not take into account the influence that latter bit has. Your fifty cents does not support the paper, nor does your cable bill support the tv stations. A magazine, I forget the name now, that tried to talk to women not as grown dress up dolls but as complex human beings that perhaps didn't need a pharmacy of beauty products didn't go under because of a lack of readership, but because advertisers drove content-beauty supply companies didn't want an article on not wearing makeup anywhere near their ad stating that the only way to feel naturally beautiful was to use their natural look foundation. Advertisers had decided what was sold and to whom (car companies, for example, would only advertise in magazines with enough male readers) and that determined the fate of the magazine, not the readers. The readers were there.

Or take the Monsanto case with the Fox news station in Florida, where not only was the investigative reporter's story squashed, but replaced with a more 'pro-Monsanto' message-and the station 'exonerated' because it is not under an obligation to tell the truth.

Did the market decide that? Was that merely a matter of the station catering to the whims of its audience? Or was it serving another master?

Additionally, accusations of media bias is used often to move the markers. Can't stop the bad news getting out? Get ahead of it by telling everyone that the news is made up of meany heads. It's really no different than having a kid run in and tell you that another kid is about to tell on him but you shouldn't listen to that kid because he's totally out to get him. It works especially well since they can control access. Want an exclusive interview? Better play nice. A CNN anchor actually asks Tucker Bounds a question instead of gives him 90 seconds to verbalize a press release, McCain pulls out of a Larry King interview. FOX is, well, FOX...no Democratic debate. While a cartoonishly obvious example that was difficult to hide, say nice things and you get coveted access even if you're a little read blogger and part time gay porn model.

Frankly, there is more to it than "Conservatives read conservative papers and Liberals read liberal papers" to explain it all away. Is the market a factor? Sure, just one of a myriad of ones-but I'm sure from an economist point of view the attempt is to make the market explain everything in the same way that everything looks like a nail to a guy with a hammer.

Because media sources each reflect their own biases, and because it is fully impossible for any, single, media entity to be perfectly non-biased, it is best to have a wide selection of varyingly biased sources which hover around a center point of accuracy, in a way that can be sort of represented by a bell graph.

The media know they can have this sway over what the people think and feel and that is part of the reason why they do it.
I really don't buy that argument to any great extent. If I keep reading the New Internationalist, do you really think I would become a leftist of any sort? For that matter, would I keep reading the paper when every article just makes me angry with the way it portrays issues and phrases things? Hell, I'm having trouble these days dealing with Der Spiegel because of the utterly incompetent way they're portraying the financial crisis. What would I do with a news source that was actually far left?

Fact of the matter is that nobody here will say "Yes, I used to be a Democrat, but then I watched Fox and it made me a Republican". People simply operate under the assumption that it happens to someone else, and I don't think that's an accurate assumption.

The article seems to make the assumption that biased media doesn't have an influence on voter behaviour because it only tells people what they want to hear, meaning they would have voted the way they do anyway. Do you really think that's true? I, for one, think there's a tremendous difference between people who, like here, may read Bild (German tabloid with huge sales) and spout off at the Stammtisch (er, "pub politics", maybe?) but when they turn on the TV, they do in fact get fair and unbalanced news, even on the crappy channels, and similar people who turn on the TV to find a glossy "serious" news channel pretending to be fair and unbalanced that actually goes and "officially confirms" all the crap they hear and blab all day.
Well, would you go and read Bild and repeat those views among your friends? Just the paper existing doesn't mean you will act in a certain way or be influenced by it to somehow comply with their agenda. No, the people who read Bild are the people to whom that sort of stuff appeals in the first place. If you were to start a newspaper in rural Saxony, would you really bet your investment on being able to influence the beliefs and behaviour of your readers and give the paper a market liberal internationalist slant?

Of course these views end up being self-reinforcing: right-wingers read right-wing sources and become even more convinced of their right-wingedness. But that doesn't necessarily imply that they weren't right-wingers to start with, and given that humans tend to exhibit this reluctance to listen to stuff they disagree with, it's much more likely that they were.

First of all, the measure of bias they use, while clever, is as most models, imperfect. Even in their sample, a paper could become 'biased' by reporting on the use of the term 'death tax' as a way to motivate interpretation-the article itself could 'lean left' by criticizing the tactic but 'read right' by their measure.

One of the things that drives accusations of media bias is that it is notoriously hard to measure. This model may be better than others (the worse is the 'now say something nice about me' model), but imperfect still.
Imperfect enough to invalidate the results? Do you really think a left-leaning newspaper would be directly quoting "death tax" often enough, but use "estate tax" little enough, to fall into the wrong category?

Of course it's not perfect, but I don't think there are errors fundamental enough to make the whole study questionable.

Second, it doesn't seem to establish cause and effect before making its conclusions. Conservative papers are read in conservative zip codes-is that the influence of bias or the preference of the readership? If you're creating a 'market explains it all' model, it's the preference, if you're trying to establish the effect of bias, it's the influence.
It's not trying to establish the effect of bias, it's trying to explain why it exists. That's the question the study is addressing.

To do something on the effects of bias, you'd need panel data over time and try to how the slant of the paper affected the views of readers. I think we could reasonably suggest that we'll see a reinforcement of the views present at the beginning.

I differ with the 'blank slate' model of the consumer because they are marketed. It's not like they were put in a room and all choices were laid out in equal portions and they made a decision separate from influence. Political information is marketed as well, and the product is packaged and marketed. Not all wants are inherent, some are created and we have an entire industry that creates them, the news media is not separate from this, in fact it draws its bread and butter from it.
You can imagine your view of marketing and advertising doesn't fit anything I have learned about that area. But much more important is that the authors developed a model that fit the data well, and which as its central part had a household loss function that increased the greater the difference was between the views of the paper and the views of the reader.

The point is that people don't enjoy reading stuff they disagree with. For your theory to work, people would have to be exposed to the views for long enough and actually believe them, when during that entire time they have the option of simply not buying the paper. With this medium it's particularly easy to simply not be exposed to it at all, so how do you figure this could be overcome?

Further, it does not take into account the influence that latter bit has.
That's presumably because they felt they had it covered. An advertiser is not going to put a big ad in a magazine that praises its products but isn't read by anyone. Ads in local newspapers are also used primarily to target people in a specific area, which means there may not be many alternatives that offer a similar focus. And given that, even if advertisers actually cared enough to check the editorial stance of such a paper, beggars can't be choosers.

Anyways:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=614583
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=977285
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0254/is_3_61/ai_90039426

Frankly, there is more to it than "Conservatives read conservative papers and Liberals read liberal papers" to explain it all away. Is the market a factor? Sure, just one of a myriad of ones-but I'm sure from an economist point of view the attempt is to make the market explain everything in the same way that everything looks like a nail to a guy with a hammer.
I think you need to make sure you really just address the article, not the source.

The model says people try to read papers they agree with. From that comes a profit-maximising level of bias that newspapers can use. They checked, and they found that the bias exhibited in the real world and this theoretical optimal bias are very close together. They checked the data, and found that reader bias is a significant, though by no means complete, determinant of paper bias.

That's all it says, and it really doesn't leave a lot of wriggling room. And I'm particularly sceptical of this idea that the causation is actually reversed. Given that it isn't time series data, I don't know the methodologies for checking intertemporal correlation (which comes pretty damn close to being able to say "this is cause and effect), and there probably isn't much more statistically they could have done. But the model clearly doesn't provide for any form of brainwashing, and I don't think there really is a reasonable basis for it being different, at the very least on the newspaper level.

I say we remove Bill O'Reily's vocal cords

I really don't buy that argument to any great extent. If I keep reading the New Internationalist, do you really think I would become a leftist of any sort? For that matter, would I keep reading the paper when every article just makes me angry with the way it portrays issues and phrases things? Hell, I'm having trouble these days dealing with Der Spiegel because of the utterly incompetent way they're portraying the financial crisis. What would I do with a news source that was actually far left?

If the arguments and the point of view presented in the articles are strong enough then you may just change your mind on an issue or two. But you Leon are different to the majority of people unlike the majority of people who are dumb and easily influenced from your posts on here, you don't seem that way you are intelligent and are able to see through their crap and form your own opinions. You say you are against Der Spiegel (funny I always thought it was with an 'a') because of the way they are reporting on the crisis. Now you have the education and the knowledge to know what they say is absolute crap (I'm assuming I haven't read Der Spiegel) but do you think the people know this? Of course they don't, the people know jack all about a lot of things and will take what the media says as gospel. The people will believe any old tripe that the media spouts because the people don't know any better and because they think that the media is presenting the 'facts' they will take those 'facts' and have the same view as their paper. If the media presents a story in such a way with any sort of bias than the people will take on that bias and believe it as such.

Fact of the matter is that nobody here will say "Yes, I used to be a Democrat, but then I watched Fox and it made me a Republican". People simply operate under the assumption that it happens to someone else, and I don't think that's an accurate assumption.

That may be my assumption that it happens to the people, but if you are on the fence of an issue and you see a report then the people are more likely to be swayed over to that side and do take up the same position as the media reported it. It is why the people may have been against bailouts because the general media which mainly is tabloids reported it as a way of socialising losses and giving more money to 'fat cats', if the media had reported it as a necessary package in order to ensure the stability of the world economy and to protect jobs, people would have thought differently about it.

Do you really think Leon that the whole Binge drinking crap that went on earlier this year would have been a big issue if the media hadn't decided to go on a moral crusade and decided to report on it? Do you think a couple of years ago if the media hadn't decided to start reporting on P-platers and their dangerous attitude we wouldn't have seen such a strong public reaction against them and some misguided policies by some state governments? The media does know they can have a say in the way the people will think, they know this politicians know this which is why those that play tabloid politics and go with what the papers want get more attention and get more support.

Now if people were watching FOX news and are (hard core) Democrats than they are more likely to be against FOX news already and won't be swayed by it but those who are sitting on the fence and could go either way would be swayed by it if the story is presented well enough.

I really don't buy that argument to any great extent. If I keep reading the New Internationalist, do you really think I would become a leftist of any sort? For that matter, would I keep reading the paper when every article just makes me angry with the way it portrays issues and phrases things? Hell, I'm having trouble these days dealing with Der Spiegel because of the utterly incompetent way they're portraying the financial crisis. What would I do with a news source that was actually far left?

Fact of the matter is that nobody here will say "Yes, I used to be a Democrat, but then I watched Fox and it made me a Republican". People simply operate under the assumption that it happens to someone else, and I don't think that's an accurate assumption.


Well, would you go and read Bild and repeat those views among your friends? Just the paper existing doesn't mean you will act in a certain way or be influenced by it to somehow comply with their agenda. No, the people who read Bild are the people to whom that sort of stuff appeals in the first place. If you were to start a newspaper in rural Saxony, would you really bet your investment on being able to influence the beliefs and behaviour of your readers and give the paper a market liberal internationalist slant?

Of course these views end up being self-reinforcing: right-wingers read right-wing sources and become even more convinced of their right-wingedness. But that doesn't necessarily imply that they weren't right-wingers to start with, and given that humans tend to exhibit this reluctance to listen to stuff they disagree with, it's much more likely that they were.
You yourself were 'left' at one point, I remember all that long time ago when you 'came out' as a capitalist. Were you 'in the closet'? Had you always been a capitalist, secretly squirreling away capitalist writings and evading 'left' sources?

No, I doubt it. You started to be introduced to work and media that eventually led you to form your current viewpoint.

Your model doesn't allow for that, right reads right and left reads left and never the twain shall meet.

Not to mention that examples on the fringe are not really the issue. Of course people on the left are going to be the ones to read Democratic Underground and the right Newsmax-there are sources that don't hide their bias and aren't meant to be convincing as they are reaffirming.

Naked bias is different. But we're talking about a bias that is much harder to measure. To follow...


Imperfect enough to invalidate the results? Do you really think a left-leaning newspaper would be directly quoting "death tax" often enough, but use "estate tax" little enough, to fall into the wrong category?

Of course it's not perfect, but I don't think there are errors fundamental enough to make the whole study questionable.
In a lot of ways they are, because the question of what constitutes bias and how perceptible it is does speak to the cause and effect, which this article seems to want to arrange.

To go back to their own example of the methodology, not all word choices are simple left and right matters, and their example is great for that. "Estate Tax" is what it actually is, that's the default, a paper that refers to it by it's actual name will now be 'biased' to the left when it in fact may be neutral reporting. Further, in the last few years the Repulblican Party has made an unveiled use of 'rebranding', (if needed I can find their expert on the subject, it's not conspiracy, he's proud of his work) so by the model you either buy into rebranding issues and have a right lean or don't and have a left lean. It might be great at identifying almost obvious right bias but not as great at determining the difference between left bias and neutral reporting.

The fact of the matter is that actual bias is an incredibly difficult thing to measure.

Which is the problem with the Bild issue. Yeah, I'm not going to read something with an obvious bias, especially when it's one that I don't agree with-no Little Green Footballs, etc. But a bias that's less obvious, so much so that models have to be created to measure it's a different animal. If it's a matter of whether or not they refer to it as 'death tax' or 'estate tax,' it's not as likely to create that instant revulsion that a Bild or Democratic Underground might create.


It's not trying to establish the effect of bias, it's trying to explain why it exists. That's the question the study is addressing.

To do something on the effects of bias, you'd need panel data over time and try to how the slant of the paper affected the views of readers. I think we could reasonably suggest that we'll see a reinforcement of the views present at the beginning.
I'm afraid it's a chicken and the egg issue. Either they read it because they agree or they agree because they read it. If it's "why it exist" that's cause.


You can imagine your view of marketing and advertising doesn't fit anything I have learned about that area. But much more important is that the authors developed a model that fit the data well, and which as its central part had a household loss function that increased the greater the difference was between the views of the paper and the views of the reader.

The point is that people don't enjoy reading stuff they disagree with. For your theory to work, people would have to be exposed to the views for long enough and actually believe them, when during that entire time they have the option of simply not buying the paper. With this medium it's particularly easy to simply not be exposed to it at all, so how do you figure this could be overcome?
Don't think I didn't notice the careful wording up there. My 'view' vs. what you 'have learned.' I'm not going to lecture you on tone because I too often cross the line giving you a hard time for being a budding Lex Luther, but I did notice it.

And yes, perhaps what I've learned is different. My education is in the creation of that media, the tools we used to create meaning, mood, and desire. The history and methods in which it has shaped ideas and influenced people. Most amusingly, the only difference in my education about 'this is how they manipulate desire,' and the MBA classes I would tape at Stanford was pronouns and inflection, 'this is how we manipulate desire.' I've watched executives from North Face, Fuji, Palm, Apple, and more talk about it. To them it's not 'conspiracy' or the views of a media critic, it's a business plan.




That's presumably because they felt they had it covered. An advertiser is not going to put a big ad in a magazine that praises its products but isn't read by anyone. Ads in local newspapers are also used primarily to target people in a specific area, which means there may not be many alternatives that offer a similar focus. And given that, even if advertisers actually cared enough to check the editorial stance of such a paper, beggars can't be choosers.
Except I gave an example of where they did in fact choose. And I've dealt first hand with the influence sponsors have had over shows.

Anyways:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=614583
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=977285
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0254/is_3_61/ai_90039426

I'll have to read these later, to dry for too late in the evening.

I think you need to make sure you really just address the article, not the source.
I did. But certainly in an article about bias I can look at potential biases in those reporting, can't I?

The model says people try to read papers they agree with. From that comes a profit-maximising level of bias that newspapers can use. They checked, and they found that the bias exhibited in the real world and this theoretical optimal bias are very close together. They checked the data, and found that reader bias is a significant, though by no means complete, determinant of paper bias.

That's all it says, and it really doesn't leave a lot of wriggling room. And I'm particularly sceptical of this idea that the causation is actually reversed. Given that it isn't time series data, I don't know the methodologies for checking intertemporal correlation (which comes pretty damn close to being able to say "this is cause and effect), and there probably isn't much more statistically they could have done. But the model clearly doesn't provide for any form of brainwashing, and I don't think there really is a reasonable basis for it being different, at the very least on the newspaper level.
"Brainwashing" is not the appropriate term, but this is still a chicken and the egg, cart and horse issue. In order for this model to not be a cause/effect issue people have to be inherently and immovably 'left' or 'right.' They've looked through a toilet paper roll and decided they've got the map pegged. I disagree. There's a whole lot more map there.

I say that Rupert Murdoch is the Prince of Darkness and his "Evil Empire" distorts the truth in three continents (at least).
This ex-Australian became an American citizen in order to expand his evil empire.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, no Murdoch publication anywhere in the world opposed the invasion.
Readership does not determine editorial opinion, owners do.
He is a very, very, dangerous man.
Politicians like Tony Blair wouldn't dare to scratch their noses without Murdoch's blessing. If I'm ever in agreement with Murdoch, I start to doubt my opinion - that's how scary he is.

Readership does not determine editorial opinion, owners do.
Ahem, you're now directly contradicting the findings of this study. Do you have anything to back this up?

:eek::mad:Don't you ever sleep NL?

Back up what? That Rupert Murdoch and the Emperor in Star Wars have everything in common? That no Murdoch publication of any kind opposed the invasion of Iraq. That every Murdoch publication has at least one pet reactionary like Bill O'Reilly writing for it?

:eek::mad:Don't you ever sleep NL?

Back up what? That Rupert Murdoch and the Emperor in Star Wars have everything in common? That no Murdoch publication of any kind opposed the invasion of Iraq. That every Murdoch publication has at least one pet reactionary like Bill O'Reilly writing for it?

Funny how different Murdoch papers will report the story differently.

Not on the big ones that matter to Murdoch - like invading Iraq.
He is ruthless in sacking editors who don't toe the line (his line!)

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12510893


So there we go. For the sample involved, made up of daily newspapers in the US, not only does ownership not determine political alignment, but political views of the likely readers do.

Taking a bit of a jump and generalising: media is not biased because of some conspiracy to usurp democracy, but because that's what people want to be exposed to. Which means that the obvious answer to not liking a biased source is: don't look at it.

Surprised? Amazed? Vindicated? Bored?

considering the source, are we really expected to buy that?

people COULD pay a little more attention to what their buying habbits appear to indicate about their preferences though. and that DOES create the incentives for the policy decisions that create the conditions they experience and complain about, but media, mainstream corporate media, IS owned by the same corporate economic intrests that HAVE largely usurped the political proccess.

I agree with Cameroi. Economists assume people are rational, moral, and self-interested agent that think through every decision they make. Humans by nature are impulsive and act more on emotion than on rational appeal (see advertising techniques taught in school, does not fit). Pathos and ethos, especially pathos, generally trumps logos any day!

The only thing that annoys me is when people say the media isn't biased.

Every news outlet is biased in some way, about some topic.

...and this is why I listen to NPR, and read the Wall Street Journal. ;)

Dear Neu L et al, Here's what letter writers think of nice Mr Murdoch who shared his wisdom with the world public at the annual Boyer Lecture hosted by the ABC (the government-owned TV and rado network):
someone in ABC management have a dark sense of humour, inviting Rupert Murdoch — probably the world's most active crusader for free markets and small government — to deliver this year's Boyer Lectures while the world reels from the effects of excessive market freedom and markets demand that government save them from their excesses?

Unfazed by the tumultuous reality of the present, Murdoch harks back to a pioneering spirit, calling on Australians to be less dependent on government and more prepared for radical reform. Watching buccaneering free-marketeers in Murdoch's adopted country trash the dreams of ordinary Americans, I suspect many there would love to depend on government to share the wealth equitably, instead of restricting the rewards of everyone's endeavours to those at the top.

Amy Wood, Wagga Wagga, NSW

A bad choice
IT IS a mystery and quite bizarre that Rupert Murdoch was chosen to present the prestigious Boyer Lectures.

Here is a man whose claims to fame are owning one of the most bigoted, biased and bullying TV talk shows in the US and some of the sleaziest newspapers in the world, who chose his business interests above human rights in China, who chose not to pay tax in the Australia he claims to love, who was a climate change sceptic until yesterday and used all his power to promote the Bush Administration's tragic adventure in Iraq.

Surely Australia must have thousands of intelligent, ethical achievers from whom a better choice could have been made.

Ann Marshall, Holgate, NSW

Stuck in the past
RUPERT Murdoch doesn't know much about 19th-century education if he thinks it is the model for the current Australian system.

Education with a goal of corporate and/or industrial application rather than full human development is not education but training.

He also shows his penchant for old times in reviving the term "bludgers" — such seems to be his contempt for Australians not swept up in the stormy capitalist seas who have not put their funds at the mercy of his corporate colleagues.

Murdoch continues to see Australia exclusively as "an economy", not as a nation and not as a people with enormous potential.

Annie de Boissiere, North Balwyn

He's got a nerve
IF RUPERT Murdoch is such a supreme social planner who apparently has the ability to know exactly what is right for Australia's economy and governance, how come he missed the fact that America's financial system was being destroyed right under his nose?

I'll tell you why — because he was part of that disastrous financial manipulation by virtue of the fact that his major US newspapers were utterly beholden (advertising revenue) to the very banks and individuals who devised and ran the systems that ultimately collapsed.

Now the man has the nerve to come out here and tell Australians how we should run our country. Instead of blaming the Wall Street bankers for the world's woes, he is blaming our welfare system.

He is so corrupted by the global status quo that he even wants another four years of Republican debauchery, for God's sake.

George Pike, Launceston, Tasmania

Rupert's propaganda
I FIND it extraordinary that Australia still cares what Rupert Murdoch says. Hasn't it been the case that for years his Fox network and News Corp have acted like the modern-day Joseph Goebbels — Hitler's propaganda minister — in telling people stuff about the Bush and Howard administrations often enough that they believed it?

Are Americans and Australians now suffering because of those lies?

Why not ask him who he is endorsing in the US election? Isn't it John McCain? Why?

Jo Nolte, St Kilda

Rich bludgers
I GUESS Rupert Murdoch meant to say everyone except millionaires and everyone except corporations should not get government hand-outs. Social Darwinism for the poor and a welfare state only for the rich.

Gavin Date, Marleston, SA

Murdoch
PREVIOUS Boyer Lectures have, without exception, been given by prominent Australians. How come the American Rupert Murdoch is giving them this year, and where does he get off calling us bludgers?

Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills

To my horror, I just discovered The View has a huge bias. So im switching to Oprah for all of my information.

I don't think you're allowed to use 'Oprah' and 'information' in the same sentence.

:eek: Shit!

I'm not sure if he was joking or not. >.>

Back up what? That Rupert Murdoch and the Emperor in Star Wars have everything in common? That no Murdoch publication of any kind opposed the invasion of Iraq. That every Murdoch publication has at least one pet reactionary like Bill O'Reilly writing for it?
No, that ownership was not a significant determinant of bias in the study. The same corporate owners (and I assume Newscorp would have been in it, given that it covered US newspapers from all over) owned papers with different slants which corresponded with the slant the readership exhibited when they went to the polls.

Not on the big ones that matter to Murdoch - like invading Iraq.
He is ruthless in sacking editors who don't toe the line (his line!)
That's anecdotal. It's just not enough to disprove the study.

considering the source, are we really expected to buy that?
The source is a published paper from NBER, which is linked to in the OP. So yes, unless you can provide some good reason not to, you are expected to buy that.

people COULD pay a little more attention to what their buying habbits appear to indicate about their preferences though. and that DOES create the incentives for the policy decisions that create the conditions they experience and complain about, but media, mainstream corporate media, IS owned by the same corporate economic intrests that HAVE largely usurped the political proccess.
That paragraph makes little sense to me. If their buying habits (by which I assume you mean the newspapers they read) indicate something about their preferences, then the study is likely right. If they should "pay more attention" to these habits, are you trying to say their preferences are actually different, but they just happen to keep buying the wrong paper?

And how does newspaper circulation cause the big corporate conspiracy you seem to be so excited about?

I agree with Cameroi. Economists assume people are rational, moral, and self-interested agent that think through every decision they make. Humans by nature are impulsive and act more on emotion than on rational appeal (see advertising techniques taught in school, does not fit). Pathos and ethos, especially pathos, generally trumps logos any day!
You're not saying anything. The study developed a model of rational newspaper readers and rational newspaper producers, then tested it against reality. It fit reality very well.

That happens to keep happening - economists develop models based on assumptions about rationality and test them. And they keep working, because even though people occasionally act like idiots, they rarely do so consistently over time. They exist within reality, and reality demands rationality to deal with it. When people consistently act against their own interest, sooner or later they'd either learn or are removed somehow.

Dear Neu L et al, Here's what letter writers think of nice Mr Murdoch who shared his wisdom with the world public at the annual Boyer Lecture hosted by the ABC (the government-owned TV and rado network):
Dude, I think I've made it clear on more than one occasion that I have no respect for the mortgage belt and its opinions. People who write letters to newspapers are the worst kind, because they think their uninformed opinions are actually worth being listened to.

Letter 1: Irrelevant, and I think I've made it clear about a billion times that "excessive market freedom" aka deregulation did not cause this crisis.

Letter 2: Irrelevant, and disagreeing with the man is not enough basis to claim that he doesn't have the relevant knowledge of the media world to deliver the lecture.

Letter 3: Irrelevant, and why does it not surprise that the writer is apparently French? :P

Letter 4: Irrelevant, and factually incorrect. I'd like to see some proof that advertising revenue from Wall Street banks is a significant factor in Newscorp's income.

Letter 5: Irrelevant, Godwinned, and remarkably content-less.

Letter 6: Irrelevant, and pure conjecture.

Letter 7: Irrelevant, and why is this lady feeling personally offended?

So basically, not only do none of these letters address the topic of the thread (nor does your campaign against Rupert Murdoch, for that matter), but none of them are actually accurate descriptions of the situation or meaningful suggestions for improvement. Hence why reading letters to mainstream newspapers should only ever be done for the sake of personal amusement at the stupidity of others.

I say we remove Bill O'Reily's vocal cords
Nah, he lets me validate my hatred of America which I get from time to time.

I think that owners make the news that the public consumes. The media barons present their news in the form that the target readership. For instance, Murdoch's Sky news caters for those who don't want much more than the headlines and the sight of Paris Hilton's cleavage which Sky will endeavour to present. Murchoch's Times in London and The Australian in Australia caters for Tories who like an "informed" but conservative perspective (The spaghetti al dente consumer). Murdoch's tabloids cater for "Trots, tatts and tits". (The fish and chip consumer)
They all love to bash Labor governments, tree-hugging greenies and unions....boy do they all hate unions.

The people consume this fodder because they have been conditioned to. Do they choose?
Do you really choose what products you consume or does the marketing choose for you.
It's all a bit of a chicken and egg argument for me. (To extend the fodder metaphor)

You are right Collectivity. This is especially so in American elections. A friend of mine said that the founders, ideally, founded the country to be nonpartisan, however, since it could not be the case, they hoped for a three party/multi party system. Unfortunately it is very difficult for that to be the case, and the legacy parties make life harder by putting ballot access restrictions in place that prevent them from getting the word out. This is clearly as much a breach of first admendment rights, much more so than most campaign finance reforms could possibly be.

Btw, on a side note, corporations are NOT persons in my view...whichever supreme court judge favored this stance must have been disturbed. Corporations are merely contracts between businesses which are subject to the restrictions of state and federal law. If corporations wish to retain personhood they must pay taxes, keep the enviroment clean, and employ mainly in the country in which in was incorporated and maintain its headquarters there, or face criminal charges (littering, reckless endangerment, tax evasion, treason, etc).

I think that owners make the news that the public consumes. The media barons present their news in the form that the target readership. For instance, Murdoch's Sky news caters for those who don't want much more than the headlines and the sight of Paris Hilton's cleavage which Sky will endeavour to present. Murchoch's Times in London and The Australian in Australia caters for Tories who like an "informed" but conservative perspective (The spaghetti al dente consumer). Murdoch's tabloids cater for "Trots, tatts and tits". (The fish and chip consumer)
They all love to bash Labor governments, tree-hugging greenies and unions....boy do they all hate unions.
So why did the study find this:
Showing that newspapers have a political slant that is economically rational does not necessarily answer the question of whether ownership or demand determines bias. Here, the academics are helped by the fact that large media companies may own several newspapers, often in markets that are politically very different. This allowed them to test whether the slants of newspapers with the same owner were more strongly correlated than those of two newspapers picked at random. They found that this was not so: owners exerted a negligible influence on slant. Readers’ political views explained about a fifth of measured slant, while ownership explained virtually none.

You are right Collectivity.
Same question to you as to him then.