Posts tagged bias
I don’t want to totally lump reporters and pundits in together, right? It’s kind of venial sins versus cardinal sins basically — right? — where reporting is very, very important and journalism is very, very important, and there are some things about campaign coverage that I might critique. Whereas punditry is fundamentally useless.
Spin?
One could, of course, do this across all sorts of media outlets.
For the educators though, an interesting media literacy exercise in how news outlets exist as brands and the messaging they hope to transmit.
Take screenshots across news organizations and decipher how word choice, positioning, heds and deks illustrate an organizational bias.
Image: Fox News Home Page, November 2. Taken and annotated by Ethan Gold. Select to embiggen.
This election year, so much of the broadcast networks, their cable counterparts, and the major establishment print media are out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda. To put it bluntly: you are rigging this election and taking sides in order to pre-determine the outcome. In the quarter century since the Media Research Center was established to document liberal media bias, there has never been a more brazen and complete attempt by the liberal so-called “news” media to decide the outcome of an election.
So begins “An Open Letter to the Biased News Media” from the Media Research Center co-signed by, among others, conservative media stalwarts Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Lars Larson and Rusty Humphries.
Bonus: New York Times media columnist David Carr thinks, perhaps, conservatives protest too much, noting how the top circulation newspaper in the country is the Wall Street Journal and its conservative editorial board, conservative radio crushes liberal haven NPR and Fox News runs circles around its cable bedfellows.
Then again, as Carr writes: “Of course, given that I am pointing out these disconnects in The New York Times, it will be seen as confirming what conservatives already know: that I went to the dark chambers where we cook up the conspiracy, met with my betters to receive my marching orders and then set about playing my small role as a cog in the manufacture of liberal consent. (Memo to headquarters: the Plan is in very high effect).”
The data behind this chart only runs from May to July, but interesting to see a snapshot.
FJP: Despite cries to the contrary, it’s been like this for quite some time. What discourages me more though is the establishment “need” to have spokespeople from each side of the aisle who regurgitate the day’s talking points instead of, say, the best people to actually dissect and analyze what policies and events actually mean. — Michael
The horror I feel when I imagine Newt assuming a position of responsibility can give way to melancholia if I contemplate the prospect of life without the feisty, aging smurf.
Robert Wright, The Atlantic. Why I Secretly Root for Newt.
Wright asks, and answers, if “members of the ‘elite liberal media,’ as Newt Gingrich would put it, [are] secretly rooting for him.”
If the mass media is dominated by a few corporations, the risk for bias and interference with editorial independence increases.
Thomas Hammarberg, Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe. Public service media needed to strengthen pluralism.
Hammarberg writes:
Media pluralism is necessary for the development of informed societies where different voices can be heard. However, in several European countries there is little genuine media freedom and therefore limited space for pluralism. Independent television and radio channels are denied licences, and critical newspapers are prevented from buying newsprint or distributing their papers.
Other state controls are more discrete. By buying advertising space solely in “loyal” media, governments can signal to businesses to follow their lead, which means that independent media are effectively boycotted. The increase in bureaucratic harassment and administrative discrimination is also of concern.
Of course, a million blogs aside, mainstream media consolidation is accelerating globally. And, of course, with deference to our Italian friends, let’s not forget that Silvio Berlusconi was the largest shareholder of the largest television station while prime minister.
And then there’s Russia and its very… um… troubling media environment.
People, Press and Trust
Good takes findings from a Pew Research Center survey and dresses them up.
Good doesn’t say, but I think the infographic comes from Views of the News Media: 1985-2011. —Michael
Image: Details from Good News/Bad News, via Good.
430 plays
Journalists Washing Their Hands of the Truth.
NPR goes all “He Said, She Said” on us. Do they really think that fools anyone?
The audio clip (3:42) is an NPR report about a new set of regulations for abortion clinics that the state of Kansas has tried to put in place. They are currently suspended because of a lawsuit. Among other provisions, the new rules say that procedure rooms must be at least 150 square feet and that storage areas for “janitorial supplies and equipment” must be at least 50 square feet per procedure room. Reuters: “The new law sets minimum sizes for surgery and recovery rooms, has room temperature range parameters for each room, and sets broader equipment and staffing rules.”
Ready for the he said?… In the NPR report, Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri President and CEO Peter Brownlie says ”[The] regulations are riddled with requirements which do nothing to improve the safety and health of women, make it more difficult for women to obtain a service they need and to which they are legally entitled.”
And now for the she said…. But several groups that oppose abortion say the regulations are common sense and necessary. Cheryl Sullenger with Operation Rescue asked the state to consider 2,500 pages of documents that detail what she descibes as abuses across the country. “If abortion clinics close, then that is for the protection of the public. It’s a good thing…”
Which is only one of several examples in the report. Here’s the complaint I sent to the NPR ombudsman about this method of hand-washing.
I would like the ombudsman to listen to this story because I have a complaint about it. My complaint is not the usual one that you probably get: biased reporting. No. This is he said, she said reporting, one of the lowest forms of journalism in existence, in which the NPR reporter washes her hands of determining what is true. The new Kansas regulations may be a form of harassment, intended to make life as difficult as possible for abortion providers in that state. Or, alternatively, these rules may be sane, rational, common sense, sound policy: just normal rule-making by responsible public officials.According to this report, NPR has no idea who is right. It cannot provide listeners with any help in sorting through such a dramatic conflict in truth claims. It knows of no way to adjudicate these clashing views. It is simply confused and helpless and the best it can do is pass on that helplessness to listeners of “Morning Edition.” Because there is just no way to know whether these new rules try to make life as difficult as possible for abortion providers, or put common sense public policy goals into practice in Kansas. There is no standard by which to judge. There is no comparison that would help. There is no act of reporting that can tell us who has more of the truth on their side. In a word, there is nothing NPR can do! And so a good professional simply passes the conflict along. Excellent: Now the listeners can be as confused as the journalists.
It is obvious to me that there’s something else going on here. NPR has, in this case, allowed its desire to escape criticism to overwhelm its journalistic imagination. ”He said, she said” does not serve listeners. It tries to shield NPR from another round of bias attacks. That’s putting your needs—for political refuge—ahead of mine as a listener. I don’t appreciate it. It makes me trust you less. And one more thing, a little lesson in realism. They’re going to attack you anyway, and crow in triumph when your CEO is forced out by those attacks. Ultimately there is no refuge, so you might as well do good journalism.
I think journalists in the mainstream media are largely unaware of how many people are catching on to “he said, she said.” They still think of it as the best way to be trusted when things are dispute, but little by little it’s becoming the opposite: a reason for active mistrust. That’s why I wrote the ombudsman. I want him to know about this shift. And push back against this shit.
UPDATE: Over Twitter, the NPR ombudsman says he will look into it, though he doubts that he said, she said reporting is the lowest form of journalism. Of course, I didn’t say it was the lowest. I said it’s one of the lowest.
FJP: Journalism programs generally drill into their students that “objectivity” is the golden rule. As Rosen points out though, this prevents journalists from calling a spade a spade as they perpetually search for a response “from the other side.”
Rosen calls such reporting “the view from nowhere,” which, in an interview he conducted with himself he writes:
In pro journalism, American style, the View from Nowhere is a bid for trust that advertises the viewlessness of the news producer. Frequently it places the journalist between polarized extremes, and calls that neither-nor position “impartial.” Second, it’s a means of defense against a style of criticism that is fully anticipated: charges of bias originating in partisan politics and the two-party system. Third: it’s an attempt to secure a kind of universal legitimacy that is implicitly denied to those who stake out positions or betray a point of view. American journalists have almost a lust for the View from Nowhere because they think it has more authority than any other possible stance.
Seven years ago, Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films released Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. While it wasn’t released theatrically, MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress helped organize “house parties” around the country where people could come together to watch it.
Writing in the New York Times at the time, AO Scott noted:
The partisan nature of ”Outfoxed,” a series of expository and analytical talking-head segments interspersed with the high-octane flag-draped shouting-head segments that have become Fox’s trademark, is obvious. It is also, therefore, a little beside the point. In the American media, like it or not, the job of exposing bias is often taken up by people and organizations with a definite point of view.
This evening, Greenwald will host an event to discuss the movie and the continuing Murdoch empire. He’ll be joined by Cenk Uygur (The Young Turks; former MSNBC host), Janeane Garofalo (Actor/Comedian), Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Nation), James Rucker (ColorofChange.org) and Ilyse Hogue (Media Matters). Should be lively in light of the the News Corp / News of the World phone hacking scandal.
If you have questions for Greenwald or his guests, you can submit them here. And if you’d like to watch, the Webcast kicks off at 5pm PT (8pm ET).
Comics: Selected Doonesbury from July 2004.
America is becoming more polarized in part because of Google’s algorithms which show us only relevant search results, which in turn means that we see only what we agree with – also referred to as confirmation bias. So the problem of polarization, also described brilliantly in Cass Sunstein’s book Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide is increasing because of technology’s push toward relevancy – giving us what we want and what we agree with…
…It is not the editorials and the opinion pieces that are causing the polarization, it is the entire spectrum of more sophisticated technology and the instant availability of diverse information and opinion that allows us, even motivates us, to seek out only those facts, information, and opinions that agree with our view of the world and our own multiple biases.
How Brand Identity Affects Perceptions of the News
William Youmans and Katie Brown, PhD candidates at the University of Michigan, have published a fascinating paper on how Al Jazeera English is viewed in the United States.
In their study, they showed 177 participants a news clip [above] of “the Taliban’s position towards peace talks.”
The first group watched the original clip with AJE’s branding…
…The second group saw the same news piece re-edited to carry CNN International’s (CNNI) logo…
…The third group, the control, viewed no clip. We then asked participants in each group to rate, in general, how biased they thought AJE and CNNI were.
Watching the AJE clip — branded as AJE — did not seem to have an impact on perceptions of bias; bias ratings were equal between those in the AJE-clip-watching group and the control group.
But in the group that had just watched the clip with fake CNNI branding, participants rated CNNI as less biased than those in the control group.
Paper (PDF) | Arab Media Society | Nieman Lab
Youmans and Brown go on to discuss AJE’s difficulty breaking into the US cable market, saying the issue is part politics and part perceived market potential.
[T]here is a difference between bias and propaganda. I don’t doubt for a milisecond - and never have - that NPR and the NYT have often profound biases to the liberal side of the equation. I’ve long argued that they should admit it and move on. But I don’t get the sense from watching PBS or listening to NPR that they take it as their guiding mission to push for a particular political party or rig the news to inflame a political party’s base. I think they still try to aim for fairness and the truth. I truly don’t believe, with a few exceptions that this is the case with FNC [Fox News Channel]. I think it’s a political operation using the guise of “journalism” to advance a cause and a party; I think NPR is a news organization with a political bias.
In Britain, we feel that it’s better to know where people are coming from and then to make up your own mind about what you think, because the truth is nobody can be completely impartial and objective. I mean the idea [that] The New York Times doesn’t have a political point of view — it’s ridiculous. It does, but it twists itself into knots in an attempt to pretend that it doesn’t.
