Media Balance/Bias Home
Opinion 1 - FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)
Opinion 2 - Don T. Forse, Jr.
Opinion 3 - Jonah Goldberg
Opinion 4 - Tonya Lindsey, Francesca Zajnoncelli,
Pam Masnik, and Maryam Hosselvizadeb (Please help me with the spelling.)
Opinion 1 - FAIR, from"How To Detect Bias In News Media"
Who are the sources?
Be aware of the political perspective of the sources used in a story.
Media over-rely on "official"
(government, corporate and establishment think tank) sources. For instance,
FAIR found that in 40
months of Nightline programming, the most frequent guests were Henry
Kissinger, Alexander Haig,
Elliott Abrams and Jerry Falwell. Progressive and public interest voices
were grossly underrepresented.
To portray issues fairly and accurately, media must broaden their spectrum
of sources. Otherwise, they
serve merely as megaphones for those in power
Is there a lack of diversity?
What is the race and gender diversity at the news outlet you watch compared
to the communities it
serves? How many producers, editors or decision-makers at news outlets
are women, people of color or
openly gay or lesbian? In order to fairly represent different communities,
news outlets should have
members of those communities in decision-making positions.
How many of the experts these news outlets cite are women and people
of color? FAIR's 40-month
survey of Nightline found its U.S. guests to be 92 percent white and
89 percent male. A similar survey of
PBS's NewsHour found its guestlist was 90 percent white and 87 percent
male.
From whose point of view is the news reported?
Political coverage often focuses on how issues affect politicians or
corporate executives rather than those
directly affected by the issue. For example, many stories on parental
notification of abortion emphasized
the "tough choice" confronting male politicians while quoting no women
under 18--those with the most at
stake in the debate. Economics coverage usually looks at how events
impact stockholders rather than
workers or consumers.
Are there double standards?
Do media hold some people to one standard while using a different standard
for other groups? Youth of
color who commit crimes are referred to as "superpredators," whereas
adult criminals who commit
white-collar crimes are often portrayed as having been tragically been
led astray. Think tanks partly
funded by unions are often identified as "labor-backed" while think
tanks heavily funded by business
interests are usually not identified as "corporate-backed."
Do stereotypes skew coverage?
Does coverage of the drug crisis focus almost exclusively on African
Americans, despite the fact that the
vast majority of drug users are white? Does coverage of women on welfare
focus overwhelmingly on
African-American women, despite the fact that the majority of welfare
recipients are not black? Are
lesbians portrayed as "man-hating" and gay men portrayed as "sexual
predators" (even though a child is
100 times more likely to be molested by a family member than by an
unrelated gay adult—Denver Post,
9/28/92)?
What are the unchallenged assumptions?
Often the most important message of a story is not explicitly stated.
For instance, in coverage of women
on welfare, the age at which a woman had her first child will often
be reported—the implication being
that the woman's sexual "promiscuity," rather than institutional economic
factors, are responsible for her
plight.
Coverage of rape trials will often focus on a woman's sexual history
as though it calls her credibility into
question. After the arrest of William Kennedy Smith, a New York Times
article (4/17/91) dredged up a
host of irrelevant personal details about his accuser, including the
facts that she had skipped classes in the
9th grade, had received several speeding tickets and-when on a date-had
talked to other men.
Is the language loaded?
When media adopt loaded terminology, they help shape public opinion.
For instance, media often use the
right-wing buzzword "racial preference" to refer to affirmative action
programs. Polls show that this
decision makes a huge difference in how the issue is perceived: A 1992
Louis Harris poll, for example,
found that 70 percent said they favored "affirmative action" while
only 46 percent favored "racial
preference programs."
Is there a lack of context?
Coverage of so-called "reverse discrimination" usually fails to focus
on any of the institutional factors
which gives power to prejudice such as larger issues of economic inequality
and institutional racism.
Coverage of hate speech against gays and lesbians often fails to mention
increases in gay-bashing and
how the two might be related.
Do the headlines and stories match?
Usually headlines are not written by the reporter. Since many people
just skim headlines, misleading
headlines have a significant impact. A classic case: In a New York
Times article on the June 1988
U.S.-Soviet summit in Moscow, Margaret Thatcher was quoted as saying
of Reagan, "Poor dear, there's
nothing between his ears." The Times headline: "Thatcher Salute to
the Reagan Years."
Are stories on important issues featured prominently?
Look at where stories appear. Newspaper articles on the most widely
read pages (the front pages and the
editorial pages) and lead stories on television and radio will have
the greatest influence on public
opinion.
Opinion 2 - "MEDIA BIAS?
The Liberal Slant of Mass Media"
By Don T. Forse, Jr.
Director of Operations
AFA/Texas
The debate has raged for years. Conservatives
accuse the media of having a liberal bias and the
media accuse conservatives of being paranoid.
Who's right? Are conservatives so out of touch with
America that an objective media comes across as
hostile? Or are the media attempting to advance a
political agenda by slanting the news?
To answer these questions, it is necessary to study
those who actually report the news. How do
journalists describe their personal political leanings?
The Media Elite by S. Robert
Lichter, Stanley Rothman and
Linda S. Lichter (1990, Hastings
House, Book Publishers) attempts
to answer this question.
During 1979 and 1980, the authors
of The Media Elite interviewed 238
journalists from the entire
spectrum of mass media. Reporters, department
heads, editors, executives, anchors and
correspondents from America's most influential
media outlets -- including the New York Times,
Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time,
Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, CBS,
NBC, ABC and PBS -- were asked questions
about their background and beliefs.
For instance, how do leading journalists describe
their personal political philosophy? A majority, 54%,
described themselves as "left of
center," compared to only 17%
who chose "right of center." When
asked to rate their co-workers, the
disparity grows even greater. 56%
believe their colleagues are "on
the left," while only 8% say they
are on the right -- a margin of
7-to-1.
Not surpisingly, the media's liberal
attitude is also reflected in their
voting behavior. In 1972, when more than 60% of all
voters chose Nixon, over 80% among the media
elite voted for George McGovern, the most liberal
presidential candidate of the last half-century. While
some might claim this is due to tenuous relations
between Nixon and the press, it should be noted
that in 1976, leading journalists preferred Carter
over Ford by the same margin.
These voting patterns are consistent with
journalists' self-description on a wide range of social
and political issues. The following figures are
reprinted from The Media Elite.
Social-Cultural
90%
believe in abortion rights.
25%
believe homosexuality is wrong.
47%
believe adultery is wrong.
19%
believe environmental problems are overstated.
80%
believe strongly in affirmative action.
Economics
68%
believe government should reduce income gap.
48%
believe government should guarantee jobs.
Foreign Policy
56%
believe the U.S. exploits the Third World and
causes poverty.
57%
believe America's use of resources are
immoral.
The attitudes and values of the media elite are
clear. Most follow the lead of the Eastern liberal
establishment and reject the
notion of traditional morality. In the
worst cases, these journalists
attempt to use their position to
change public opinion on the
social and political issues of the
day.
These aren't the New Deal liberals
of FDR, however, but the social
liberals of the post-Watergate era. By their own
admission, they favor a strong welfare state,
abortion-on-demand, homosexual rights and
affirmative action, and are increasingly critical of
America itself.
It's accurate to say that the media elite are
extremely liberal when compared to the general
population. The question isn't
whether they're liberal -- they are.
What is in dispute is whether
these journalists let their personal
beliefs influence their coverage of
news.
While acknowledging their own
leftward leanings, most journalists
maintain that they are fair and
impartial, and that their political
philosophy doesn't affect their
coverage of the news. Such a claim is truly
incredible. It is unreasonable to assume that their
personal views, whatever they may be, don't
influence the way they present a story.
While the Lichter/Rothman study is somewhat
dated, few would argue that things have improved
since 1980. As conservatives, we should maintain a
healthy skepticism of mass media and be willing to
make our voices heard when the liberal slant is
painfully obvious.
Opinion 3 - from “Media Bias 101”
By Jonah Goldberg
The mainstream
media honestly don't consider themselves to be biased.
When they rip apart and question the Promise Keepers,
but let the "Million Moms" slide, they honestly don't see
the problem. Bryant Gumbel once introduced some quiz,
by saying "This test is not going to tell you whether
you're a racist or a liberal."
Often, even after you explain it to them, they are
clueless. When the producers of The West Wing are
asked if their show is liberal, they look as confused as
my basset hound used to when I offered him a grape
(but somehow a big dopey "huh?" on a basset's face is
much more endearing).
Dan Rather actually calls liberal bias "one of the great
political myths." No seriously, he does. Stop laughing.
For a conservative, or simply unpopular, group to break
through this cacophony of liberal group-think, it often
has to buy exposure in the form of newspaper ads or
television commercials. Even if they get a lot of free
media, the attendant commentary is wildly biased. Most
notions of campaign- finance reform involve some form
of curtailing the amount of money that can be spent on
public arguments. The news media loves this idea
because they trust themselves to be fair. But that doesn't
make them trustworthy. There are plenty of other
reasons to be against campaign-finance reform, but
whenever I see the media go nuts, this is the one I think
of.
Opinion 4 - from “Liberal vs. Conservative,
Media Bias?”
by Tonya Lindsey, Francesca Zajnoncelli, Pam Masnik, and Maryam Hosselvizadeb
The Conservative Media and their Fascist Agenda
In recent years the number of corporations owning
all forms of media are shrinking in numbers.
This new media big business, above all else, values the bottom line
and profits! profits! profits!
Structural changes within the political sphere have taken a turn towards
deregulation since Reagan's
80s. This means less restrictions on ownership and ignoring laws
set to protect the public's interests
(Federal Communications Act specifies that the airwaves belong to the
public, but somehow these
same airwaves are up for sale for the sake of open-market [narrow]
competition) so as to turn a larger
profit for already enormous media conglomerates.
Lately, these same conglomerates have been under
scrutiny because 89% of journalists polled (only
139 in total) voted for President Clinton's liberal platform.
The media has been charged with being too
"liberal." Research however, has also shown that during Clinton's
first 18 months in office 62% of
televised media broadcasts were negative compared to a more balanced
coverage of Bush's
"conservative" years. Leading us back to the possibility of a
different conclusion than the media as
liberal in their bias'.
As the number of corporations which own various
media resources get smaller and smaller, media
critics have begun to wonder if diversity of content is suffering.
The real question seems to be, "Is
diversity of content, or content period beside the point?" In
a big business, media-centered America,
diversity, or lack of it, is honored only if it attracts large audiences,
wealthy advertisers, and higher
profits.
A typical conservative bias exists within the media
as whole regardless of the content of the finished
product. Due to the marketing imperatives involved in content
decision making, sex and violence are a
staple of many a media package. Every broadcast, write-up, or
book must be entertaining and
titillating to attract large audiences and wealthy advertisers.
Actual content of the media package may
not offer traditional ideologies, but the marketing imperative behind
the mediated world view fills a
greater role in deciding just what the content will be. The so-called
liberal media hides behind its own
facade a truly conservative ethic of profit - content to big business
is otherwise irrelevant.