Media bias in the United States
Encyclopedia
Media bias in the United States occurs when the media in the United States systematically presents a particular point of view. Claims of media bias
in the United States
include claims of liberal
bias, conservative bias, mainstream bias, and corporate bias. There are a variety of watchdog groups
that attempt to find the facts behind both biased reporting and unfounded claims of bias, and research about media bias is a subject of systematic scholarship in a variety of disciplines.
, newspapers reflected the opinions of the publisher. Frequently, an area would be served by competing newspapers taking differing and often radical views by modern standards.
In 1728 Benjamin Franklin
, writing under the pseudonym "Busy-Body", wrote an article for the American Weekly Mercury advocating the printing of more paper money. He did not mention that his own printing company hoped to get the job of printing the money. It is an indication of the complexity of the issue of bias when it is noted that, even though he stood to profit by printing the money, Franklin also seems to have genuinely believed that printing more money would stimulate trade. As his biographer Walter Isaacson
points out, Franklin was never averse to "doing well by doing good".
In 1798, the Congress of the United States passed the Alien and Sedition Acts
, which prohibited the publication of "false, scandalous, or malicious writing" against the government, and made it a crime to voice any public opposition to any law or presidential act. This act was in effect until 1801.
In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln
accused newspapers in the border states of bias in favor of the Confederate
cause, and ordered many newspapers closed.
In the 19th century, many American newspapers made no pretense to lack of bias, openly advocating one or another political party. Big cities would often have competing newspapers supporting various political parties. To some extent this was mitigated by a separation between news and editorial. News reporting was expected to be relatively neutral or at least factual, whereas editorial sections openly relayed the opinion of the publisher. Editorials might also have been accompanied by editorial cartoon
s, which would frequently lampoon the publisher's opponents.
The advent of the Progressive Era
, from the 1890s to the 1920s, was a period of relative reform with a particular journalistic style
, while early in the period, some American newspapers engaged in yellow journalism
to increase sales. William Randolph Hearst
, publisher of several major-market newspapers, for example, deliberately falsified stories of incidents, which may have contributed to the Spanish-American War
.
In the years leading up to World War II
, politicians who favored the United States entering the war on the German
side accused the international media of a pro-Jewish bias, and often asserted that newspapers opposing entry of the United States on the German side were controlled by Jews. They claimed that reports of German mistreatment of Jews were biased and without foundation. Hollywood was said to be a hotbed of Jewish bias, and pro-German politicians in the United States called for Charlie Chaplin
’s film The Great Dictator
to be banned as an insult to a respected leader.
During the civil rights
movement in the 1960s, some White Southerners stated that television was biased against White Southerners and in favor of mixing of the races. In some cases, Southern television stations refused to air programs such as I Spy and Star Trek
, because of their racially mixed casts.
During the labor union movement and the civil rights
movement, newspapers supporting liberal
social reform were accused by conservative newspapers of communist bias.
In November 1969, Spiro Agnew
, then Vice President
under Richard Nixon
, made a landmark speech denouncing what he saw as media bias against the Vietnam War
. He called those opposed to the war the "nattering nabobs of negativism."
Conservative critics of the media say some bias exists within a wide variety of media channels including network news shows of CBS
, ABC
, and NBC
, cable
channels CNN
and MSNBC
, as well as major newspapers, news-wires, and radio outlets, especially CBS News
, Newsweek
, and the New York Times. These arguments intensified when it was revealed that the Democratic Party received a total donation of $1,020,816, given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), while the Republican Party received only $142,863 via 193 donations. Both of these figures represent donations made in 2008.
A study cited frequently by critics of a "liberal media bias" in American journalism is The Media Elite, a 1986 book co-authored by political scientists Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter. They surveyed journalists at national media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the broadcast networks. The survey found that most of these journalists were Democratic voters whose attitudes were well to the left of the general public on a variety of topics, including such hot-button social issues as abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights. Then they compared journalists' attitudes to their coverage of controversial issues such as the safety of nuclear power, school busing to promote racial integration, and the energy crisis of the 1970s. The authors concluded that journalists' coverage of controversial issues reflected their own attitudes, and the predominance of political liberals in newsrooms therefore pushed news coverage in a liberal direction. They presented this tilt as a mostly unconscious process of like-minded individuals projecting their shared assumptions onto their interpretations of reality.
In a survey conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors
in 1997, 61% of reporters stated that they were members of or shared the beliefs of the Democratic Party
. Only 15% say their beliefs were best represented by the Republican Party
. This leaves 24% undecided or Independent.
A 2002 study by Jim A. Kuypers
of Dartmouth College
, Press Bias and Politics, investigated the issue of media bias. In this study of 116 mainstream US papers, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, Kuypers stated that the mainstream press in America tends to favor liberal viewpoints. They claimed that reporters who they thought were expressing moderate or conservative points of view were often labeled as holding a minority point of view. Kuypers said he found liberal bias in reporting a variety of issues including race, welfare reform
, environmental protection
, and gun control
.
A joint study by the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that viewers believe that liberal media bias can be found in television news by networks such as CNN
. These findings concerning a perception of liberal bias in television news – particularly at CNN – are also reported by other sources.
and Edward S. Herman
claim the logic in these conclusions is flawed. They state that comparing the media product to the voting record of the journalists is akin to thinking auto-factory workers design the cars they help produce. Indeed, they claim that the media owners and news makers are the ones with an agenda, and they assert that this agenda is subordinated to corporate interests that they view as often leaning right.
A report "Examining the 'Liberal Media' Claim: Journalists' Views on Politics, Economic Policy and Media Coverage" by David Croteau, from 1998, calls into question the assumption that journalists' views are to the left of center in America. The findings were that journalists were "mostly centrist in their political orientation" and more conservative than the general public on economic issues (with a minority being more progressive than the general public on social issues).
See also John Ziegler (talk show host)
Examples of conservative bias include:
Rupert Murdoch
, the CEO of News Corporation
(the parent of Fox News), self-identifies as a libertarian. Rupert Murdoch has exerted a strong influence over Fox News.
In 2008 George W. Bush
's press secretary Scott McClellan
published a book in which he confessed to regularly and routinely, but unknowingly, passing on lies to the media, following the instructions of his superiors, lies that the media reported as facts. He characterizes the press as, by and large, honest, and intent on telling the truth, but reports that "the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House", especially on the subject of the war in Iraq.
E. J. Dionne, Jr., Op Ed columnist for The Washington Post
, writes: "For all the talk of a media love affair with Obama, there is a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the media's discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from the moderate left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspectives."
, CBS
, or ABC
, Fox News's editorial policy is set from the top down in the form of a daily memo: "frequently, Reina says, it also contains hints, suggestions and directives on how to slant the day's news – invariably, he says, in a way that's consistent with the politics and desires of the Bush administration."
Fox News responded by denouncing Reina as a "disgruntled employee" with "an ax to grind."
According to the December 18, 2010 issue of The Atlantic, "One alleged news network fed its audience a diet of lies, while contributing financially to the party that benefited from those lies. Those who work for Fox News are not working for a journalistic enterprise. They are working for the communications department of a political party."
, while chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
, commissioned a $10,000 government study into Bill Moyers
' PBS
program, NOW. The results of the study indicated that there was no particular bias on PBS. Mr. Tomlinson chose to reject the results of the study, subsequently reducing time and funding for NOW with Bill Moyers
, which many including Tomlinson regarded as a "left-wing" program, and then expanded a show hosted by Fox News correspondent Tucker Carlson
. Some board members stated that his actions were politically motivated. Himself a frequent target of claims of bias (in this case, conservative bias), Tomlinson resigned from the CPB board on November 4, 2005. Regarding the claims of a left-wing bias, Bill Moyers asserted in a Broadcast & Cable interview that "If reporting on what's happening to ordinary people thrown overboard by circumstances beyond their control and betrayed by Washington officials is liberalism, I stand convicted."
Many also point to the rising tide of Talk Radio
's popularity as evidence of an underlying conservative bias in the American Press.
. Coverage is variously cited as being: 'Beltway centrism', framed
in terms of domestic politics and established policy positions, only following Washington's 'Official Agendas', and mirroring only a 'Washington Consensus'. Regardless of the criticism, according to the Columbia Journalism Review
, "No news subject generates more complaints about media objectivity than the Middle East in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular."
wrote that "mainstream and conservative Jewish organizations have mobilized considerable lobbying resources, financial contributions from the Jewish community, and citizen pressure on the news media and other forums of public discourse in support of the Israeli government."
According to CUNY professor of journalism, Eric Alterman
, debate among Middle East pundits, “is dominated by people who cannot imagine criticizing Israel”. In 2002, he listed 56 columnists and commentators who can be counted on to support Israel “reflexively and without qualification.” Alterman only identified five pundits who consistently criticize Israeli behavior or endorse pro-Arab positions. Journalists described as pro-Israel by Mearsheimer and Walt include: the New York Times’ William Safire, A.M. Rosenthal, David Brooks, and Thomas Friedman (although they say that the latter is sometimes critical of areas of Israel policy); the Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland, Robert Kagan, Charles Krauthammer and George Will; and the Los Angeles Times’ Max Boot
, Jonah Goldberg
and Jonathan Chait
.
writes that "Jewish organizations are quick to detect bias in the coverage of the Middle East, and quick to complain about it. That's especially true of late. As The Forward
observed in late April [2002], 'rooting out perceived anti-Israel bias in the media has become for many American Jews the most direct and emotional outlet for connecting with the conflict 6,000 miles away.'"
The Forward relates how one individual feels:
Indicative of the diversity of opinion is a 2003 Boston Globe profile of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
media watchdog group in which Mark Jurkowitz observes: "To its supporters, CAMERA is figuratively – and perhaps literally – doing God's work, battling insidious anti-Israeli bias in the media. But its detractors see CAMERA as a myopic and vindictive special interest group trying to muscle its views into media coverage."
A former spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York said that as a result of this lobbying of the media: “Of course, a lot of self-censorship goes on. Journalists, editors, and politicians are going to think twice about criticizing Israel if they know they are going to get thousands of angry calls in a matter of hours. The Jewish lobby is good at orchestrating pressure.”
The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy, a book published by Stanley Rothman and Mark Snyderman, claimed to document bias in media coverage of scientific findings regarding intelligence quotient
and race
.
Research has shown that African Americans are over-represented in news reports on crime, and within those stories, they are more likely to be shown as the perpetrators of the crime than as the persons reacting to or suffering from it. This is true even when crime statistics indicate otherwise.
Conversely, multiple commentators and newspaper articles have cited examples of the national media undereporting interracial hate crimes when they involve white victims as compared to when they involve black victims.
In their book, Chomsky and Herman say that the pro-power bias occurs not as a result of conscious design but simply as a consequence of market selection: those businesses who favor profits over news quality survive, while those that present a more accurate picture of the world tend to become marginalized. They also say that several filters, such as the drive for advertising revenue and the dependency of mass media news outlets upon major sources of news, particularly the government, work to create a "propaganda model
" of the mainstream media. To minimize the possibilities of lost revenue, therefore, outlets will tend to report news in a tone more favorable to the government and giving unfavorable news about the government less emphasis. The book and related works by the authors provide numerous examples of what they see as bias in the leading US media, most prominently in the New York Times.
According to some, the profit-driven quest for high numbers of viewers, rather than high quality for viewers, has resulted in a slide from serious news and analysis to entertainment, sometimes called infotainment
:
claims that most television news stories are made to fit into one of five categories:
In these five categories, Jamieson sees a tendency towards an unrealistic black/white mentality, in which the media simplifies the world into comfortingly easily understood opposites. She says the media provides an over-simplified skeleton of information which is more easily commercialized.
, which would frequently lampoon the publisher's opponents.
In an editorial
for The American Conservative
, Pat Buchanan wrote that reporting by "the liberal media establishment" on the Watergate scandal
"played a central role in bringing down a president." Richard Nixon later complained, "I gave them a sword and they ran it right through me." Nixon's Vice-President Spiro Agnew
attacked the media in a series of speeches—two of the most famous having been written by White House aides William Safire
and Buchanan himself—as "elitist" and "liberal." However, the media had also strongly criticized his Democratic
predecessor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, for his handling of the Vietnam War
, which culminated in him not seeking a second term.
In 2004, Steve Ansolabehere, Rebecca Lessem and Jim Snyder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
analyzed the political orientation of endorsements by U.S. newspapers. They found an upward trend in the average propensity to endorse a candidate, and in particular an incumbent one. There were also some changes in the average ideological slant of endorsements: while in the 1940s and in the 1950s there was a clear advantage to Republican candidates, this advantage continuously eroded in subsequent decades, to the extent that in the 1990s the authors found a slight Democratic lead in the average endorsement choice.
Riccardo Puglisi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
looks at the editorial choices of the New York Times from 1946 to 1997. He finds that the Times displays Democratic partisanship, with some watchdog
aspects. This is the case, because during presidential campaigns the Times systematically gives more coverage to Democratic topics of civil rights, health care, labor and social welfare, but only when the incumbent
president is a Republican. These topics are classified as Democratic ones, because Gallup polls show that on average U.S. citizens think that Democratic candidates would be better at handling problems related to them. According to Puglisi, in the post-1960 period the Times displays a more symmetric type of watchdog behavior, just because during presidential campaigns it also gives more coverage to the typically Republican issue of Defense when the incumbent President is a Democrat, and less so when the incumbent is a Republican.
John Lott and Kevin Hassett of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute
studied the coverage of economic news by looking at a panel of 389 U.S. newspapers from 1991 to 2004, and at a subsample of the two ten newspapers and the Associated Press from 1985 to 2004. For each release of official data about a set of economic indicators, the authors analyze how newspapers decide to report on them, as reflected by the tone of the related headlines. The idea is to check whether newspapers display partisan bias, by giving more positive or negative coverage to the same economic figure, as a function of the political affiliation of the incumbent President. Controlling for the economic data being released, the authors find that there are between 9.6 and 14.7% fewer positive stories when the incumbent President is a Republican.
According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
, a liberal watchdog group, Democratic candidate John Edwards was falsely maligned and was not given coverage commensurate with his standing in presidential campaign coverage because his message questioned corporate power.
A poll of likely 2008 United States presidential election voters released on March 14, 2007 by Zogby International
reports that 83 percent of those surveyed believe that there is a bias in the media, with 64 percent of respondents of the opinion that this bias favors liberals and 28 percent of respondents believing that this bias is conservative. In August 2008 the Washington Post
ombudsman
wrote that the Post had published almost three times as many page 1 stories about Barack Obama
than it had about John McCain
since Obama won the Democratic party
nomination that June. In September 2008 a Rasmussen poll found that 68 percent of voters believed that "most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win." Forty-nine (49) percent of respondents stated that the reporters were helping Barack Obama to get elected, while only 14 percent said the same regarding John McCain. A further 51 percent said that the press was actively "trying to hurt" Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin
with negative coverage. In October 2008, The Washington Post
media correspondent Howard Kurtz
reported that Sarah Palin was again on the cover of Newsweek
, "but with the most biased campaign headline I've ever seen."
After the election was over, the Washington Post ombudsman
Deborah Howell reviewed the Post's coverage and concluded that it was tilted in favor of Obama. "The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts." Over the course of the campaign, the Post printed 594 "issues stories" and 1,295 "horse-race stories." There were more positive opinion pieces on Obama than McCain (32 to 13) and more negative pieces about McCain than Obama (58 to 32). Overall, more news stories were dedicated to Obama than McCain. Howell said that the results of her survey were comparable to those reported by the Project for Excellence in Journalism
for the national media. (That report, issued on October 22, 2008, found that "coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable," with 57% of the stories issued after the conventions being negative and only 14% being positive. For the same period, 36% of the stories on Obama were positive, 35% were neutral or mixed, and 29% were negative.) While rating the Post's biographical stories as generally quite good, she concluded that "Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a teenager."
Various critics, particularly Hudson, have shown concern at the link between the news media reporting and what they see as the trivialised nature of American elections. Hudson argues that America’s news media elections damage the democratic process. He argues that elections are centered on candidates, whose advancement depends on funds, personality and sound-bites, rather than serious political discussion or policies offered by parties. His argument is that it is on the media which Americans are dependent for information about politics (this is of course true almost by definition) and that they are therefore greatly influenced by the way the media report, which concentrates on short sound-bites, gaffes by candidates, and scandals. The reporting of elections avoids complex issues or issues which are time-consuming to explain. Of course, important political issues are generally both complex and time-consuming to explain, so are avoided.
Hudson blames this style of media coverage, at least partly, for trivialised elections:
stated the network news disproportionately focused on pro-war sources and left out many anti-war
sources. According to the study, 64% of total sources were in favor of the Iraq War while total anti-war sources made up 10% of the media (only 3% of US sources were anti-war). The study stated that "viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with U.S. guests alone, the ratio increases to 25 to 1."
In February 2004, a study was released by the liberal national media watchdog group FAIR
. According to the study, which took place during October 2003, current or former government or military officials accounted for 76 percent of all 319 sources for news stories about Iraq which aired on network news channels.
On March 23, 2006, the US designated the Hezbollah affiliated media, Al-Nour
Radio and Al-Manar
TV station, as "terrorist
entities" through legislative language as well as support of a letter to President Bush signed by 51 senators.
comic strip
, a topical daily cartoon, has often been accused of liberal bias. In 2004 a conservative letter writing campaign was successful in convincing Continental Features, a company that prints many Sunday comics sections, to refuse to print the strip, causing Doonesbury to disappear from the Sunday comics in 38 newspapers. Of the 38, only one editor, Troy Turner, executive editor of the Anniston Star in Alabama, continued to run the Sunday Doonesbury, albeit necessarily in black and white.
Doonesbury is not the first cartoon to blur the distinction between the comics and editorial cartoons. Li'l Abner
by Al Capp
routinely parodied Southern Democrats
through the character of Senator Jack S. Phogbound ("Ain't no Jack S. like OUR Jack S!). Pogo by Walt Kelly
caricaturized a wide range of political figures including Joseph McCarthy
, Richard Nixon
, Hubert Humphrey
, George Wallace
, Robert F. Kennedy
, and Eugene McCarthy
. Little Orphan Annie
espoused a strong anti-union pro-business stance in the story "Eonite" from 1935, where union agitators destroy a business that would have benefited the entire human race.
Modern comic strips routinely take political stands. Mallard Fillmore
by Bruce Tinsley and Prickly City
by Scott Stantis are both proudly conservative in their views. In addition to Doonesbury, Non Sequitur
often promotes liberal views and Opus
also promotes political views, though those views are often somewhat blurred.
Self-described as "the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly, a study by political scientists Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeff Milyo of the University of Missouri at Columbia. The study's stated purpose was to document the range of bias among news outlets. The research concluded that of the major 20 news outlets studied "18 scored left of the average U.S. voter, with CBS Evening News
, The New York Times
and The Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal
, while only the Fox News "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times
scored right of the average U.S. voter." The study also identified the Drudge Report
as "left of center". In this study, "left" and "liberal" are treated as synonyms, and are identified with think tanks cited by Congressional members of the Democratic Party
, while "right" is identified with think tanks cited by Congressional members of the Republican Party
. The report also states, however, that the news media show a remarkable degree of centrism, since all but one of the outlets studied are, from an ideological point of view, between the average Democrat and average Republican in Congress.
The study met with criticism from many outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, and Media Matters
. Criticisms included:
Mark Liberman
, a professor of Computer Science and the Director of Linguistic Data Consortium
at the University of Pennsylvania
, has pointed out a number of statistical flaws in this study. According to Professor Liberman, the model chosen leads to "very implausible psychological claims, for which no evidence is presented." He concludes by saying that "many if not most of the complaints directed against G&M (Groseclose and Milyo) are motivated in part by ideological disagreement – just as much of the praise for their work is motivated by ideological agreement. It would be nice if there were a less politically fraught body of data on which such modeling exercises could be explored."
A 1998 study from FAIR
found that journalists are "mostly centrist in their political orientation"; 30% considered themselves to the left on social issues compared to 9% on the right, while 11% considered themselves to the left on economic issues compared to 19% on the right. The report explained that since journalists considered themselves to be centrists, "perhaps this is why an earlier survey found that they tended to vote for Bill Clinton in large numbers." FAIR uses this study to support the claim that media bias is propagated down from the management, and that individual journalists are relatively neutral in their work.
the media in the United States lost a great deal of freedom between the 2004 and 2006 indices, citing the Judith Miller case
and similar cases and laws restricting the confidentiality of sources
as the main factors. They also cite the fact that reporters who question the American "war on terror
" are sometimes regarded as suspicious. They rank the United States as 53rd out of 168 countries in freedom of the press, comparable to Japan
and Uruguay
, but below all but one European Union
country (Poland
) and below most OECD countries (countries that accept democracy and free markets). In the 2008 ranking, the United States moved up to 36, between Taiwan
and Macedonia, but still far below its ranking in the late 20th Century as a world leader in having a free and unbiased press.
According to Noam Chomsky
, American commercial media encourage controversy within a narrow range of opinion, in order to give the impression of open debate, but do not report on news that falls outside that range.
According to David Niven, of Ohio State University
, research shows that American media show bias on only two issues, race and gender equality.
Accusers of liberal or conservative bias alike typically ignore the dictionary meanings of those words (as do modern political parties). In fact, in the current political discourse, the words seem to have meaning that shifts depending on point of view. The Oxford American Dictionary
defines "liberal" in the political sense as "favoring democratic reform and individual liberty" and "conservative" in the political sense as "favoring private enterprise and freedom from government control".
(FAIR), a self-described progressive
media watch group, has argued that accusations of liberal media bias are part of a conservative strategy, noting an article in the August 20, 1992 Washington Post, in which Republican party chair Rich Bond
compared journalists to referees in a sporting match. "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time." Media Matters for America
, another self-described progressive media watch group, dedicates itself to "monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."
Conservative organizations Accuracy In Media
and Media Research Center
support the claim that the media has a liberal bias, and are dedicated to publicizing the issue. The Media Research Center, for example, was founded with the specific intention to "prove ... that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values".
Groups such as FactCheck
argue that the media frequently gets the facts wrong because they frequently rely upon biased sources of information. This includes using information provided to them from both parties.
A news blog called After the Press is specifically tasked with national news gathering on media bias and inaccuracy, http://afterthepress.com/
Non-partisan
Claims of conservative bias
Claims of liberal bias
Media bias
Media bias refers to the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
include claims of liberal
Liberalism in the United States
Liberalism in the United States is a broad political philosophy centered on the unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion for all belief systems, and the separation of church and state, right to due process...
bias, conservative bias, mainstream bias, and corporate bias. There are a variety of watchdog groups
Watchdog journalism
Watchdog journalism aims to hold accountable public personalities and institutions, whose functions impact social and political life. The term "lapdog journalism", for journalism biased in favour of personalities and institutions, is sometimes used as a conceptual opposite to watchdog...
that attempt to find the facts behind both biased reporting and unfounded claims of bias, and research about media bias is a subject of systematic scholarship in a variety of disciplines.
History
Before the rise of professional journalism in the early 1900s, and the conception of media ethicsMedia ethics
Media ethics is the subdivision of applied ethics dealing with the specific ethical principles and standards of media, including broadcast media, film, theatre, the arts, print media and the internet...
, newspapers reflected the opinions of the publisher. Frequently, an area would be served by competing newspapers taking differing and often radical views by modern standards.
In 1728 Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
, writing under the pseudonym "Busy-Body", wrote an article for the American Weekly Mercury advocating the printing of more paper money. He did not mention that his own printing company hoped to get the job of printing the money. It is an indication of the complexity of the issue of bias when it is noted that, even though he stood to profit by printing the money, Franklin also seems to have genuinely believed that printing more money would stimulate trade. As his biographer Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson is a writer and biographer. He is the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. He has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of TIME...
points out, Franklin was never averse to "doing well by doing good".
In 1798, the Congress of the United States passed the Alien and Sedition Acts
Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution's reign of terror and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams...
, which prohibited the publication of "false, scandalous, or malicious writing" against the government, and made it a crime to voice any public opposition to any law or presidential act. This act was in effect until 1801.
In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
accused newspapers in the border states of bias in favor of the Confederate
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
cause, and ordered many newspapers closed.
In the 19th century, many American newspapers made no pretense to lack of bias, openly advocating one or another political party. Big cities would often have competing newspapers supporting various political parties. To some extent this was mitigated by a separation between news and editorial. News reporting was expected to be relatively neutral or at least factual, whereas editorial sections openly relayed the opinion of the publisher. Editorials might also have been accompanied by editorial cartoon
Editorial cartoon
An editorial cartoon, also known as a political cartoon, is an illustration containing a commentary that usually relates to current events or personalities....
s, which would frequently lampoon the publisher's opponents.
The advent of the Progressive Era
Progressive Era
The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political...
, from the 1890s to the 1920s, was a period of relative reform with a particular journalistic style
Muckraker
The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...
, while early in the period, some American newspapers engaged in yellow journalism
Yellow journalism
Yellow journalism or the yellow press is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism...
to increase sales. William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
, publisher of several major-market newspapers, for example, deliberately falsified stories of incidents, which may have contributed to the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
.
In the years leading up to World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, politicians who favored the United States entering the war on the German
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
side accused the international media of a pro-Jewish bias, and often asserted that newspapers opposing entry of the United States on the German side were controlled by Jews. They claimed that reports of German mistreatment of Jews were biased and without foundation. Hollywood was said to be a hotbed of Jewish bias, and pro-German politicians in the United States called for Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
’s film The Great Dictator
The Great Dictator
The Great Dictator is a comedy film by Charlie Chaplin released in October 1940. Like most Chaplin films, he wrote, produced, and directed, in addition to starring as the lead. Having been the only Hollywood film maker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, this was...
to be banned as an insult to a respected leader.
During the civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
movement in the 1960s, some White Southerners stated that television was biased against White Southerners and in favor of mixing of the races. In some cases, Southern television stations refused to air programs such as I Spy and Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
, because of their racially mixed casts.
During the labor union movement and the civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
movement, newspapers supporting liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
social reform were accused by conservative newspapers of communist bias.
In November 1969, Spiro Agnew
Spiro Agnew
Spiro Theodore Agnew was the 39th Vice President of the United States , serving under President Richard Nixon, and the 55th Governor of Maryland...
, then Vice President
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
under Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
, made a landmark speech denouncing what he saw as media bias against the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. He called those opposed to the war the "nattering nabobs of negativism."
Demographic Polling
Gallup Polls show that most Americans do not have confidence in the mass media. In 2011 a 60% majority saw a media bias, with 47% saying mass media was too liberal, 13% too conservative. Perceived bias was strongest among partisans, with 78% of conservatives reporting bias, 53% of liberals reporting bias and only 46% of moderates reporting bias. Those who view mass media reporting as "just about right" was polled at 36%, in the historic range of Gallup polling. According to Gallup, in every year since 2002 more Americans think the media show liberal bias than think the media show conservative bias.Claims of a liberal bias
Liberal bias in the media occurs when liberal ideas have undue influence on the coverage or selection of news stories.Conservative critics of the media say some bias exists within a wide variety of media channels including network news shows of CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, and NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, cable
Cable
A cable is two or more wires running side by side and bonded, twisted or braided together to form a single assembly. In mechanics cables, otherwise known as wire ropes, are used for lifting, hauling and towing or conveying force through tension. In electrical engineering cables are used to carry...
channels CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
and MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
, as well as major newspapers, news-wires, and radio outlets, especially CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, and the New York Times. These arguments intensified when it was revealed that the Democratic Party received a total donation of $1,020,816, given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), while the Republican Party received only $142,863 via 193 donations. Both of these figures represent donations made in 2008.
A study cited frequently by critics of a "liberal media bias" in American journalism is The Media Elite, a 1986 book co-authored by political scientists Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter. They surveyed journalists at national media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the broadcast networks. The survey found that most of these journalists were Democratic voters whose attitudes were well to the left of the general public on a variety of topics, including such hot-button social issues as abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights. Then they compared journalists' attitudes to their coverage of controversial issues such as the safety of nuclear power, school busing to promote racial integration, and the energy crisis of the 1970s. The authors concluded that journalists' coverage of controversial issues reflected their own attitudes, and the predominance of political liberals in newsrooms therefore pushed news coverage in a liberal direction. They presented this tilt as a mostly unconscious process of like-minded individuals projecting their shared assumptions onto their interpretations of reality.
In a survey conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors
American Society of Newspaper Editors
The American Society of News Editors is a membership organization for editors, producers or directors in charge of journalistic organizations or departments, deans or faculty at university journalism schools, and leaders and faculty of media-related foundations and training organizations...
in 1997, 61% of reporters stated that they were members of or shared the beliefs of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
. Only 15% say their beliefs were best represented by the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
. This leaves 24% undecided or Independent.
A 2002 study by Jim A. Kuypers
Jim A. Kuypers
Jim A. Kuypers is an American academic specializing in communication studies. A professor at Virginia Tech, he has written on the news media, rhetorical criticism and presidential rhetoric, and is particularly known for his work in political communication which explores the qualitative aspects of...
of Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, Press Bias and Politics, investigated the issue of media bias. In this study of 116 mainstream US papers, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, Kuypers stated that the mainstream press in America tends to favor liberal viewpoints. They claimed that reporters who they thought were expressing moderate or conservative points of view were often labeled as holding a minority point of view. Kuypers said he found liberal bias in reporting a variety of issues including race, welfare reform
Welfare reform
Welfare reform refers to the process of reforming the framework of social security and welfare provisions, but what is considered reform is a matter of opinion. The term was used in the United States to support the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act...
, environmental protection
Environmental protection
Environmental protection is a practice of protecting the environment, on individual, organizational or governmental level, for the benefit of the natural environment and humans. Due to the pressures of population and our technology the biophysical environment is being degraded, sometimes permanently...
, and gun control
Gun control
Gun control is any law, policy, practice, or proposal designed to restrict or limit the possession, production, importation, shipment, sale, and/or use of guns or other firearms by private citizens...
.
A joint study by the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that viewers believe that liberal media bias can be found in television news by networks such as CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
. These findings concerning a perception of liberal bias in television news – particularly at CNN – are also reported by other sources.
Criticism of claims of liberal bias
However, scholars Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
and Edward S. Herman
Edward S. Herman
Edward S. Herman is an American economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media. He is Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also teaches at Annenberg School for...
claim the logic in these conclusions is flawed. They state that comparing the media product to the voting record of the journalists is akin to thinking auto-factory workers design the cars they help produce. Indeed, they claim that the media owners and news makers are the ones with an agenda, and they assert that this agenda is subordinated to corporate interests that they view as often leaning right.
A report "Examining the 'Liberal Media' Claim: Journalists' Views on Politics, Economic Policy and Media Coverage" by David Croteau, from 1998, calls into question the assumption that journalists' views are to the left of center in America. The findings were that journalists were "mostly centrist in their political orientation" and more conservative than the general public on economic issues (with a minority being more progressive than the general public on social issues).
Authors
Several authors have written books on liberal bias in the media. Some examples include:- John StosselJohn StosselJohn F. Stossel is an American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist. In October 2009 Stossel left his long time home on ABC News to join the Fox Business Channel and Fox News Channel, both owned and operated by News Corp...
wrote Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media in 2004 about what he alleged was a liberal bias in the established media. - Bernard GoldbergBernard GoldbergBernard Richard Goldberg , also known as Bernie Goldberg, is an eleven-time Emmy Award-winning American writer, journalist, and political commentator...
wrote BiasBias (book)Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News is a non-fiction book by Bernard Goldberg, a 28-year veteran CBS news reporter and producer, giving detailed examples of what he calls liberal bias in television news reporting...
in 2001, in which he claimed CBS, his former employer, had a liberal bias. In 2009, he published A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media. - S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman and Linda Lichter wrote The Media EliteThe Media EliteThe Media Elite, written by S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter, details a social scientific study of the ideological commitments of elite journalists and the consequences of those commitments on both the reporting itself and on its reception by the public. The book states that...
in 1986, in which journalists' political views and voting record were compared to the general public. - Bob KohnBob KohnBob Kohn currently serves as founder, Chairman and CEO of RoyaltyShare, Inc., an outsourced royalty processing solution for the music, book publishing, brand licensing, and motion picture industries....
wrote Journalistic Fraud, a criticism of the New York Times. - Ann CoulterAnn CoulterAnn Hart Coulter is an American lawyer, conservative social and political commentator, author, and syndicated columnist. She frequently appears on television, radio, and as a speaker at public events and private events...
wrote Slander: Liberal Lies About the American RightSlander: Liberal Lies About the American RightSlander: Liberal Lies About the American Right is a book by conservative columnist Ann Coulter criticizing "the left's hegemonic control of the news media". The book was a #1 New York Times best seller in 2002, holding the #1 spot for eight weeks....
in 2002, in which she claimed the American television and print news had a widespread liberal bias. - Brian C. AndersonBrian C. AndersonBrian C. Anderson is the editor of City Journal, a quarterly magazine, published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.-Background:Anderson received his BA and MA from Boston College...
wrote South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media BiasSouth Park ConservativesSouth Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias is a book written by Brian C. Anderson. It explores the idea that the traditional mass media in the United States are biased towards liberals, but through new media, such as the Internet, cable television, and talk radio,...
. - Tim Groseclose wrote Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.
See also John Ziegler (talk show host)
John Ziegler (talk show host)
John Ziegler is a conservative radio talk show host turned documentary film writer/director.Ziegler's most prominent work in radio has been as the evening host of a radio talk show called The John Ziegler Show on KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles, California from January 12, 2004 until November 13, 2007...
Claims of a conservative bias
Conservative bias in the media occurs when conservative ideas have undue influence on the coverage or selection of news stories.Examples of conservative bias include:
- Media Concentration: A handful (Disney, CBS CorporationCBS CorporationCBS Corporation is an American media conglomerate focused on commercial broadcasting, publishing, billboards and television production, with most of its operations in the United States. The President and CEO of the company is Leslie Moonves. Sumner Redstone, owner of National Amusements, is CBS's...
, News CorporationNews CorporationNews Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
, TimeWarner, and General ElectricGeneral ElectricGeneral Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
) of corporate conglomeratesConglomerate (company)A conglomerate is a combination of two or more corporations engaged in entirely different businesses that fall under one corporate structure , usually involving a parent company and several subsidiaries. Often, a conglomerate is a multi-industry company...
own the majority of mass media outlets. Such a uniformity of ownership means that stories which are critical of these corporations are in some cases underplayed in the media.
- Capitalist Model: In the United States the media are operated for profit, and are usually funded by advertisingAdvertisingAdvertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
. Stories critical of advertisers or their interests may in some cases be underplayed, while stories favorable to advertisers may be given more coverage.
- Conservative Media Organizations: Certain conservative media outlets such as NewsMax and WorldNetDailyWorldNetDailyWorldNetDaily is an American web site that publishes news and associated content from a U.S. conservative perspective. It was founded in May 1997 by Joseph Farah with the stated intent of "exposing wrongdoing, corruption and abuse of power" and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.-History:In...
describe themselves as news organizations, but are generally seen as promoting a conservative agenda.
Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
, the CEO of News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
(the parent of Fox News), self-identifies as a libertarian. Rupert Murdoch has exerted a strong influence over Fox News.
In 2008 George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
's press secretary Scott McClellan
Scott McClellan
Scott McClellan is a former White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush, and author of a controversial No. 1 New York Times bestseller about the Bush Administration titled What Happened. He replaced Ari Fleischer as press secretary in July 2003 and served until May 10, 2006...
published a book in which he confessed to regularly and routinely, but unknowingly, passing on lies to the media, following the instructions of his superiors, lies that the media reported as facts. He characterizes the press as, by and large, honest, and intent on telling the truth, but reports that "the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House", especially on the subject of the war in Iraq.
E. J. Dionne, Jr., Op Ed columnist for The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, writes: "For all the talk of a media love affair with Obama, there is a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the media's discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from the moderate left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspectives."
Criticism of claims of conservative bias
"I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel."--Rupert Murdoch (Salon, 3/1/01)Fox News
According to former Fox News producer Charlie Reina, unlike the APAssociated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, or ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, Fox News's editorial policy is set from the top down in the form of a daily memo: "frequently, Reina says, it also contains hints, suggestions and directives on how to slant the day's news – invariably, he says, in a way that's consistent with the politics and desires of the Bush administration."
Fox News responded by denouncing Reina as a "disgruntled employee" with "an ax to grind."
According to the December 18, 2010 issue of The Atlantic, "One alleged news network fed its audience a diet of lies, while contributing financially to the party that benefited from those lies. Those who work for Fox News are not working for a journalistic enterprise. They are working for the communications department of a political party."
Kenneth Tomlinson and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Kenneth TomlinsonKenneth Tomlinson
Kenneth Y. Tomlinson is a former editor at Reader's Digest and American government official. He is the former chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages Voice of America radio, and formerly Chairman of the Board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which manages funds...
, while chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress, funded by the United States’ federal government to promote public broadcasting...
, commissioned a $10,000 government study into Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers is an American journalist and public commentator. He served as White House Press Secretary in the United States President Lyndon B. Johnson Administration from 1965 to 1967. He worked as a news commentator on television for ten years. Moyers has had an extensive involvement with public...
' PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
program, NOW. The results of the study indicated that there was no particular bias on PBS. Mr. Tomlinson chose to reject the results of the study, subsequently reducing time and funding for NOW with Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers is an American journalist and public commentator. He served as White House Press Secretary in the United States President Lyndon B. Johnson Administration from 1965 to 1967. He worked as a news commentator on television for ten years. Moyers has had an extensive involvement with public...
, which many including Tomlinson regarded as a "left-wing" program, and then expanded a show hosted by Fox News correspondent Tucker Carlson
Tucker Carlson
Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson is an American political news correspondent and conservative commentator for the Fox News Channel...
. Some board members stated that his actions were politically motivated. Himself a frequent target of claims of bias (in this case, conservative bias), Tomlinson resigned from the CPB board on November 4, 2005. Regarding the claims of a left-wing bias, Bill Moyers asserted in a Broadcast & Cable interview that "If reporting on what's happening to ordinary people thrown overboard by circumstances beyond their control and betrayed by Washington officials is liberalism, I stand convicted."
Many also point to the rising tide of Talk Radio
Talk Radio
Talk Radio can refer to:*Talk radio, a call-in discussion format for radio broadcasts*Talk Radio UK, a former national UK talk station**talkSPORT, a British radio station formerly called "Talk Radio"...
's popularity as evidence of an underlying conservative bias in the American Press.
Authors
Several authors have written books on conservative bias in the media, including:- Eric AltermanEric AltermanEric Alterman is an American English teacher, historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. His political weblog named Altercation was hosted by MSNBC.com from 2002 until 2006, moved to Media Matters for America until December 2008, and is now hosted by The...
wrote What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the NewsWhat Liberal Media?What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News is a book by columnist Eric Alterman that challenges the widespread conservative belief in a liberal media bias...
, (2003) in which he disputes the belief in liberal media bias, and suggests that over-correcting for this belief resulted in conservative media bias. - Al FrankenAl FrankenAlan Stuart "Al" Franken is the junior United States Senator from Minnesota. He is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which affiliates with the national Democratic Party....
wrote Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell ThemLies and the Lying Liars Who Tell ThemLies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is a satirical book on American politics by comedian, political commentator and now Senator Al Franken, published in 2003 by Dutton, a subsidiary in the Penguin Group. Franken had a study group of 14 Harvard graduate students known as "TeamFranken" to help him...
, (2003), in which he argues that mainstream media organizations have neither a liberal nor a conservative political bias, but there exists a right-wing media that seeks to promote conservative ideology rather than report the news. - Jim HightowerJim HightowerJames Allen "Jim" Hightower is an American syndicated columnist, activist and author.-Life and career:Born in Denison, Texas, Hightower came from a working class background. He worked his way through college as assistant general manager of the Denton Chamber of Commerce and later landed a spot as...
in There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos (1997; ISBN 0-06-092949-9) uses humor to deflate claims of liberal bias, and gives examples of how media support corporate interests. - David BrockDavid BrockDavid Brock is an American journalist and author, the founder of the media watchdog group, Media Matters for America, and a Democratic political operative...
wrote The Republican Noise MachineThe Republican Noise MachineThe Republican Noise Machine is a 2004 book written by David Brock which chronicles the author's opinion of how the American right wing was able to build their media infrastructure...
(2004). - Amy GoodmanAmy GoodmanAmy Goodman is an American progressive broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter and author. Goodman is the host of Democracy Now!, an independent global news program broadcast daily on radio, television and the internet.-Early life:Goodman was born in Bay Shore, New York...
wrote Standing up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. - Edward HermanEdward HermanEdward Herman may refer to:* Ed Herman, American mixed martial arts fighter* Edward S. Herman, American economist and media analystSee also:* Edward Herrmann, American actor* Edward John Herrmann, U.S. Catholic bishop...
and Noam ChomskyNoam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
wrote Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988, 2002). - Robert W. McChesneyRobert W. McChesneyRobert Waterman McChesney is an American professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication. His work concentrates on the history and political economy of communication, emphasizing the role media play in democratic...
and John Nichols (journalist)John Nichols (journalist)John Nichols is an American journalist and author. He is a political correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times. Books authored or co-authored by Nichols include: The Genius of Impeachment and The Death and Life of American Journalism.- Biography :Nichols holds a...
wrote Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media (2002). - Michael ParentiMichael ParentiMichael Parenti is an award-winning, internationally known American political scientist, historian, and culture critic who has been writing on a wide range of both scholarly and popular subjects for over forty years. He has taught at several universities and colleges and has been a frequent guest...
wrote Inventing Reality: the Politics of News Media (1993).
Bias in foreign policy
In addition to philosophical or economic biases, there are also subject biases, including criticism of media coverage about foreign policy issues as being overly centered in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. Coverage is variously cited as being: 'Beltway centrism', framed
Framing (social sciences)
A frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation — that is, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes—that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events. In simpler terms, people build a series of mental filters through biological and cultural influences. They use these...
in terms of domestic politics and established policy positions, only following Washington's 'Official Agendas', and mirroring only a 'Washington Consensus'. Regardless of the criticism, according to the Columbia Journalism Review
Columbia Journalism Review
The Columbia Journalism Review is an American magazine for professional journalists published bimonthly by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961....
, "No news subject generates more complaints about media objectivity than the Middle East in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular."
Claims of a Pro-Israel media
Stephen ZunesStephen Zunes
Stephen Zunes is an international relations scholar specializing in the Middle East specializing in Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, and strategic nonviolent action. He is known internationally as a leading critic of United States policy in the Middle East, particularly under the...
wrote that "mainstream and conservative Jewish organizations have mobilized considerable lobbying resources, financial contributions from the Jewish community, and citizen pressure on the news media and other forums of public discourse in support of the Israeli government."
According to CUNY professor of journalism, Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman is an American English teacher, historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. His political weblog named Altercation was hosted by MSNBC.com from 2002 until 2006, moved to Media Matters for America until December 2008, and is now hosted by The...
, debate among Middle East pundits, “is dominated by people who cannot imagine criticizing Israel”. In 2002, he listed 56 columnists and commentators who can be counted on to support Israel “reflexively and without qualification.” Alterman only identified five pundits who consistently criticize Israeli behavior or endorse pro-Arab positions. Journalists described as pro-Israel by Mearsheimer and Walt include: the New York Times’ William Safire, A.M. Rosenthal, David Brooks, and Thomas Friedman (although they say that the latter is sometimes critical of areas of Israel policy); the Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland, Robert Kagan, Charles Krauthammer and George Will; and the Los Angeles Times’ Max Boot
Max Boot
Max Boot is an American author, consultant, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian. He has been a prominent advocate for American power. He once described his ideas as "American might to promote American ideals." He self-identifies as a conservative, once joking that "I grew up in the...
, Jonah Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Jonah Jacob Goldberg is an American conservative syndicated columnist and author. Goldberg is known for his contributions on politics and culture to , of which he is editor-at-large...
and Jonathan Chait
Jonathan Chait
Jonathan Chait is a writer for New York magazine. He was previously a senior editor at The New Republic and a former assistant editor of The American Prospect. He also writes a periodic column in the Los Angeles Times.- Personal life :...
.
Claims of an Anti-Israel media
Journalist Michael MassingMichael Massing
Michael Massing is a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. Michael Massing received his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard and an MS from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He often writes for the New York Review of Books concerning the media and foreign affairs...
writes that "Jewish organizations are quick to detect bias in the coverage of the Middle East, and quick to complain about it. That's especially true of late. As The Forward
The Forward
The Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
observed in late April [2002], 'rooting out perceived anti-Israel bias in the media has become for many American Jews the most direct and emotional outlet for connecting with the conflict 6,000 miles away.'"
The Forward relates how one individual feels:
"'There's a great frustration that American Jews want to do something,' said Ira Youdovin, executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. 'In 1947, some number would have enlisted in the HaganahHaganahHaganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
,' he said, referring to the pre-state Jewish armed force. 'There was a special American brigade. Nowadays you can't do that. The battle here is the hasbarah war,' Youdovin said, using a Hebrew term for public relationsPublic relationsPublic relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
. 'We're winning, but we're very much concerned about the bad stuff.'"
Indicative of the diversity of opinion is a 2003 Boston Globe profile of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America is an American non-profit pro-Israel media watchdog group. The group says it was founded in 1982 "to respond to the Washington Post's coverage of Israel's Lebanon incursion", and to respond to what it considers the media's "general...
media watchdog group in which Mark Jurkowitz observes: "To its supporters, CAMERA is figuratively – and perhaps literally – doing God's work, battling insidious anti-Israeli bias in the media. But its detractors see CAMERA as a myopic and vindictive special interest group trying to muscle its views into media coverage."
A former spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York said that as a result of this lobbying of the media: “Of course, a lot of self-censorship goes on. Journalists, editors, and politicians are going to think twice about criticizing Israel if they know they are going to get thousands of angry calls in a matter of hours. The Jewish lobby is good at orchestrating pressure.”
Claims of racial bias
Political activist and one time presidential candidate Rev. Jesse Jackson said in 1985 that the news media portray black people as "less intelligent than we are."The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy, a book published by Stanley Rothman and Mark Snyderman, claimed to document bias in media coverage of scientific findings regarding intelligence quotient
Intelligence quotient
An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence. When modern IQ tests are constructed, the mean score within an age group is set to 100 and the standard deviation to 15...
and race
Race
Race is classification of humans into large and distinct populations or groups by factors such as heritable phenotypic characteristics or geographic ancestry, but also often influenced by and correlated with traits such as appearance, culture, ethnicity, and socio-economic status...
.
Research has shown that African Americans are over-represented in news reports on crime, and within those stories, they are more likely to be shown as the perpetrators of the crime than as the persons reacting to or suffering from it. This is true even when crime statistics indicate otherwise.
Conversely, multiple commentators and newspaper articles have cited examples of the national media undereporting interracial hate crimes when they involve white victims as compared to when they involve black victims.
Pro-government and power bias
The pressure to create a stable, profitable business invariably distorts the kinds of news items reported, as well as the manner and emphasis in which they are reported, according to Professors Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.In their book, Chomsky and Herman say that the pro-power bias occurs not as a result of conscious design but simply as a consequence of market selection: those businesses who favor profits over news quality survive, while those that present a more accurate picture of the world tend to become marginalized. They also say that several filters, such as the drive for advertising revenue and the dependency of mass media news outlets upon major sources of news, particularly the government, work to create a "propaganda model
Propaganda model
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media...
" of the mainstream media. To minimize the possibilities of lost revenue, therefore, outlets will tend to report news in a tone more favorable to the government and giving unfavorable news about the government less emphasis. The book and related works by the authors provide numerous examples of what they see as bias in the leading US media, most prominently in the New York Times.
"Infotainment"
Academics such as McKay, Jamieson, and Hudson have described private U.S. media outlets as profit-driven. For the private media, profits are dependent on viewing figures, regardless of whether the viewers found the programs adequate or outstanding. The strong profit-making incentive of the American media leads them to seek a simplified format and uncontroversial position which will be adequate for the largest possible audience. The market mechanism only rewards numbers of viewers, not how informed the viewers were, how good the analysis was, or how impressed they were.According to some, the profit-driven quest for high numbers of viewers, rather than high quality for viewers, has resulted in a slide from serious news and analysis to entertainment, sometimes called infotainment
Infotainment
Infotainment is "information-based media content or programming that also includes entertainment content in an effort to enhance popularity with audiences and consumers." It is a neologistic portmanteau of information and entertainment, referring to a type of media which provides a combination of...
:
"Imitating the rhythm of sports reports, exciting live coverage of major political crises and foreign wars was now available for viewers in the safety of their own homes. By the late-1980s, this combination of information and entertainment in news programmes was known as infotainment." [Barbrook, Media Freedom, (London, Pluto Press, 1995) part 14]
Oversimplification
Kathleen Hall JamiesonKathleen Hall Jamieson
Kathleen Hall Jamieson is an American Professor of Communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania...
claims that most television news stories are made to fit into one of five categories:
- Appearance versus reality
- Little guys versus big guys
- Good versus evil
- Efficiency versus inefficiency
- Unique and bizarre events versus ordinary events.
In these five categories, Jamieson sees a tendency towards an unrealistic black/white mentality, in which the media simplifies the world into comfortingly easily understood opposites. She says the media provides an over-simplified skeleton of information which is more easily commercialized.
Coverage of electoral politics
In the 19th century, many American newspapers made no pretense to lack of bias, openly advocating one or another political party. Big cities would often have competing newspapers supporting various political parties. To some extent this was mitigated by a separation between news and editorial. News reporting was expected to be relatively neutral or at least factual, whereas editorial was openly the opinion of the publisher. Editorials might also be accompanied by an editorial cartoonEditorial cartoon
An editorial cartoon, also known as a political cartoon, is an illustration containing a commentary that usually relates to current events or personalities....
, which would frequently lampoon the publisher's opponents.
In an editorial
Editorial
An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...
for The American Conservative
The American Conservative
The American Conservative is a monthly U.S. opinion magazine published by Ron Unz. Its first editor was Scott McConnell, his successors being Kara Hopkins and the present incumbent, Daniel McCarthy....
, Pat Buchanan wrote that reporting by "the liberal media establishment" on the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
"played a central role in bringing down a president." Richard Nixon later complained, "I gave them a sword and they ran it right through me." Nixon's Vice-President Spiro Agnew
Spiro Agnew
Spiro Theodore Agnew was the 39th Vice President of the United States , serving under President Richard Nixon, and the 55th Governor of Maryland...
attacked the media in a series of speeches—two of the most famous having been written by White House aides William Safire
William Safire
William Lewis Safire was an American author, columnist, journalist and presidential speechwriter....
and Buchanan himself—as "elitist" and "liberal." However, the media had also strongly criticized his Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
predecessor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, for his handling of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, which culminated in him not seeking a second term.
In 2004, Steve Ansolabehere, Rebecca Lessem and Jim Snyder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
analyzed the political orientation of endorsements by U.S. newspapers. They found an upward trend in the average propensity to endorse a candidate, and in particular an incumbent one. There were also some changes in the average ideological slant of endorsements: while in the 1940s and in the 1950s there was a clear advantage to Republican candidates, this advantage continuously eroded in subsequent decades, to the extent that in the 1990s the authors found a slight Democratic lead in the average endorsement choice.
Riccardo Puglisi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
looks at the editorial choices of the New York Times from 1946 to 1997. He finds that the Times displays Democratic partisanship, with some watchdog
Watchdog journalism
Watchdog journalism aims to hold accountable public personalities and institutions, whose functions impact social and political life. The term "lapdog journalism", for journalism biased in favour of personalities and institutions, is sometimes used as a conceptual opposite to watchdog...
aspects. This is the case, because during presidential campaigns the Times systematically gives more coverage to Democratic topics of civil rights, health care, labor and social welfare, but only when the incumbent
Incumbent
The incumbent, in politics, is the existing holder of a political office. This term is usually used in reference to elections, in which races can often be defined as being between an incumbent and non-incumbent. For example, in the 2004 United States presidential election, George W...
president is a Republican. These topics are classified as Democratic ones, because Gallup polls show that on average U.S. citizens think that Democratic candidates would be better at handling problems related to them. According to Puglisi, in the post-1960 period the Times displays a more symmetric type of watchdog behavior, just because during presidential campaigns it also gives more coverage to the typically Republican issue of Defense when the incumbent President is a Democrat, and less so when the incumbent is a Republican.
John Lott and Kevin Hassett of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
studied the coverage of economic news by looking at a panel of 389 U.S. newspapers from 1991 to 2004, and at a subsample of the two ten newspapers and the Associated Press from 1985 to 2004. For each release of official data about a set of economic indicators, the authors analyze how newspapers decide to report on them, as reflected by the tone of the related headlines. The idea is to check whether newspapers display partisan bias, by giving more positive or negative coverage to the same economic figure, as a function of the political affiliation of the incumbent President. Controlling for the economic data being released, the authors find that there are between 9.6 and 14.7% fewer positive stories when the incumbent President is a Republican.
According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting is a progressive media criticism organization based in New York City, founded in 1986.FAIR describes itself on its website as "the national media watch group" and defines its mission as working to "invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity...
, a liberal watchdog group, Democratic candidate John Edwards was falsely maligned and was not given coverage commensurate with his standing in presidential campaign coverage because his message questioned corporate power.
A poll of likely 2008 United States presidential election voters released on March 14, 2007 by Zogby International
Zogby International
IBOPE Zogby International is an international market research, opinion polling firm founded in 1984 by John Zogby. The company polls and consults for a wide spectrum of business media, government, and political groups, and conducts public opinion research in more than 70 countries...
reports that 83 percent of those surveyed believe that there is a bias in the media, with 64 percent of respondents of the opinion that this bias favors liberals and 28 percent of respondents believing that this bias is conservative. In August 2008 the Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
ombudsman
Ombudsman
An ombudsman is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency while representing not only but mostly the broad scope of constituent interests...
wrote that the Post had published almost three times as many page 1 stories about Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
than it had about John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
since Obama won the Democratic party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
nomination that June. In September 2008 a Rasmussen poll found that 68 percent of voters believed that "most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win." Forty-nine (49) percent of respondents stated that the reporters were helping Barack Obama to get elected, while only 14 percent said the same regarding John McCain. A further 51 percent said that the press was actively "trying to hurt" Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
with negative coverage. In October 2008, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
media correspondent Howard Kurtz
Howard Kurtz
Howard "Howie" Alan Kurtz is an American journalist and author with a special focus on the media. He is host of CNN's Reliable Sources program, and Washington bureau chief for The Daily Beast. He is the former media writer for The Washington Post. He has written five books about the media...
reported that Sarah Palin was again on the cover of Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, "but with the most biased campaign headline I've ever seen."
After the election was over, the Washington Post ombudsman
Ombudsman
An ombudsman is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency while representing not only but mostly the broad scope of constituent interests...
Deborah Howell reviewed the Post's coverage and concluded that it was tilted in favor of Obama. "The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts." Over the course of the campaign, the Post printed 594 "issues stories" and 1,295 "horse-race stories." There were more positive opinion pieces on Obama than McCain (32 to 13) and more negative pieces about McCain than Obama (58 to 32). Overall, more news stories were dedicated to Obama than McCain. Howell said that the results of her survey were comparable to those reported by the Project for Excellence in Journalism
Project for Excellence in Journalism
The Project for Excellence in Journalism is a non-profit research organization in the US that uses empirical methods to evaluate and study the performance of the press. It asserts that it is "non partisan, non ideological and non political"...
for the national media. (That report, issued on October 22, 2008, found that "coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable," with 57% of the stories issued after the conventions being negative and only 14% being positive. For the same period, 36% of the stories on Obama were positive, 35% were neutral or mixed, and 29% were negative.) While rating the Post's biographical stories as generally quite good, she concluded that "Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a teenager."
Various critics, particularly Hudson, have shown concern at the link between the news media reporting and what they see as the trivialised nature of American elections. Hudson argues that America’s news media elections damage the democratic process. He argues that elections are centered on candidates, whose advancement depends on funds, personality and sound-bites, rather than serious political discussion or policies offered by parties. His argument is that it is on the media which Americans are dependent for information about politics (this is of course true almost by definition) and that they are therefore greatly influenced by the way the media report, which concentrates on short sound-bites, gaffes by candidates, and scandals. The reporting of elections avoids complex issues or issues which are time-consuming to explain. Of course, important political issues are generally both complex and time-consuming to explain, so are avoided.
Hudson blames this style of media coverage, at least partly, for trivialised elections:
"The bites of information voters receive from both print and electronic media are simply insufficient for constructive political discourse... candidates for office have adjusted their style of campaigning in response to this tabloid style of media coverage... modern campaigns are exercises in image manipulation... Elections decided on sound bites, negative campaign commercials, and sensationalised exposure of personal character flaws provide no meaningful direction for government".
Coverage of Iraq War
Suggestions of insufficiently critical media coverage
In 2003, a study released by Fairness and Accuracy In ReportingFairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting is a progressive media criticism organization based in New York City, founded in 1986.FAIR describes itself on its website as "the national media watch group" and defines its mission as working to "invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity...
stated the network news disproportionately focused on pro-war sources and left out many anti-war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
sources. According to the study, 64% of total sources were in favor of the Iraq War while total anti-war sources made up 10% of the media (only 3% of US sources were anti-war). The study stated that "viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with U.S. guests alone, the ratio increases to 25 to 1."
In February 2004, a study was released by the liberal national media watchdog group FAIR
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting is a progressive media criticism organization based in New York City, founded in 1986.FAIR describes itself on its website as "the national media watch group" and defines its mission as working to "invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity...
. According to the study, which took place during October 2003, current or former government or military officials accounted for 76 percent of all 319 sources for news stories about Iraq which aired on network news channels.
On March 23, 2006, the US designated the Hezbollah affiliated media, Al-Nour
Al-Nour
Al-Nour is a pro-Hezbollah radio station based in Beirut, Lebanon. The station was established on 9 May 1988.In July 2006 during the Israel-Lebanon crisis, Israel attacked Hezbollah's TV station Al-Manar and radio station Al-Nour in Haret Hreyk .-Objectives:Al Nour has stated its objectives...
Radio and Al-Manar
Al-Manar
Al-Manar is a Lebanese satellite television station affiliated with Hezbollah, registered as Lebanese Media Group Company, broadcasting from Beirut, Lebanon. It has an offering a "rich menu" of high production news, commentary, and entertainment. The self-proclaimed "Station of the Resistance" ,...
TV station, as "terrorist
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
entities" through legislative language as well as support of a letter to President Bush signed by 51 senators.
Suggestions of overly critical media coverage
Some critics believe that, on the contrary, the American media have been too critical of U.S. forces. Rick Mullen, a former journalist, Vietnam veteran, and U.S. Marine Corps reserve officer, has suggested that American media coverage has been unfair, and has failed to send a message adequately supportive of U.S. forces. Mullen calls for a lesser reporting of transgressions by US forces (condemning "American media pouncing on every transgression"), and a more extensive reporting of US forces' positive actions, which Mullen feels are inadequately reported (condemning the media for "ignoring the legions of good and noble deeds by US and coalition forces"). Mullen compares critical media reports to the 9/11 terrorist attacks:"I have got used to our American media pouncing on every transgression by U.S. Forces while ignoring the legions of good and noble deeds performed by U.S. and coalition forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan... This sort of thing is akin to the evening news focusing on the few bad things that happen in Los Angeles or London and ignoring the millions of good news items each day... I am sure that you are aware that it is not the enemy's objective to defeat us on the battlefield but to defeat our national will to prevail. That battle is fought in the living rooms of America and England and the medium used is the TV news and newspapers. The enemy is not stupid. As on 9/11, they plan to use our "systems" against us, the news media being the most important "system" in their pursuit to break our national will." [Rick Mullen, Letter to The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, June 5, 2006]
Bias in entertainment media
The DoonesburyDoonesbury
Doonesbury is a comic strip by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau, that chronicles the adventures and lives of an array of characters of various ages, professions, and backgrounds, from the President of the United States to the title character, Michael Doonesbury, who has progressed from a college...
comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
, a topical daily cartoon, has often been accused of liberal bias. In 2004 a conservative letter writing campaign was successful in convincing Continental Features, a company that prints many Sunday comics sections, to refuse to print the strip, causing Doonesbury to disappear from the Sunday comics in 38 newspapers. Of the 38, only one editor, Troy Turner, executive editor of the Anniston Star in Alabama, continued to run the Sunday Doonesbury, albeit necessarily in black and white.
Doonesbury is not the first cartoon to blur the distinction between the comics and editorial cartoons. Li'l Abner
Li'l Abner
Li'l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared in many newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe, featuring a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished town of Dogpatch, Kentucky. Written and drawn by Al Capp , the strip ran for 43 years, from August 13, 1934 through...
by Al Capp
Al Capp
Alfred Gerald Caplin , better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li'l Abner. He also wrote the comic strips Abbie an' Slats and Long Sam...
routinely parodied Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the American South. In the 19th century, they were the definitive pro-slavery wing of the party, opposed to both the anti-slavery Republicans and the more liberal Northern Democrats.Eventually "Redemption" was finalized in...
through the character of Senator Jack S. Phogbound ("Ain't no Jack S. like OUR Jack S!). Pogo by Walt Kelly
Walt Kelly
Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. , or Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip, Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Pinocchio and Fantasia. Kelly resigned in 1941 at the age of 28 to work at Post-Hall Syndicate,...
caricaturized a wide range of political figures including Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
, Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
, Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...
, George Wallace
George Wallace
George Corley Wallace, Jr. was the 45th Governor of Alabama, serving four terms: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. "The most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter and Stephan Lesher, he ran for U.S...
, Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
, and Eugene McCarthy
Eugene McCarthy
Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy was an American politician, poet, and a long-time member of the United States Congress from Minnesota. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971.In the 1968 presidential election, McCarthy was the first...
. Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie was a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and made its debut on August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News...
espoused a strong anti-union pro-business stance in the story "Eonite" from 1935, where union agitators destroy a business that would have benefited the entire human race.
Modern comic strips routinely take political stands. Mallard Fillmore
Mallard Fillmore
Mallard Fillmore is a comic strip written and illustrated by Bruce Tinsley that has been syndicated by King Features Syndicate since May 30, 1994. The strip follows the exploits of its title character, an anthropomorphic green-plumaged duck who works as a politically conservative reporter at...
by Bruce Tinsley and Prickly City
Prickly City
Prickly City is a daily comic strip drawn by Scott Stantis, the editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, and distributed through United Features Syndicate. The cartoon follows the adventures of Carmen, a young Hispanic girl in pigtails, and a coyote pup named Winslow...
by Scott Stantis are both proudly conservative in their views. In addition to Doonesbury, Non Sequitur
Non Sequitur (comic strip)
Non Sequitur is a comic strip created by Wiley Miller in 1992 and syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate to over 700 newspapers...
often promotes liberal views and Opus
Opus (comic strip)
Opus was a Sunday strip drawn by Berkeley Breathed for a period of five years, 2003 to 2008. It was Breathed's fourth comic strip, following The Academia Waltz, Bloom County and Outland....
also promotes political views, though those views are often somewhat blurred.
Research
A 2000 meta-analysis of research in 59 quantitative studies of media bias in American presidential campaigns from 1948 through 1996 found that media bias tends to cancel out, leaving little or no net bias. The authors conclude "It is clear that the major source of bias charges is the individual perceptions of media consumers and, in particular, media consumers of a particularly ideological bent."Self-described as "the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly, a study by political scientists Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeff Milyo of the University of Missouri at Columbia. The study's stated purpose was to document the range of bias among news outlets. The research concluded that of the major 20 news outlets studied "18 scored left of the average U.S. voter, with CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and The Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, while only the Fox News "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
scored right of the average U.S. voter." The study also identified the Drudge Report
Drudge Report
The Drudge Report is a news aggregation website. Run by Matt Drudge with the help of Joseph Curl and Charles Hurt, the site consists mainly of links to stories from the United States and international mainstream media about politics, entertainment, and current events as well as links to many...
as "left of center". In this study, "left" and "liberal" are treated as synonyms, and are identified with think tanks cited by Congressional members of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
, while "right" is identified with think tanks cited by Congressional members of the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
. The report also states, however, that the news media show a remarkable degree of centrism, since all but one of the outlets studied are, from an ideological point of view, between the average Democrat and average Republican in Congress.
The study met with criticism from many outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, and Media Matters
Media Matters for America
Media Matters for America is a politically progressive media watchdog group which says it is "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." Set up as a 501 non-profit organization, MMfA was founded in 2004 by journalist and...
. Criticisms included:
- Different lengths of time studied per media (CBS NewsCBS NewsCBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
was studied for 12 years while the Wall Street Journal was studied for four months). - Lack of context in quoting sources (sources quoted were automatically assumed to be supporting the article)
- Lack of balance in sources (Liberal sources such as the NAACP didn't have conservative or counter sources that could add balance)
- Flawed political positions of sources (Sources such as the NRANational Rifle AssociationThe National Rifle Association of America is an American non-profit 501 civil rights organization which advocates for the protection of the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights and the promotion of firearm ownership rights as well as marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection...
and RAND corporation were considered "liberal" while sources such as the American Civil Liberties UnionAmerican Civil Liberties UnionThe American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
were "conservative".)
Mark Liberman
Mark Liberman
Mark Liberman is an American linguist. He has a dual appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, as Trustee Professor of Phonetics in the Department of Linguistics, and as a professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences. He is the founder and director of the Linguistic Data...
, a professor of Computer Science and the Director of Linguistic Data Consortium
Linguistic Data Consortium
The Linguistic Data Consortium is an open consortium of universities, companies and government research laboratories. It creates, collects and distributes speech and text databases, lexicons, and other resources for linguistics research and development purposes. The University of Pennsylvania is...
at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, has pointed out a number of statistical flaws in this study. According to Professor Liberman, the model chosen leads to "very implausible psychological claims, for which no evidence is presented." He concludes by saying that "many if not most of the complaints directed against G&M (Groseclose and Milyo) are motivated in part by ideological disagreement – just as much of the praise for their work is motivated by ideological agreement. It would be nice if there were a less politically fraught body of data on which such modeling exercises could be explored."
A 1998 study from FAIR
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting is a progressive media criticism organization based in New York City, founded in 1986.FAIR describes itself on its website as "the national media watch group" and defines its mission as working to "invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity...
found that journalists are "mostly centrist in their political orientation"; 30% considered themselves to the left on social issues compared to 9% on the right, while 11% considered themselves to the left on economic issues compared to 19% on the right. The report explained that since journalists considered themselves to be centrists, "perhaps this is why an earlier survey found that they tended to vote for Bill Clinton in large numbers." FAIR uses this study to support the claim that media bias is propagated down from the management, and that individual journalists are relatively neutral in their work.
Additional information
According to Reporters Without BordersReporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
the media in the United States lost a great deal of freedom between the 2004 and 2006 indices, citing the Judith Miller case
Judith Miller (journalist)
Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy...
and similar cases and laws restricting the confidentiality of sources
Protection of sources
The protection of sources, sometimes also referred to as the confidentiality of sources or in the U.S. as the reporter's privilege, is a right accorded to journalists under the laws of many countries, as well as under international law...
as the main factors. They also cite the fact that reporters who question the American "war on terror
War on Terror
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
" are sometimes regarded as suspicious. They rank the United States as 53rd out of 168 countries in freedom of the press, comparable to Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, but below all but one European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
country (Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
) and below most OECD countries (countries that accept democracy and free markets). In the 2008 ranking, the United States moved up to 36, between Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
and Macedonia, but still far below its ranking in the late 20th Century as a world leader in having a free and unbiased press.
According to Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, American commercial media encourage controversy within a narrow range of opinion, in order to give the impression of open debate, but do not report on news that falls outside that range.
According to David Niven, of Ohio State University
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
, research shows that American media show bias on only two issues, race and gender equality.
Accusers of liberal or conservative bias alike typically ignore the dictionary meanings of those words (as do modern political parties). In fact, in the current political discourse, the words seem to have meaning that shifts depending on point of view. The Oxford American Dictionary
New Oxford American Dictionary
The New Oxford American Dictionary is a single-volume dictionary of American English compiled by American editors at the Oxford University Press....
defines "liberal" in the political sense as "favoring democratic reform and individual liberty" and "conservative" in the political sense as "favoring private enterprise and freedom from government control".
Watchdog groups
Fairness and Accuracy in ReportingFairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting is a progressive media criticism organization based in New York City, founded in 1986.FAIR describes itself on its website as "the national media watch group" and defines its mission as working to "invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity...
(FAIR), a self-described progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
media watch group, has argued that accusations of liberal media bias are part of a conservative strategy, noting an article in the August 20, 1992 Washington Post, in which Republican party chair Rich Bond
Richard Bond
Richard N. Bond is a former Chairman of the Republican National Committee and currently a government relations consultant based in Washington, D.C....
compared journalists to referees in a sporting match. "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time." Media Matters for America
Media Matters for America
Media Matters for America is a politically progressive media watchdog group which says it is "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." Set up as a 501 non-profit organization, MMfA was founded in 2004 by journalist and...
, another self-described progressive media watch group, dedicates itself to "monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."
Conservative organizations Accuracy In Media
Accuracy in Media
Accuracy In Media is an American, non-profit news media watchdog founded in 1969 by economist Reed Irvine. AIM describes itself as "a non-profit, grassroots citizens watchdog of the news media that critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that...
and Media Research Center
Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is a content analysis organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, founded in 1987 by conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III...
support the claim that the media has a liberal bias, and are dedicated to publicizing the issue. The Media Research Center, for example, was founded with the specific intention to "prove ... that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values".
Groups such as FactCheck
FactCheck
FactCheck.org is a non-partisan, nonprofit website that describes itself as a consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University...
argue that the media frequently gets the facts wrong because they frequently rely upon biased sources of information. This includes using information provided to them from both parties.
A news blog called After the Press is specifically tasked with national news gathering on media bias and inaccuracy, http://afterthepress.com/
See also
- Objectivity (journalism)Objectivity (journalism)Parent article: Journalism ethics and standardsObjectivity is a significant principle of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity can refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities.- Definitions :In the context...
- PropagandaPropagandaPropaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
- Hostile media effectHostile media effectThe hostile media effect, sometimes called the hostile media phenomenon, refers to the finding that people with strong biases toward an issue perceive media coverage as biased against their opinions, regardless of the reality...
- Group attribution errorGroup attribution errorThe group attribution error is a group-serving, attributional bias identical to the fundamental attribution error except that it occurs between different groups rather than different individuals....
- Propaganda ModelPropaganda modelThe propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media...
- Cultural biasCultural biasCultural bias is the phenomenon of interpreting and judging phenomena by standards inherent to one's own culture. The phenomenon is sometimes considered a problem central to social and human sciences, such as economics, psychology, anthropology, and sociology...
- Liberal eliteLiberal eliteLiberal elite is a political stigma used to describe affluent, politically left-leaning people. It is commonly used with the pejorative implication that the people who claim to support the rights of the working class are themselves members of the upper class, or upper middle class, and are...
- Culture of fearCulture of fearCulture of fear is a term used by certain scholars, writers, journalists and politicians who believe that some in society incite fear in the general public to achieve political goals, for example......
- Mass Media Coverage of Missing Pretty Girls
- Media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict
- 2003 invasion of Iraq media coverage2003 invasion of Iraq media coverageThe 2003 invasion of Iraq involved unprecedented media coverage. The coverage itself became a source of controversy, as media outlets were accused of bias, reporters were casualties of both Iraqi and American gunfire, and claims of censorship and propaganda became widespread.-U.S...
- LiberalismLiberalismLiberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
- ConservatismConservatismConservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
Non-partisan
- Facts on File
- Center for Media and Public AffairsCenter for Media and Public AffairsThe Center for Media and Public Affairs is a self-described nonpartisan and nonprofit research and educational organization that is affiliated with George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. It was founded in 1985 by political scientists Dr. S. Robert Lichter and his ex-wife, the late Dr....
- factcheck.org
Liberal
- Media Matters for AmericaMedia Matters for AmericaMedia Matters for America is a politically progressive media watchdog group which says it is "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." Set up as a 501 non-profit organization, MMfA was founded in 2004 by journalist and...
- Fairness and Accuracy in ReportingFairness and Accuracy in ReportingFairness & Accuracy In Reporting is a progressive media criticism organization based in New York City, founded in 1986.FAIR describes itself on its website as "the national media watch group" and defines its mission as working to "invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity...
- Center for Media and DemocracyCenter for Media and DemocracyThe Center for Media and Democracy is a non-profit investigative reporting group. The CMD gives analysis and opinion on policies such as the economy, environment and national security...
Conservative
- Media Research CenterMedia Research CenterThe Media Research Center is a content analysis organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, founded in 1987 by conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III...
- Accuracy in MediaAccuracy in MediaAccuracy In Media is an American, non-profit news media watchdog founded in 1969 by economist Reed Irvine. AIM describes itself as "a non-profit, grassroots citizens watchdog of the news media that critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that...
- NewsBusters
Examples/sources
- Eric AltermanEric AltermanEric Alterman is an American English teacher, historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. His political weblog named Altercation was hosted by MSNBC.com from 2002 until 2006, moved to Media Matters for America until December 2008, and is now hosted by The...
, author of What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News is one of those who argues against any significant liberal bias. Reviewer John Moe sums up Alterman's views:- "The conservatives in the newspapers, television, talk radio, and the Republican party are lying about liberal bias and repeating the same lies long enough that they've taken on a patina of truth. Further, the perception of such a bias has cowed many media outlets into presenting more conservative opinions to counterbalance a bias, which does not, in fact, exist." ISBN 0-465-00176-9
- Media ImperialismMedia imperialismMedia imperialism is a theory based upon an over-concentration of mass media from larger nations as a significant variable in negatively affecting smaller nations, in which the national identity of smaller nations is lessened or lost due to media homogeneity inherent in mass media from the larger...
is a critical theory regarding the perceived effects of globalization on the world's media. It is closely tied to the similar theory of cultural imperialism.- "As multinational media conglomerates grow larger and more powerful many believe that it will become increasingly difficult for small, local media outlets to survive. A new type of imperialism will thus occur, making many nations subsidiary to the media products of some of the most powerful countries or companies. Significant writers and thinkers in this area include Ben BagdikianBen BagdikianBen Haig Bagdikian is an American educator and journalist. Bagdikian has made journalism his profession since 1941. He is a significant American media critic and the dean emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism...
, Noam ChomskyNoam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Edward S. HermanEdward S. HermanEdward S. Herman is an American economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media. He is Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also teaches at Annenberg School for...
and Robert McChesneyRobert W. McChesneyRobert Waterman McChesney is an American professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication. His work concentrates on the history and political economy of communication, emphasizing the role media play in democratic...
."
- "As multinational media conglomerates grow larger and more powerful many believe that it will become increasingly difficult for small, local media outlets to survive. A new type of imperialism will thus occur, making many nations subsidiary to the media products of some of the most powerful countries or companies. Significant writers and thinkers in this area include Ben Bagdikian
- A UCLA political scientist released a peer-reviewed study which concluded that, in general, "almost all major media outlets tilt to the left." http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664 Self-described by UCLA as "the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them", it used a somewhat complicated pattern to figure out the political center of the electorate and based the positions of the media on that center. As the first peer-reviewed study to use this particular measure of political position, the study's claims have been contested due to some of its methodogy. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001169.html
- "Our results show a strong liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. And a few outlets, including the New York Times and CBS Evening News, were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than the center. These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample." http://web.archive.org/web/20061128014117/http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.pdf
External links
- Ignorance Is not Bliss "They Want Your Soul"
- What's wrong with the news?
- Media content analysis
- The Memory Hole – site for the preservation of FOIAed documents and material removed from government websites
- Purported anti-Israel bias
- Purported pro-Israel bias
- Blinded By Science: How ‘Balanced’ Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality
- MediaLens
- Reporting Wars – Exposing Bias in the Media
- Politmus – Crowdsourced media monitor
Non-partisan
- factcheck.org Fact Check. Non-partisan factcheck of current media news.
- factsonfile.com Facts on File. Non-partisan facts (requires subscription).
- Pew Research Center for the People and the Press – studies of attitudes toward the media
- "A measure of media bias" – working paper attempting to statistically analyze media bias
- DebatePolitics.com A non-biased political debate forum addressing Bias in the Media.
- Website of the Center for Media and Public AffairsCenter for Media and Public AffairsThe Center for Media and Public Affairs is a self-described nonpartisan and nonprofit research and educational organization that is affiliated with George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. It was founded in 1985 by political scientists Dr. S. Robert Lichter and his ex-wife, the late Dr....
, a self-described "nonpartisan research and educational organization"
Claims of conservative bias
- Media Matters for America – site claiming to expose conservative bias
- Fairness and accuracy in reporting – claimed conservative media bias
Claims of liberal bias
- Accuracy in Media – site claiming to expose liberal bias
- Media Research Center – site claiming to expose liberal bias
- Fairpress.org (Citizens Coalition for Responsible Media) – site claiming to expose liberal bias
- TheMediaReport.com