"The Media" is some mythical beast devouring the minds of people with slanted information. Slanted is often in the mind of the complainant. Too often the charge is "The Media" is "too liberal". I've observed "too liberal" often means "The Media" doesn't emphasize a supposedly "conservative" view sufficiently according to the view of the complainants.
I think "The Media" gives too much coverage to views of all kinds that are based more on emotion than on fact, irrespective of where on the "political spectrum" they may be.
"The Media" reinforces the emotional impact of its coverage with a different, more worrisome bias. A bias towards economy of words and away from nuance. Just think of some of the headlines:
Angry voters
Consumers hold tight to their wallets
Investors were buoyed/dejected by …
Americans think…
These headlines convey "all voters", "all consumers", "all investors", or "all Americans" are acting as one. What we rarely know is if the implied "all" should be replaced by "most", "many", or "some". Sometimes we can read deep into an article that a poll claims that 45% of respondents answered with view A, 40% answered with view B, and 15% had no opinion. That certainly doesn't justify a headline "People hold view A".
Oh, yeah! It's probably even more problematic. Few polls admit how many people hung up without responding.
For more of my rants on generalization, see "General Ization Battles Truth".
