"The Media" is biased, but not the way many think it is

"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".

Now I understand media "bias"

Assume that politician Smith does 5 good things and 2 dumb things and that politician Jones does 2 good things and 5 dumb things. According to some letter writers, the "media" is "biased" because it commented unfavorably on the 5 dumb things that politician Jones did. It is irrelevant to these letter writers that it also commented unfavorably on the 2 dumb things that politician Smith did.

Media bias or media balance

This morning's Duluth News Tribune had yet another rant from a global warming denier: "Global warming a prime example of junk science". He then goes on to use isolated facts and hearsay assumptions to berate those who have made numerous scientific observations. I wonder why the DNT even gave space to this letter.

Of course, to show they are not biased, that they give "both sides" a hearing.

Actually, if they want to give "both sides" a hearing, then they should give equal weight to the global warming alarmists who act as if the world is doomed if we don't take draconian measures yesterday.

I would put giving global warming deniers in the same category as flat earth believers. After all, all those pictures of the moon were staged, right?

The media bias charge does come from two extremes: from those in lock step with "Republican" "principles" and from those who believe all corporations are evil.

"The media", whatever that monolithic entity is, does have the job of addressing truth to power. Many on the so-called right were up in arms about criticism of President Bush, but now they are strangely silent about criticism of President Obama. Or even about reporting of the "right's" criticism of Obama. Interestingly, most of the reasoned criticism of Obama is coming from columnists who gave supportive views of Obama during the presidential campaign.

Some have made an "objective" study to prove media bias. They rate stories as to being favorable to "conservatives" or to "liberals", often finding there are more "liberal" stories than "conservative". This is a false dichotomy, assuming that both groups have equally legitimate views and interests.

First, let's admit that there are both "kooky conservatives" and "loony liberals", people whose views are not shared by many others. Now is it possible that the number of pragmatists with honest differences of opinion might be larger in one group than in the other? Currently it is "liberals" who have more pragmatists than the "conservatives". In another era, the balance may shift the other way.

Until we give more balance to the pragmatists, we will have biased media.