in what ways might the media be biased?

Question

Can anybody suggest different ways in which the media might be biased?

Answer 1

Media is extremely selective of the events it covers. In this way, the media gets to set the issues (up to a certain point). Take the issue of terrorism in North America, for example. Traffic accidents are a way bigger problem than terrorism, no matter how you look at the statistics. If you listen to mainstream media and believe everything they feed you, however, you're going to think it's a God-given right for any idiot to drive a SUV, and that there just might be a terrorist under your bed. These agendas are dictated by political elites and the corporate interests that own media outlets (Which tend to be the same people). The media is so prevalent that anyone who dismisses its conclusions can usually safely be dismissed as a loon by politicians and corporate leaders.
Secondly, the information that is presented to you by media, although technically true, is usually pablum for the brain. The average news clip is anywhere from 30 seconds to 1 minute and a half. In that time frame, there is no way to give the viewer a clear picture on any issue, even if you wanted to. Take the situation in Afghanistan for example. All most Americans know is: Taliban bad, Northern alliance good. And this is what they need to know, according to the media. Nobody ever told them (At least in the mainstream) that the Northern Alliance was made up of warlords defeated by the Taliban by popular support because they made life impossible through constant tribal fighting, that the northern alliance was originally armed an trained, in part, by the CIA, etc... So the media usually presents a vision of things that is black and white, and leaves little food for an intellectual assesment of the information being presented.
Finally, there are a whole lot of experts being interviewed in the media that are nothing more than lobbyists and special interest groups spokespeople. These are usually presented as neutral observers. They are anything but. When somebody from the Conference Board is being introduced, those in the know understand that this person's salary is being paid by the largest corporations in America in a kind of big corporate pool. Media organizations don't bother to make viewers aware of this fact and present the person as an expert. So these interviews are really little more than public relations for big money.

Answer 2

Ownership is just one of the issues, usually not the genuinely salient one either. Public broadcasting services, for example, the BBC and NPR, who are both so proud of not reflecting capital, are among the most consistently and stubbornly biased and narrow across the entire English broadcast realm.

I have discussed this privately with some of these folks, and they are VERY proud of the uni-dimensional perspective, and look on "balance" as if it were a cop-out. Some actually view themselves as if they were a branch of elective government, which they decidedly are not.

All newsrooms have "editorial voice" usually set by the philiosophical and experiential assumptions of the senior editors, and sometimes the publisher, too. These folks tend to hire people like themselves, people who have similar outlooks and values and education (although recently they have been hiring people with different color skin or different accents or different religions or different cultures). Every newsroom tends toward a certain uniformity on an ideological level; PLUS, and this is critical for understanding media BIAS, all journalists have a strong preference toward what they call a 'good story' i.e. heightening dramatic elements, even if certain facts need to be selectively modulated, just a bit. They will deliberately select and emphasize conflict, because it improves the story, even if objectivity suffers.

I am not talking about outright lies here. That is rare. I am talking about half-truths, nuance, poor balance, selective reporting, selective quoting. These are far too common.

And journalists find safety in numbers. They will echo dominant themes in others' work, because it is safe to do so. They will promote or echo the common buzz, the broadly easy assumptions, the common slanders. No one inside the profession will attack them for this, including their editors. This is responsible for a lot of drumbeat type stories that turn out to be inaccurate or misleading---there are plenty of such, but they are rarely apologized for afterwards.

Ethics in journalism are not that great, frankly. Although perhaps only one journalist in 20 will admit it.

Answer 3

Operation process - an inefficient investigator, might cover thoroughly one side and get only a few or none from the other side.

Personal newsperson bias - Politcal affiliation, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, if it's not Conservative Republican they trash it.

Sponsors for their company - If you uncover an unflattering about a company and that company is a big sponsor for your news. Your news bcomes biased so not to offend the sponsor.

Catering to the public - Without the public support for your news, you can't generate income. So you tailor your news to what tickles the public. For instance covering Catholicism and Muslims view more because of the enormous numbers of members and not here anything about Mennonites.

Organizatinal goals - LA Times are pretty liberal and they have a lliberal agenda.

Answer 4

There are many ways for bias in the media, even down to grammar choice. What they call someone is key to where they are coming from. Generally, the media is biased in favor of leftist positions. This can be shown by the constant bashing of Christians and basically anyone who opposes abortion or supports traditional marriage. Coverage of the election was heavily slanted towards the democratic candidates.

Many times the most effective bias is subtle. CNN demonstrated this by saying it was a painstaking decision to decide to air the propaganda video of jihadist terrorists, as if terrorists are entitled to have their propaganda played on the media outlets of the free-world. This video was clearly designed to demoralize the American public and bring about a Vietnam-ization of the Iraq war.

Answer 5

Look at the ownership of the papers and the media conglomerates . Such as Rupert Murdoch who owns News International which controls The Sun and The Times, his close affiliation and relationship with Tony Blair affects the reporting of the Labour government in the paper, because of his censorship to portray Labour in a positive light, this can conflict with the Editors views, which can result in them being replaced.

Also look at the amount of negative stories on the press proving "bad news is good news" saying is true. The papers are more likely to report on mass devestation because it evokes the readers feelings.

Answer 6

Very simple. "The Media" is actually a collection of individual human being who all have an opinion and a bias. Try as they might, no human is totally objective, so bias creeps in in subtleties. For example. Some of the news reporters were quite gleeful to report that Democrats had take some seats in the House and Senate. They were unable to hide their bias in favor Democrats and that showed in their facial expressions and body language.

Answer 7

The media, especially newspapers and commercial TV, can be pressurised by advertisers to avoid certain themes otherwise the advertisements will be stopped.
The editor/owner can also influence which articles are carried, which results in newspapers having a political bias.

Answer 8

all media is biased due to elite journal schools teach leftist
ideas based on liberal teaching.
very few media is objective.
the worst of these media outlets are the new york times,
washington post and the la times.
more objective outlets, such as new york post and sun
and washington times report the news instead of making
the news.
when all is said and done all, but a few, professor's at
unversity's are just left of stalin.

d conner
scottsdale az

Answer 9

Biased how? You got no clue what biased means. Education is free here.Lets start. Get your pen and paper ready.

Bias is for or against something, like a preference. If we talk about food say( of which there are millions of types) they may be in favour of potatoes but not macaroni. So what I'm trying to say here is you must be specific if you talk about bias.

Anyway, to continue, you may say that they are biased against macaroni but if you take this across the range of foods, you may find that they favour 500000 of this and 500000 of that and on average they are balanced.

Follow? We haven't even got to politics yet. Please!

Answer 10

i think one of the most important ways that the media is biased is through their ownership. take nbc for example. nbc is owned by general electric (g.e.). g.e. is one of the country's largest defense weapons manufacturers...so in a very real sense, g.e. makes huge profits from wars, and gets better ratings on nbc news because of these same wars. try www.democracynow.org for some corporate-free news, it may be interesting to you. dianne.