Salon are reporting that Republicans massively distrust - even disbelieve - the press. Unfortunately Salon themselves are massively liberal / Democrat biased, so, to paraphrase Christine Keeler, “They would say that, wouldn’t they?”
So, is this true? Is the American press actually biased? Remember that biases can occur in more than one form, and that one company may have departments with different biases. Biases can occur not only in how events and issues are reported, but whether they are reported at all.
Do note that I’m a Brit, so don’t really know much about the American press other than Fox is right-wing and that certain newspapers have historically had problems with reporters inventing material. And that Americans tend to be incredibly insular. (And by American standards I’m probably a rabid commie. :))
The media is biased so everyone should believe it is. The media is frequently wrong, and dishonest plenty of times also so there’s no reason to trust them. You can take the information they offer and find ways to verify it, but it’s no different than any other hearsay.
On the right many distrust the media because they feel there is a deep seated liberal bias. On the left there is distrust of the media due to the belief that it is corporate owned and unwilling to challenge the power structure or the overton window. So there is a lot of distrust of the media.
However the distrust of the media seems more intense on the right than on the left.
Agreed, and frankly the media, define that how you will, makes little to no attempt to conceal their bias. It is a known characteristic. Unbiased reporting is too boring for consumption.
Oh, please. The right knows that Fox News is biased, they just happen to agree with that bias.
As for the distrust, well it comes with the bias. If we know you lean one way, why on earth should we trust you not to color your reporting accordingly? Those on the left are probably slightly more trusting because most media outlets are left leaning.
People on the right watch a channel which is biased, and which says that everyone else is biased, so it is not surprising that they think so. And in this sense they are correct.
But the media is too big for there to be an answer. Is MSNBC biased also? Of course it is - that’s the point. CNN? Stupid maybe, but not that biased.
I remember the days when the Wall Street Journal had excellent reporting of world news and business news. The editorial page was pretty far right and the op eds were often libertarian. But, the paper as a whole was well worth reading .
IME, people of all political persuasions find the press emininently fair and honest as long as the reporting fits in with the reader’s pre-existing beliefs.
Seems a better course of action really. I’m cynical enough not to believe that anybody is unbiased, even if they wish to be. Better to just be upfront about your bias and let folks sort it out for themselves.
I incline towards believing that unbiased media is a myth. However, it’s worth remembering that there was a time, not so long ago, when every single mainstream media outlet had a liberal bias. In the last couple generations, some major media outlets with a rightward bias have appeared. Before the National Review was founded in 1955, there was no nationwide magazine promoting conservative viewpoints. Before Rush Limbaugh went on the air in the 80’s, there was no nationwide radio program devoted to conservative ideas. Before Fox News was created in 1996, there was no conservative TV news channel, nor even any national wide news show with a conservative slant.
So conservatives certainly did have reasons for believing in an overall media bias.
Now sometimes stories like say the weather, sports, or reporting on a traffic accident is pretty straightforward. When they start endorsing or putting down certain politicians, policies, laws, or groups then we can see the bias.
There is a long history of media bias in the United States. Pretty much from the inception of the nation the press has been in the pocket of one political viewpoint or another. Which is not to saw that all publishers espoused the same bias, indeed the major political parties, directly or indirectly, had their fingers in the media via subsidies or lucrative contracts.
The Fall and Rise of Partisan Journalism is well worth a read for some background on American media bias. As one cited example “When Democrat Grover Cleveland won the presidency in 1884, the Republican Los Angeles Times simply failed to report this unhappy result for several days.”
In the modern age NYU Journalism school professor, and former head of the Department of Journalism at NYU, Jay Rosen has encouraged the abandonment of any pretense of unbiased reporting. Just disclose your bias and hack away, as he argues against what he calls “The View from Nowhere.”
Bias? Depends on the source, really. I don’t find my local tv news to be terribly biased (I get TV news out of Boston), but it also generally isn’t great reporting. Crime, fires, accidents, weird news of the day – that makes up most news. Sometimes some stuff about politics, which is what should really be on the news. The fact that there was a house fire on Boylston Street and three families are homeless is sad, but it’s not news. Local politicians wanting to defund fire stations would be news. An auto accident isn’t news, but why there isn’t a covered left turn on the most dangerous intersection in the county is news.
There is good reporting and bad reporting. Good reporting reports facts, regardless of ideology. Bad reporting plays to the biases and notions of its intended audience, using emotion rather than verifiable facts. Bad reporting also goes with “if it bleeds, it leads” rather than determining what affects the most people and leading with that.
Bias? Depends on the source, really. I don’t find my local tv news to be terribly biased (I get TV news out of Boston), but it also generally isn’t great reporting. Crime, fires, accidents, weird or cute news of the day – that makes up most news (the rest is weather, sports, and maybe traffic). Sometimes some stuff about politics (especially now with all of the would-be presidents in New Hampshire) which is what should really be on the news. The fact that there was a house fire on Boylston Street and three families are homeless is sad, but it’s not news. Local politicians wanting to defund fire stations would be news. An auto accident isn’t news, but why there isn’t a covered left turn on the most dangerous intersection in the county is news.
There is good reporting and bad reporting. Good reporting reports facts, regardless of ideology. Bad reporting plays to the biases and notions of its intended audience, using emotion rather than verifiable facts. Bad reporting also goes with “if it bleeds, it leads” rather than determining what affects the most people and leading with that.
As far as sources; I find that often the longer the article, the less-biased, if only because you can get in more points of view and facts. Certain writers are also almost always good, dealing in facts and figures rather than only appealing to emotion. The best writers, of course, use both. Bad writers *try *to do this, but end up on Slate talking about their sudden and dramatic realization that medial tests cost money while they were pregnant and “on Obamacare”, or that because some writer’s girlfriend got an incompetent doctor in an ER without decent triaging, women’s pain isn’t taken seriously.
That said, I’m sure someone can point to a wildly biased, well-regarded magazine with really long articles and prove my last paragraph wrong.
Grumpy.
Although sometimes even local news has bias. I notice here in Kansas City the TV news has taken an “ignore” position on the KCMO school district and all its numerous problems. I dont know if its origins but it just seems they dont want to keep focusing on the districts problems. Maybe its because back in the 70’s and 80’s the focus on the problems of desegregation and the teacher strike might have lead to further problems.
About 60% of the public has little or no confidence in the mass media to report the news fairly. Less than one in five thinks the media is too conservative, more than two in five thinks it is too liberal. It is affected by politcal persuasion, of course, but twice as many independents think the media are too liberal as think they are too conservative. (Cite.)
I see the US media as on the whole, just dumbed down. It’s not that it is biased politically (except for Fox News, which is just GOP TV), it’s that it is news by and for stupid people. I’m a news junky and read a number of news sources every day for my work, it would never occur to me to watch CNN to get information, for example. For all the press Jon Stewart got for taking on Fox News, I thought his takedowns of CNN and the big networks were more cutting.
