media bias
June 30, 2006 at 8:42 am (J333)
I’ve been looking afresh at the whole “media bias” claim by many on the political right, the claim that major news media are biased against Republicans, conservatives, business, Israel, etc. in favor of left-leaning positions. I think media bias is very real, if only because major media is concentrated in an elite niche on the upper east coast, and it’s easy for any one in a bubble to think that the whole world “obviously” thinks like they do. But I’ve also wanted to cast a skeptical eye on the whole “media bias” perspective because it tends to stereotype all major media reports as biased, when that’s not the case either. There’s lots of excellent reporting being done by major media, and I believe that the Right often cries wolf.
So I left the radio dial on NPR this morning as I drove home from City of Hope (I took Sam in to get his blood level counts; we were the first there, and therefore driving west on the 210 Freeway at 810am. I confess that I searched first, in vain, for a radio station broadcasting the Germany-Argentina quarterfinal, before settling on NPR via KPCC). There was a report about fresh Israeli military strikes against Hamas in Palestinian territory. Fulfilling stereotype, the NPR report literally told one side of the story (click this link to listen), a view weighted toward the idea that the Israeli response to the soldier’s kidnapping was unjust. For balance, some quotes from Israeli officials and Israelis-on-the-street would have been in order, as the NPR report was full of quotes from ordinary Palestinians. I was underwhelmed by the NPR reporter’s, er, report.
Ryan Kellermeyer said,
June 30, 2006 at 10:59 am
I just prefer when a reporter comes out with thier biases instead of trying to be “fair and balanced.”
p.s. - Alemania!!!
Trey said,
June 30, 2006 at 4:44 pm
FYI… the world cup games are on AM 620 … in Spanish
fernando said,
June 30, 2006 at 8:13 pm
The history of the media bias argument is a deep one that traces right back to the days when broadcasts were regulated for “balance.” It really took off when Reagan changed your media laws.
As an outsider, the US media does not look like it has a liberal bias at all, in fact it looks solidly biased to the right. CNN international is more to the right than CNN in the US, especially with that Wolf Blizter bloke and, of course, there is Fox News.
Samurai Theolgian said,
July 1, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Is there a liberal media bias in the MSM? You bet. If you doubt it, go to the Media Research Center for DAILY examples:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/
And if it looks to an outsider like the US media is biased to the right, remember that America is a fairly conservative nation, and within that context, the elite media are heavily slanted toward our left.
I remember one poll of reporters showed that something like 75% were card-carrying Democrats. Not exactly representative of the population at large.