A Fresh Take On Media Bias
Jack Shafer at Slate has written about a new study out of the University of Chicago that takes a fresh look at media bias. It's hard to summarize the study in a short post, and I recommend you read Shafer's piece for more, but here are the three main points he focuses on:
1) If a media outlet cares about its reputation for accuracy, it will be reluctant to report anything that counters the audiences' existing beliefs because such stories will tend to erode the company's standing. Newspapers and news programs have a visible incentive to "distort information to make it conform with consumers' prior beliefs."Captain Ed has written a post that jumps off Shafer's piece. "The mechanism Shafer describes in the first paragraph has a basis in psychology," he writes. "One of the dynamics at work in assessing information gathering in general on an individual basis is the constant re-evaluation of the messenger based on whether the data it delivers matches our worldview. When a trusted source brings us information that contradicts our own set of assumptions, it tends to increase the credibility of the new data while decreasing the trust level in that source. Whether the dynamic Shafer describes involves conscious effort on the part of the media outlets or is more of a normal but subconcious human response, its existence is hardly a surprise."2) The media can't satisfy their audiences by merely reporting what their audience wants to hear. If alternative sources of information prove that a news organization has distorted the news, the organization will suffer a loss of reputation, and hence of profit. The authors predict more bias in stories where the outcomes aren't realized for some time (foreign war reporting, for example) and less bias where the outcomes are immediately apparent (a weather forecast or a sports score). Indeed, almost nobody accuses the New York Times or Fox News Channel of slanting their weather reports.
3) Less bias occurs when competition produces a healthy tension between a news organization's desire to conform to audience expectations and maintaining its reputation.
As for the second paragraph, what strikes this media observer isn't just the potential for more bias in stories where the outcomes aren't realized for a while, but the potential for the perception of more bias in stories with far away outcomes, like war reporting. That isn't to say there isn't bias, but it is to say that the lack of a short term outcome, the thing the authors argue allow a media outlet to get away with bias, also allows media critics to assert bias whether or not it's there. That's why some people can charge that the media isn't showing enough good news from Iraq while others complain the press is ignoring the bloodshed. The far-away outcome makes it difficult to definitively argue that one side or the other is right or wrong.