Commentary: On Media Bias and News Reporting Norms and Impacts

media-logoIt never ceases to amaze me that when the chips are down and all else is failing, the fallback position of any failing campaign – particularly a Republican one – is to blame the messenger, i.e. the media.

Just Google: “Romney unfair media” and you will see a litany of complaints from the right on this subject.  This came up briefly Saturday in a comment.

Back when I was an aspiring political scientist, I actually studied public opinion and media effects.  The research that I have seen, including a good portion of research for a dissertation that was never completed, all squarely shows that the impact of media on actual voter behavior is small.

There is a good reason for that.  The ability for media to impact people’s views of the political world is dependent on two variables that are actually at odds with each other – exposure and receptiveness.  In short, you need to be exposed to the message and receptive to the new information.

Now it turns out, not surprisingly, that the more attentive people are to media sources, the more likely they are to have already made up their minds.  And the people who are most likely to be influenced by media coverage are those least likely to be exposed to it.

In addition to studying media effects, I was interested in the literature on media bias.  The problem was, there was not much of it and most of it was quite poor.  The problem with studying media bias is figuring out how to measure it.

Usually when I get into these discussions, UCLA researcher Tim Grosecloses’ research comes up.  This is a top scholar, who used very sophisticated cutting-edge methodological techniques to get at this question.  He developed what we might call a proxy-measure.

In short, that is a measure that was not directly measuring the critical variable but something that might be a proxy for it.  The proxy measure is, of course, easier to detect and thus analyze, and the one he used was mentions of think-tanks.  Using that, he was able to show that some media sources were biased to the left.

The problem is that his research rests on the assumption that mentions of think-tanks as authoritative sources of information represents an ideological component and therefore a bias on the part of the media.  I am simply not convinced that his key variable – innovative as it is – actually measures what he thinks it does.

The other problem that I have with this conversation is that we are still arguing and discussing it like it is 1992 and like there is one media.

Increasingly, there is no center.  An increasing number of viewers watch either Fox News, which is clearly highly-partisan to the point this year that many of their contributors are advisors to the Romney campaign, and to the point where even conservatives are complaining about it, or other cable outlets like MSNBC which have modeled themselves after the very successful Fox News business model.

As political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it: “The Fox business model is based on securing and maintaining a loyal audience of conservatives eager to hear the same message presented in different ways by different hosts over and over again.”

We also have the proliferation of blogs, citizen news cites, and, of course, social media.

So, while there are still traditional news organizations – ABC, CBS, NBC and the Associated Press, among other news services, along with a few of the major newspapers – NY Times, Wall Street Journal, etc – their influence is clearly on the wane.

The networks covered exactly one hour of convention time this year per night.  Their audience is diminishing and being replaced either by partisan cable news or equally-partisan internet sources.

So if you want to argue for media bias of the mainstream news – you have to convince me that it matters, and within either a traditional framework or an emerging media industry framework, I simply am not going to buy it.

Nor do I buy the premise that the mainstream media are biased to the left.

The Vanguard once argued that fair and balanced could be less accurate.  The mainstream media, in fact, are guilty of this.

Professors Mann and Ornstein have written a book describing the dysfunction of Washington government and that book contains a very explicit critique of the mainstream media.

As they note: “It is traditional that those in the American media intent on showing their lack of bias frequently report to their viewers and readers that both sides are equally guilty of partisan behavior.  Journalistic traditions notwithstanding, reality is very different.”

Attacks on the media for being liberally biased go back, at least, to the days of Richard Nixon.

Ironically, John Dean in his review of the Mann and Ornstein book, writes about “the remarkable failure of American journalism to report on the extremism and governing intransigence of the Republican Party.”

The campaign against the media might be working, as he adds, “It appears that the journalistic mainstream fears being cast as partisan for simply being honest.”

In a May op-ed from Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, they argue that a core of the problem in American government is the increasing extremism of the Republican party.

They write, “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

They add, “When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”

This analysis forms the backdrop for their critique of the news media.

Here they write: “We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.”

They advise the press: “Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?”

They continue, “Stop giving balanced treatment to unbalanced tactics and strategies, in situations where Republicans clearly rely on such homogenized news coverage to hide their obstinacy and obstructionism, not to mention their radical policies.”

Furthermore: “Fact-check and report the fact-checking results prominently, and then become increasingly critical toward politicians who repeat falsehoods.”

As John Dean writes: “Just these few basic reporting changes by the giants of the news media could seriously lessen the impact of our political polarization.  Yet, these salutary changes are not likely to happen, because most mainstream news media journalists, editors, and producers – and their corporate overlords – worry more about offending viewers, than about telling the audience what is really happening.”

He adds, “What is disquieting about mainstream journalism now is that the journalists know full well what is going on, but they fear being called partisan for simply accurately and fully describing this situation.”

Much of what they say here is accurate and it is a frequent criticism of the media – the creation of false balance that actually distorts.  In my view, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but they are not entitled to their own facts.  By creating a phony balance, you end up distorting the facts and the media is clearly guilty of this.

Bottom line, the media should not serve one side or another.  But they should not allow their practices to be used to manipulate the coverage in the name of balance, either.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

Author

  • David Greenwald

    Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

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116 comments

  1. sigh…

    All this proves is that a liberal is quite unable to look outside his ideological bias to recognize the same.

    Amazing analysis and conclusion. It is that same Democrat political template…. The GOP has gone extreme, so the poor Democrats and media cannot even talk honestly for fear of upsetting them. So, the Democrats and the media are the victims of those GOPers! There is so much bullshit in that template I can’t even approach it for the stench.

    Is the occupy movement a GOP thing? I suppose that is not extreme in the eyes of a liberal.

    Go hang out reading the comments from the posters on the Huffington post and come back with a straight face and tell me you are not reading the views of extremists.

    I talk to my hard working friends all the time about their political views and they parrot the main talking points of the main media. I have to deprogram them. They say “why didn’t they explain it that way?”. While I agree that CBS, NBC and ABC news are becomming less and less relevant, you also have to include all the daytime talk shows, nighttime talk shows and entertainment (shows and movies). All of this stuff tilts way left. That is why Clint Eastwood got so much attention… how dare he step out of the liberal entertainer box!!! Saturday Night Live last night did a piece making fun of the GOP Party. It probably was hillarious to the average viewer brainwashed by the Democrat-Left-Media conglomerate; but it was unprecedented… especially just a few weeks away from the election.

    All of this helps set and cement a narrative that is increasingly anti-GOP and pro liberal-progressive and out of touch with conservative values and views.

    The Vanguard here is a reliable tourch carrier for the liberal Democrat Party. That Party has done a tremendous job capturing and controlling the education system and the media… two of the three institutions most responsible for shaping minds and public opinion. The third is the church… which many liberals clearly hate.

    The only light at the end of the tunnel for this conservative is that these wrong-headed liberals will continue to paddle toward the cliff. Maybe the best thing for this conservative to do is to support all they want to do so to expedite the enevitable fall so we can again begin to climb back to greatness.

  2. For someone who is not on the far left, the Vanguard’s objectivity is what Fox News is to leftists. Articles like this do nothing but confirm this.

    Just out this week, from Gallup:
    [quote]Americans’ distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. [/quote]
    [url]http://www.gallup.com/poll/157589/distrust-media-hits-new-high.aspx?utm_source=google&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=syndication[/url]

    Gallup states that
    [quote]This year’s decline in media trust is driven by independents and Republicans.[/quote]

    I will say that the comments in the Vanguard often have original and refreshing perspectives. And to be fair, when the Vanguard reports on local issues it often does a reasonable job.

  3. Jeff

    [quote]The only light at the end of the tunnel for this conservative is that these wrong-headed liberals will continue to paddle toward the cliff. Maybe the best thing for this conservative to do is to support all they want to do so to expedite the enevitable fall so we can again begin to climb back to greatness.[/quote]

    And I would opine that this paragraph demonstrates how at lease one conservative has been “brain washed”
    (your frequent expression ) by the likes of Ayn Rand. All you needed to add is “who is John Galt” !

  4. “Amazing analysis and conclusion. It is that same Democrat political template…. The GOP has gone extreme, so the poor Democrats and media cannot even talk honestly for fear of upsetting them.”

    The research that I cite actually tracks all of that.

    You cite the Huffington Post, which suggests that there are liberals as liberals as conservatives are conservative. No argument. The problem is you are not accounting for numbers and there are far more conservatives than liberals in that class and more importantly there are far fewer moderate Republicans than Moderate Democrats.

    Is that an accurate analysis? I don’t know, but you are certainly not taking on the data.

  5. medwoman: [i]”And I would opine that this paragraph demonstrates how at lease one conservative has been “brain washed”
    (your frequent expression ) by the likes of Ayn Rand. All you needed to add is “who is John Galt” ! “[/i]

    Brain washed? From whom? Which institutions? Certainly not the education system… Aynd Rand was never required reading. I didn’t even have to read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. However, I had to read books on Marx, and even Mein Kampf!

    From the media? From Hollywood? I hope you don’t think these are brainwashing me!

    I read everything I can from all viewpoints. I have been working hard to try to understand how a liberal thinks, because frankly it is perplexing. I have changed my views a bit during this process… some have moved a bit closer to that left view, and some farther away. I come to my own conclusions for what I believe and think is right. Always have. Always will.

  6. [i]The problem is you are not accounting for numbers and there are far more conservatives than liberals in that class and more importantly there are far fewer moderate Republicans than Moderate Democrats.[/i]

    I don’t know that to be a fact, and I don’t even know what relevance it has to your thesis. If there are fewer liberals, then it is even more worrisome that they are concentrated in controlling the institutions that provide most of the services that shape minds and public opinion.

    A center-right country, with a center-left (being generous) education system and media? Huston, we have a problem!

  7. “I don’t even know what relevance it has to your thesis”

    I’m not sure if you’re intentionally being obtuse here, remember the point (not necessarily my thesis) is that there is a greater concentration of extremist republicans than democrats, obviously the greater numbers lends itself.

    “If there are fewer liberals, then it is even more worrisome that they are concentrated in controlling the institutions that provide most of the services that shape minds and public opinion.”

    You’re begging the question here.

  8. Fox News and now the internet are game changers. I don’t see a liberal media. In fact, I don’t see “a” media. The media has become decentralized which is good and bad. Good that there is no one view. Bad in that, I think it’s aiding the polarization of the electorate.

  9. Jeff

    [quote]I come to my own conclusions for what I believe and think is right. Always have. Always will.[/quote]

    I am sure that you believe this. And yet, the language that you use frequently, “looters and moochers” for example borrows heavily from the writings of Ayn Rand, as does your insistence on the idea of “blowing it all up” and starting over with a philosophy and process very similar to what Ayn Rand espoused leaves me skeptical about how original your thinking and positions actually are. You will note I did not make any claim that any institution or school made you develop these ideas. Indeed, I believe that the strongest of all “brainwashing” is what we obtain culturally and organically, because it is this process that is the most likely to cause us to believe without questioning our own ideas.

  10. [quote]The research that I have seen, including a good portion of research for a dissertation that was never completed,[/quote]

    Well, that inspires a lot of confidence.

    [quote]And I would opine that this paragraph demonstrates how at lease one conservative has been “brain washed” [/quote]

    I have a different view. It seems to me that Jeff thinks things through for himself. This leads him to sometimes arrive at opinions that are not shared by the majority of his fellow Davis residents. In contrast, people like medwoman have largely predictable views that are in conformity with the majority in Davis and require no courage to voice.

    By the way, who is renting out Jeff?

  11. Is it any surprise that liberals think that most the media isn’t obviously left wing biased? They say this because they know having a biased left leaning media is to their benefit so they always deny it.

  12. Rusty: Just because you expect someone to say something, does not make them inaccurate. In this case, I have to question you: what media? It’s not like there is one “media” or a unified media.

  13. I think that legacy media has generally had a left bias, not so much in how stories are presented but in what stories are covered. Modern media is so much more diverse that I think that — other than a couple of outliers like Fox — it is harder to characterize. HuffPost is left wing, Drudge is right wing, but since they’re mostly aggregators you can just click through directly to the source they’re linking. Think about it: where do you get your news nowadays?
    Growing up in San Diego, with just the Union, it was odd constantly hearing how left-biased the media was. Copley papers were very, very right-wing, and that was all we had. Plus three (3) channels to choose from on our TV.

  14. J. R. [i]”Who is renting Jeff out?”[/i]

    LOL!

    My dear sweet kind hearted wife. It is amazing that she keep this mean old conservative guy around to rant a rave.

    I’m sure several of us can make the same claim!

  15. Jeff:
    “My dear sweet kind hearted wife. It is amazing that she keep this mean old conservative guy around to rant a rave.

    I’m sure several of us can make the same claim!”

    LOL… My wife is a school teacher in town and even though she too is conservative she likes me to try and tone it down because of the backlash she knows she would get from parents in the People’s Republic of Davis. That’s the main reason I don’t use my real name on this website.

  16. medwoman, RE: “looters, moochers, producers”.

    I certainly see the world and humans as being much more diverse and complicated than this classification would suggest. It is only a metaphor for a filtering of ideological thinking. Rand had the advantage of living in soviet Russia and then experiencing the American system. She was blown away by the contrast and this led to her motivation to craft her stories and her philosophy. I am not an Ayn Rand disciple. In fact, I think she was quite weird. However, most people that we quote in the ideology realm, are weird.

    However, she I think she nails the psychology of humans and the related group-think that forms the current of social constructs that we individually and collectively will paddle downstream on. The problem… if we are paddling down the wrong flow, is becomes impossible to paddle back against current to get on the correct tributary. See Argentina for a recent example. So much about where seem to be headed looks like the wrong flow to me. We only have to look around at all the historical and cuurent examples of failure. Even so, we seem to be predisposed to make these same mistakes.

    I was shy and introverted as a young person. More an artist than I was business minded. I have a good life now precisely because I was able to stuggle and strive and grow and eventually make a good American life for myself. But I was well into my mid 30s still living pay check to pay check. Now my kids do not have the same options and opportunities I had. I think a big part of that reason is the advance of the global economy and the resultant global labor wage leveling… combined with our failure to adjust to it approriately. My experience in business tells me that change is always inevitable, and it is only how you deal with it that determines your success or failure. We have not dealt with it appropriately and we are still not dealing with it appropriately.

    We are in fact shrinking from competition at a time when we should be increasing it. We are bowing down to the pressure of stuggle to try and force a more stress-free life that is largely funded by increased debt. The meek simply cannot inherit the earth unless we are willing to accept a less free, less prosperous, less rich life for all. I am not willing to accept that and will I fight its advance until my last breath.

    We have always celebrated the producers in this country. They held the brass ring that we all aspired to grab. In our quest to grab it we would get knocked down only to get back up again and try again. Now we seem tired. We get knocked down and we curl up in a fetal position, get therapy and take on a victim’s story. We want someone else to do the hard work for us. We don’t want the stress and the struggle. We want a little brass ring and we want it to be secured. We want a cush government job that pays us a wage we can be pround of, and benefits that allow us to retire early and travel the world. We don’t want to worry about aquiring shelter, food, healthcare. This is a looter/moocher mentality and it is fatal.

    Human life has never been easy. It has always been a struggle. Those that figure out how to struggle, strive, persevere are generally able to make a good American life for themselves. This fact has been the reason that so many have wanted to migrate here.

    We need a government that gets this… A government that helps with the struggle, but not in a way that rewards those that stop struggling.

    I can tell when my heart is getting in the way of my head. People that need help breaking their destructuve habbits will likley hate you for telling them what they need to hear. That is not any justification for shrinking from the responsibility to tell them.

  17. Jeff Boone:09/23/12 04:20PM “….Human life has never been easy. It has always been a struggle. Those that figure out how to struggle, strive, persevere are generally able to make a good American life for themselves. This fact has been the reason that so many have wanted to migrate here….”

    Excellent observation, Jeff! Even though this may be off topic, the personal characteristics you have just described (drive, desire, dedication, determination, and durability) cannot be measured by our “beloved” GATE testing. Maybe that is partially why it is so unpopular.

  18. Jeff

    [quote]The meek simply cannot inherit the earth unless we are willing to accept a less free, less prosperous, less rich life for all. I am not willing to accept that and will I fight its advance until my last breath.

    We have always celebrated the producers in this country. They held the brass ring that we all aspired to grab. In our quest to grab it we would get knocked down only to get back up again and try again.[/quote]

    Here is an essential difference in our thinking. You seem to think that we all view success in the same way.
    You define success, at least here, in terms of material plenty. I simply do not believe in that portion of “the
    American Dream” that seems to imply that each generation should do better economically. We have as a society reached a point where I believe that we could easily all have “enough” to have satisfactory lives. And I believe that this could be done in such a fashion that no one would have to sacrifice having “more” if they were willing to put in more time and energy into having it. But this would involve a societal willingness to accept the cooperative drive in men and women as equal to the competitive drive. Yes, Jeff , that probably would mean that we would have to honor the contributions of women as much as we honor those of men. And we would have to start valuing psychological strength as much as physical strength. And we probably would have to consider the measure of our prosperity as a people as something more than financial prosperity. And, we would have to stop pretending that our system has ever provided equal opportunity for greater prosperity for all.

  19. [quote] But this would involve a societal willingness to accept the cooperative drive in men and women as equal to the competitive drive. Yes, Jeff , that probably would mean that we would have to honor the contributions of women as much as we honor those of men. And we would have to start valuing psychological strength as much as physical strength. And we probably would have to consider the measure of our prosperity as a people as something more than financial prosperity. And, we would have to stop pretending that our system has ever provided equal opportunity for greater prosperity for all.[/quote]

    That’s quite a collection of cliches, but it doesn’t really amount to much. No one is forcing you to have one opinion or another about any of these items, so you can believe and honor whatever principles you want.

    I get the impression that what you really want is to force your particular viewpoint on everyone else.

  20. JR

    Since I do not know how old you are, it may well be that you are not old enough to remember why the points that I made about equality and equal valuation of disparate traits are anything but cliche.

    For example, if you are not old enough to remember the draft for the Viet Nam war, you may not understand that people were most certainly forced to either fight, leave the country or risk imprisonment. You could attempt to get conscientious objector status, but this was generally reserved for those who could prove that they were affiliated with a church. Life or death in this situation is hardly what I would call “cliche”.

    If you are not at least in your 50’s, you may not be able to remember a time when a woman did not have any
    realistic chance of becoming a CEO of a major company, a surgeon, or a politician at the national level.
    I also do not consider this type of discrimination to be “cliche”. This lack of opportunity most certainly “forced”
    women to earn less than men even if they were the sole support of their family. So while no one may be “forcing” me to believe a certain way, the beliefs of the dominant culture have most certainly limited opportunities for many ( women, blacks, hispanics, gays, immigrants) within my lifetime if not in yours.

  21. David wrote:

    > there are far fewer moderate Republicans
    > than Moderate Democrats.

    The term “moderate” depends how you look at the world…

    I super liberal guy might call a Republican who goes to church once a year a “crazy religious extremist” and a super conservative guy might call someone that does not want to start every high school class (and sport) with a prayer a “crazy got hating pagan” (I would say they both sound fairly moderate)…

    Then medwoman wrote:

    > And I would opine that this paragraph demonstrates
    > how at least one conservative has been “brain washed”
    > your frequent expression ) by the likes of Ayn Rand.

    Most Americans (even most liberals) believe in God. Almost all conservatives believe in God and most have a hard time that Ayn Rand was an atheist. Just because many conservative believe in less government regulation like Ayn Rand does not make them “brain washed” by Ayn Rand any more than liberals (who mostly love public transit) were “brain washed” by Hitler since they both like trains to run on time…