We Can Deal With Media Bias.
Yesterday I recommended making make a personalized news plan: a way to get balanced news each day but not all day. A foundation for active citizenship and, also, mental health in these troubled times.
But What About Media Bias?!?!?
HOW, even?! Source
Media bias is one of those bogeyman concepts that turns up everywhere, like Billy Bob Thornton: everyone’s familiar with and worried about it, but no one can definitively explain it. Even many political progressives take as gospel the notion that “the mainstream media” has a “liberal bias.” But if the alternative is Fox News? Mon dieu!
So, what to do?
Turns out that, like any oft-repeated political phrase, “media bias” must be unpacked in order to reveal actual meaning. So, in this episode of I Do The Research So You Don’t Have To, here are my top five (refreshingly common-sense) gleanings from a day’s reading on media bias. Let's go!
1. "Media" ≠ News. “Media” includes news, entertainment, commentary, propaganda—any way people transmit ideas. "News media" is a subset of media, and the distinction is important.
Upshot 1: It’s best to get news from an outlet whose bread and butter is news—real, legitimate reporting. Don't order scallops at a steakhouse; don't order news from entertainment or activist outlets.
Here in 2017 it's passé to pick on Millennials who pull their news exclusively from The Daily Show. We get it, bad idea. But what about The Atlantic? Turns out: different question, same answer. Though outlets like The Atlantic and Slate have upped their reporting game in this Age Of We Need New Homepage Content Every Minute, their bread and butter isn't news reporting, but cultural commentary. Their commentary is insightful—but reporting-wise, they simply can't compete with the juggernaut newsrooms who've published daily news for a century or more. I left my beloved Atlantic out of my news plan and now read its commentary as "dessert," not the main course.
Upshot 2: In conversation, it's important to distinguish between “the press” and other kinds of media. Lumping Robert Redford or the Dixie Chicks (entertainment) with The New York Times (press) is tempting—particularly for your Tea Party uncle—but it’s not sensible or fair. Sure, most outspoken celebrities are outspoken-to-the-left, but reporting the news is not their job. To use them as Exhibit A for “the biased media” is wacky, and you can tell your uncle I said so.
2. “The news media” or “the press” is not a monolithic thing. It’s comprised of hundreds of thousands of professional journalists working for outlets with a range of audiences.
Upshot 1: “The press hates Trump” is as wild and irrational an assertion as “sixty-year-olds prefer Danielle Steele.” Huh?
Upshot 2: We can stop worrying that journalists and news outlets might be biased, because of course they are: there is no such thing as perfect neutrality when humans are involved. Writers have to choose words, camera operators have to choose angles, and these choices affect how readers and viewers perceive the news. The common-sense tricks, again, are to look for established pros, to get news from more than one source, and to balance your sources. Because, actually…
"Basic AF." Such shade! Vanessa Otero
3. Many outlets’ editorial biases are reasonably well agreed-upon. The diagram above has been cruising the Internet recently, and though some of its details are disputable, most lay news-hounds seem to be shrugging and saying, “seems about right.” (Actually, most people I’ve talked with would like to see The Washington Post, The New York Times, and NPR pushed a little farther left—and FWIW I strongly agree.)
Upshot 1: For news, stick to outlets near the middle, with an equal number of “skews conservative” (Journal and Economist) and “skews liberal” (Times and Post).
Upshot 2: Knowledge—not paranoid hyper-vigilance—is half the battle. My four favorite outlets are venerable news organizations, and I'm familiar with their traditional slants. I’ll read with my eyes open for signs of clear bias—but as long as I’m maintaining a balanced intake, I’m not going to mistrust a reputable outlet's news just because that outlet “skews” one way or the other. That’s a recipe for insanity, and my insanity cup already overfloweth.
4. Another loaded and poorly-used phrase? “Mainstream media.” We hear constantly that the "mainstream media" leans to the left. But, a quick quiz: who has more viewers, CNN or Fox News? Fox, actually. And whose circulation is higher, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal? The Journal's.
Upshot: To assert that CNN and the Times are “mainstream” and the Journal and Fox are some sort of scrappy underdogs is…um, bizarre fake news. It feeds some weird and factually untrue martyr complex: “The liberal-skewing papers are for those coastal elites who rule the mainstream, and the conservative-skewing outlets are for us normal folk at the margins.” Not true. Among the biggest players (ie, “mainstream media”), there are slight biases in both directions. That's another one for your uncle.
You'd never guess that this grin hides so much rage. Source
5. Hand-wringing about news bias is not a new phenomenon. American politicians have called the press biased and unfair since the Revolution. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, loathed newspapers. And, according to one interview I read: “Carter was such a nice man but he wasn’t really thrilled about them either.” Hee! SUCH A NICE MAN. Also: LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD. He'll answer to either!
Upshot of Upshots: No one’s denying a contentious relationship between professional politicians and professional journalists. But we need the latter to report on the former, so we shouldn’t throw out the News Media baby with the Media Bias bathwater. Everyone’s human, no one is neutral, and we have the necessary intelligence and common sense to work around media bias by choosing a balanced handful of reputable sources. Chalk one up for common-sense active citizenship!
Resources
This is for my husband. Just the picture, not the action figure, silly. Source
If you’re interested in further reading, I learned a lot from these pieces:
- ‘Mainstream Media’ Doesn’t Have a Liberal Bias, from The Federalist
- The Myth of Media Bias, from the First Amendment Center
- Is media bias really rampant? Ask the man who studies it for a living, from the Poynter Institute
- Thomas Jefferson Had Some Issues With Newspapers, from Intellectual Takeout