Bias in the News and Reporting

Reporting the News

“As audience decline, network executives decreed that news had to become
more profitable. So news divisions sharply reduced their costs, and tried
to raise the entertainment value of their broadcast.”
-Leonard Downie, Jr. and Robert Kaiser


 To a large extent TV, networks define news as what is newsworthy, where
they get their information, and how they present it. Major news
organizations assign their best reporters to particular beats-which are
specialist in what goes on at that location. Trial balloons are information
leaked to see what the political reaction will be. An example is President
Clinton’s inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky that was leaked
out by Richard Berke of the New York Times.
Reporters and their official sources have a symbolic relationship.
Newsmakers rely on journalist to get their message out at the same time
reporters rely on the public officials to keep them in the know. There are
cases of good investigative reporting making a difference in politics and
government. In 1999 the Chicago tribune documented the experience of
numerous Illinois men sentenced to death who had been convicted on
questionable evidence or coerced into confessing. Soon after it was
published the governor of Illinois suspended all executions in the state.
Once the news has been “found” it has to be compressed into a 30-second
news segment or fit in among the advertisements in a newspaper. They
basically seize the most interesting, controversial, and unusual aspects of
the issue. If coverage of political events during the height of an election
campaign in thin, coverage of day-to-day policy questions is even thinner.
Many of the issues are calculated to see if it will have an impact on the
viewers. Rather than presenting their audience with the whole chicken, the
media typically give just a McNugget.
Many people believe that the new is biased in favor of one point of
opposing points of view. But most stories are presented in a
“point/counterpoint” format in which two conclusions. Reporters believe in
journalistic objectivity, and their editors usually reward those who
practice it best. The news contains little explicit partisan bias is not to
argue that it does not distort reality in its coverage. The overriding bias
is towards stories that will draw the largest audience. Surveys show that
people are most fascinated by stories with conflict, violence, disaster, or
scandal.

"There is no such thing as an objective point of view.

No matter how much we may try to ignore it, human communication always takes place in a context, through a medium, and among individuals and groups who are situated historically, politically, economically, and socially. This state of affairs is neither bad nor good. It simply is. Bias is a small word that identifies the collective influences of the entire context of a message.

Politicians are certainly biased and overtly so. They belong to parties and espouse policies and ideologies. And while they may think their individual ideologies are simply common sense, they understand that they speak from political positions."

--Anonymous