Media Bias Not Exclusive to Cable News Networks
What must be understood is that newspapers are owned by individuals or are regulated by major corporations. While these entities may be in the business of delivering the news, they’re also in the business of turning a profit. Because profits are at stake, sometimes what stories are covered and how they’re covered can be impacted by the owner or regulator’s political or financial interests. This forms a bias toward the news, which unfortunately the public must take the brunt of in the end.
And because the news is generated and organized by human beings, imperfections in understanding and personal conflicts and opinions can find their way into the news stories the public reads, thus spreading that bias laced within the facts contained within a story. Because the public generally doesn’t understand how the newspaper industry works, some of these euphemisms and slanted views become just as much a fact as the numbers and quotes used within the story are fact because they really happened. Although the opinions and buzz words within are not fact, the damage has been done.
Media bias can come in the form of which angle a new entity decides to take on an important issue, or what topics to focus on out of a particular event. Bias is inherent in deciding “newsworthiness” because it is based upon personal beliefs and standards one has learned either on their own or has been taught from supervising journalists. In either case, the decision making process, even if based on company or journalistic standards comes from an individual or a group of individuals coming to that conclusion based on their own preferences.
Media and journalism analyst Robert McChesney writes in his book Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy that the public associated bias more with government involvement than with companies being privately owned on a corporate level. Instead, the public views this as being “innately democratic and benevolent, and therefore not subject to political discussion” (McChesney p.6).
Political and financial interests aside, bias can be rooted in what an editor or editorial staff deems “newsworthy.” Public perception of current events and issues can become tainted or shortchanged depending on where a story is placed within a paper, which is also a product of personal opinions and biases. Also, how a story is written or what aspects are emphasized and not emphasized or even mentioned are forms of bias as well.
One such difference in newsworthiness can be demonstrated when comparing articles done by the Chicago Tribune (June 11, 2005) and the Chicago Sun-Times (June 12, 2005) on Mayor Richard Daley’s visit with other major metropolitan mayors at the 73rd Annual Conference of Mayors.
In the Tribune story, staff reporters Gary Washburn and Dan Mihalopoulos chose to write a lead that immediately named off glamorizing aspects of Chicago and its mayor, immediately creating their own positive image before even getting to the substantial news item within.
“The chief executives of more than 200 cities were converging on Chicago for this weekend’s annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors greeted by blooming flowers, a pristine lake dotted by sailboats and a man named recently by Time magazine as one of the very best mayors in America.”
By this, the reporters have already set the tone and told the reader that Daley is a good mayor without even allowing the reader to read further on for the proof and come to his or her own conclusion. Add this lead to the headline “Among mayors, Daley king” also tends to over-blow Daley’s importance. When reading the story without the lead or the headline, it tells the tale of a man who’s surrounded by corruption, which he may or may not be a part of.
He’s also doing his best to cover it up as long as other mayors are in town by not allowing non-convention related questions to be asked by the press. But with the headline and lead read as they are, the story paints a slightly different picture of a man who is faced by adversity and is struggling to do his best against these odds. In essence, Daley is a saint, surrounded by bad, bad men.
The Sun-Times took a very different stance with the event, choosing to focus more on news and the actual reason why the mayors were there in the first place, instead of relating everything back to Daley. The real reason the mayors convened was to lobby against a proposal by the Bush administration that would cut in half a program cities have relied on for 31 years. Chicago could lose as much as $48 million according to the story by Maudlyne Ihejirika.
So while the Tribune story tried to play Daley up by pitting his accomplishments versus some of the downfalls, the Sun-Times opted to go for a more direct, news and facts-oriented story, which took few liberties with the facts and made no noticeable editorialized statements.
Placement of a story can also create a slightly more subliminal sense of bias. By placing a story in a certain part of the newspaper, it creates the notion that material toward the back is less important than material that was deemed appropriate for page one. In one instance, the Tribune, which printed its story one full day earlier than the Sun-Times, placed the story on page one, whereas the Sun-Times placed the story on page eight. While both stories were of the same event, one is likely to have more of an impact on public opinion than the other.
Because the Tribune placed its Daley story on page one, more people will read it and take the bias expressed within to heart as perceived fact. The Sun-Times article will likely suffer a lesser fate, since less people will read past the first few pages of the newspaper before skipping to the sports section. This, combined with an over-all lack of sensationalism on the part of the reporter will mean that not only will the reader of the Sun-Times be less likely to obtain a biased opinion of their mayor, but it’s also less likely they’ll even be informed of the crucial monetary and political information contained within the story as well.
It’s easy for bias to slip past readers because of their voluntary suspension of disbelief, meaning that people are so quick to trust the news. McChesney believes this has something to do with the way our culture has become fused with the media. He believes there are certain myths engrained in our culture. These myths include: “That professionalism in journalism will protect the public interest from private media control; that the Internet and new digital technologies with their billions of potential channels eliminate any reason to be concerned about corporate domination of media; that the market is the best possible organization for a media system because it forces media firms to Ã?¯Ã?¿Ã?½give the people what they want’ . . . and that the media are not dominated by corporate interests but, instead, have a liberal or left-wing anti-business bias.” (McChesney p.8).
While McChesney believes the opposite of the last statement to be true, CBS insider Bernard Goldberg reprinted an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal in his book, Bias, in which he stated that it’s because television anchors like Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings do in fact present a left-wing slant that television news on a major network level has suffered in terms of public trust in news.
“The old argument that the networks and other Ã?¯Ã?¿Ã?½media elites’ have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it’s hardly worth discussing anymore. No we don’t sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on who we’re going to slant the news. We don’t have to. It comes naturally to most reporters.” (Goldberg p.19).
Between McChesney and Goldberg, there starts to form a greater dynamic in that bias in television and print news are not reserved for liberals or conservatives. Even in the texts represented in this report, bias plays a huge part in perception of the whole process of the media machine. Goldberg perceives the “media elitists” who run CBS as a bunch of liberals who want to make everything politically correct and played down so nobody gets overly offended. Later on page 19, Goldberg even openly states that he is “objective . . . fair . . . balanced,” which is tantamount to him claiming that he is without fault and thereby not entirely human, much like how Fox News makes the same bold statement. It’s possible that he’s borderline insane. The preceding statement itself could be perceived as a form of left-wing bias.
Goldberg, through his observations, does associate being liberal with political correctness and therefore a conscious consideration of ratings and commercialization which are key elements of broadcasting that can have a blatant effect on how news stories are covered. McChesney maintains that most corporate media entities, predominantly print, are more on the conservative side but are still corporately conscious of not rocking the boat and getting into trouble politically or economically and risk losing their precious readership.
In either case, fear of repercussions and political affiliations seems to have the greatest control over bias in news coverage, whether it is in television or newsprint. In the case of the Chicago Tribune article versus the Chicago Sun-Times, while there was no such perceived bias on the part of the Sun-Times, there is a definite perceived bias with the Tribune. By showing predominantly positive aspects in light of negatives, the article is almost pro-Daley and thus doesn’t seem the rock the boat and place the newspaper in political danger.
The Sun-Times article on the other hand, while it doesn’t use negative or overly positive language or focus on Daley, expresses a placement in the paper that might suggest the paper’s stance on or political involvement with the Daley administration, which is simply to not get involved at all. This in itself is a politically motivated stance and can thereby be conceived as being a form of bias. No matter how anyone perceives it, bias is inherently in the eye of the beholder. It’s always there, but can be viewed differently from the right or the left.
