Unmasking Media Bias

Media bias is a subject that is tossed around these days more often than a Frisbee on a California beach. Many people, especially politicians, have a hard time defining the term, but they certainly will vouch they know it when they see it. They argue that it must be bias if doesn't fit their political or world view.

However, real bias usually is harder to detect. The prejudice that pervades today's mainstream media flows mainly from the decision about what qualifies as news. Those editorial judgements, made behind the scenes, are reflected in the selection of what stories are assigned for coverage.

Once editors decide what merits coverage, reporters are given instructions on pursuing a predetermined news angle. After stories are written or videoed, they are reviewed and edited for display in print or broadcast. Then another set of editors decides placement, directing where the story runs in a newscast or print publication.

Reporters often are blamed for news bias because their faces or names appear next to the coverage. But the editors pull the strings. Reporters are mere puppets dangled about by editors who are making judgements every day about what to cover, how to report it, and where to display it.

With that as a primer, here's a personal story that better illustrates how bias reflects an editor's judgement. Once while working at The Dallas Times-Herald, yours truly was given an assignment to produce a story about car-pooling. At that time, circa 1970, car-pooling was catching on in a handful of big cities in the country.

Like a good reporter should, I conducted interviews with a myriad of sources, including corporate spokesmen, city transportation agencies, state highway department officials and the chamber of commerce. What I found was that no company, save for Texas Instruments, had shown any interest in car-pooling. It was virtually non-existent in Dallas except for two vans operated by TI.

When I turned in my article, the news editor blew a gasket. "This isn't the story I wanted," he bellowed. "I want a story showing how car-pooling is growing in Dallas. It's good for the city."

I went back to my desk, sufficiently chastened. I dug out my notes and rewrote the story, emphasising that only one company was backing car-pooling, but it was surely a trend. I used the same set of facts and just ignored those that did not support the notion that car-pooling was going to save Dallas' traffic clogged freeways. The editor loved it so much it ran on the front page.

Although this episode happened decades ago, editors and journalists are employing the same tactic today. Closely examine most articles and reports and you will be able to spot how "selective facts" are chosen to make a point or advance an agenda. From the media's viewpoint, that isn't bias as along as the report is factual. However,leaving out facts and choosing only quotes and sources in support of a viewpoint, fails the test of being fair and balanced.

The best way to illustrate today's media bias is by listing some recent examples. In some cases, editors ignored the same news they once covered with gusto. In other instances, editors elected to use select facts to change the tenor of the reporting. Their choices have neutered the media's once proud journalism standards.

Here are just a few examples to illustrate the point:

1. BANK FAILURES: When a few California banks went under during President Bush's final year in office, the major broadcast networks showed long times of depositors waiting to withdraw their money from the institutions. The scene was described as reminiscent of The Great Depression. For perspective, there have been only two years since 1934 when no U.S. banks failed. Both years (2005 & 2006) occurred during the Bush Administration. Bank failures this year are on pace to break all previous records. Already, 103 banks have shuttered their doors. Have you seen any pictures of long lines of anxious bank customers on the television news? Of course not. The media has decided the country wants to see the economy recover and therefore doesn't need to be reminded of impending disaster. The news "narrative" has changed to showing and reporting facts and sources that support that agenda. No one could argue that a new record in bank closures does not merit news coverage.

2. AFGHAN WAR: During President Bush's two terms, the number of Americans killed or wounded in action in Iraq and Afghanistan ran on the front pages of most newspapers. The broadcast news followed suit, often with graphic footage of the unloading of flag draped caskets as a grim reminder of the war's toll. Each milestone reached in war dead became a new headline. During Bush's eight years there were 630 Americans killed in Afghanistan. In less than two years of his presidency, Barack Obama has presided over a war toll that now stands at 577. Have you seen front page charts showing the rising number of soldiers killed? Where are those flag-draped casket photos? The media has obviously decided that Americans no longer care about the killing of young men and women in uniform. Their narrative calls for stories that show the war is winding down to a successful conclusion.

3. HOME FORECLOSURES: During the last fading light of the Bush Administration, the media covered home foreclosures as if every American would soon be homeless. Interviews dominated the news with sobbing single mothers and minority families thrown out of their homes because they couldn't make the payments. Many claimed they were duped by greedy mortgage companies. In yet another irony, home foreclosures continue to spike with hardly any coverage. There is the odd mention of the percentage of mortgages under water, but there have been no snapshots of vans parked outside the domiciles of homeowners who are moving out of homes that they can no longer afford. No homeowner tears are being shown on the nightly news. Judging from the coverage, one would assume foreclosures are no longer a problem for the country. Yet the country has experienced 26 consecutive months of year-over-year increases in home foreclosures. Home foreclosures among the most credit-worthy borrowers have risen an alarming 425 percent (yes, 425%) since January 2008, according to Lender Processing Services, a mortgage data firm. Wouldn't you think that merited a few teary eyed homeowners pouring out their heart about their bad luck?

4. PROTEST: During the Bush Administration, Democrats and the media championed dissent as a sign of the First Amendment right of every American to speak out on the country's ills. Overnight, protesters gained celebrity status, such as Cindy Sheehan, a mother of a slain U.S. solider, who camped out near Bush's Crawford ranch. Pictures of protest placards with unflattering images of President Bush were served up in print photos and on television. There was even the famous footage of the Iraqi journalist throwing his shoe at President Bush during a news conference. No less an authority that Hillary Clinton claimed disagreement with a president was a holy exercise of American patriotism. Protest seemed like a great American ideal until the Tea Party came along. Then the media decided protest was a bad thing after all. Noisy citizens with signs were called Nazis, racists and kooks. The tenor of the coverage went from fawning to frightful. The media began snooping for dirt on protesters, particularly after Democrats and the President were critical of the dissent. Today Tea Party protests go largely unreported, although often the numbers of people involved far exceed the "mass" demonstrations aimed at Bush's administration.

Is it any wonder that surveys show the public distrusts the media almost as much as politicians? For decades, the media has sold its soul to promote ideas, causes and viewpoints instead of using its resources to inform and educate the public.

As a result, the media industry has suffered crippling declines in viewership and readership. Captains of media conglomerates complain that people just don't read newspapers and consume news broadcasts like they once did. They point the finger of blame at the Internet and an uneducated, dumbed-down public who does not care about what's happening in their country.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The news media needs to quit looking elsewhere for scapegoats. Today's media have become the enemy of truth, accuracy, balance and fairness. They have dug themselves a deep credibility hole that threatens to bury the industry in a grave they will never escape.