15.5: Media Bias

One of the central tenets of journalism is that of objectivity. A reporter’s first loyalty, according to this ideal, should always be to the truth, warts and all. An objective news organization is a fair one, covering both sides of every story — or, if there are more than two, as many sides as there are — without favoring any side in particular, except insofar as the facts themselves clearly favor one side. Cherry-picking facts to promote a particular viewpoint or injecting one’s own opinion into reporting runs counter to this standard.

Objectivity has not always been the norm for media in the United States. Early American newspapers gave little thought to projecting an aura of fairness and impartiality, openly advocating for and against parties, candidates, and policies with little concern for factual accuracy. In the late 1800s, publishers began attempting to cultivate reputations for objectivity as a way to attract wider audiences, even though their actual reporting didn’t always live up to those reputations.

Technological changes created new reasons for news organizations to strive for objectivity. To prevent competing signals from crowding the airwaves and rendering them unusable, Congress established the Federal Communications Commission in 1934 to issue radio (and, later, television) broadcasting licenses and regulate frequencies. Radio and television stations were required to dedicate a portion of their broadcasting time to “public interest” programming such as news reports, and were initially required to remain neutral in their reporting. The adoption of the fairness doctrine in 1949 removed the neutrality stipulation but required radio and television broadcasters to present opposing political views in their reporting, a requirement which remained in force until 1987. These regulations bolstered Americans’ faith in their news: Walter Cronkite, who anchored the CBS Evening News for almost two decades, was crowned “the most trusted man in America” by a national poll in 1972.

The arrival of cable television and the Internet brought new business models to the media industry. Whereas newspapers and television networks had in the past promoted their objectivity to appeal to as many people as possible, it was now possible to build a profitable news organization while catering to a smaller segment of the population. Moreover, many Americans actually preferred news coverage that was tilted toward their side of the issues. The Fox News Channel, launched in 1996, quickly became recognized as a conservative alternative to other network and cable channels, allowing it to lead all cable news networks in viewership for over two decades beginning in 2002. Other channels such as MSNBC followed Fox News’s lead but in the opposite direction, taking a more openly liberal stance.

Most discussions of media bias center on partisan bias, which favors or opposes a particular party. (Ideological bias is also often mentioned, but because party and ideology overlap so closely in today’s America the difference between it and partisan bias is slight.) Left-leaning media organizations produce news that makes Democrats look good and Republicans look bad, and right-leaning media organizations do the opposite. This bias needn’t involve outright lying: news stories can be framed to make one side seem more noble or sympathetic than the other, or certain facts can be omitted while others are promulgated, or information can be interpreted in favorable or unfavorable terms. (Figure 15.2 below lists several dozen online news providers according to their reputations for partisan or ideological bias.)

Figure 15.2: Selected online news sources by bias, 2023 (Source: AllSides. Note: Ratings apply to news only, not opinion pieces.)

A less commonly discussed but equally (if not more) important form of media bias is newsworthy bias. Whether a news organization leans to the left, right, or center, it must regularly draw enough readers, listeners, or viewers to remain attractive to advertisers or subscribers (if it is privately owned) or justify continued government spending on it (if it is publicly owned). The drive to increase and maintain an audience causes media to prioritize sensational, attention-grabbing stories at the expense of dull or boring ones, and to present the stories they cover in appealing ways. Another round of congressional haggling over the budget might have a greater impact on Americans’ lives than the latest celebrity divorce, but the latter will sell far more magazines and get far more clicks than the former. Bad news holds the public’s attention better than good news, and violence is especially irresistible — hence the old reporter’s adage: “If it bleeds, it leads.” And, of course, all of the foregoing will captivate news consumers more if accompanied by slick graphics packages and dramatic musical motifs. (Check YouTube for a stale Walter Cronkite broadcast from the 1970s and compare it to a flashy modern broadcast to see how much this presentation can add to — or subtract from — the news.)

Americans’ trust in news media has eroded since its peak in the mid 20^th century, in part because of concerns about media bias. Ultimately, though, it is impossible to report the news without bias. Every news organization has a finite “news hole” — pages in a newspaper, minutes or hours of broadcast time, space on a website’s homepage — that it can fill with news, yet every day there are far more events than any one of them could possibly cover. Which events become “the news,” how much coverage each one gets, and the order in which they are prioritized are all choices that reporters, editors, and media executives have to make on a daily or even hourly basis. There is no objective answer to the question of which stories “deserve” to be covered, nor to the question of how much more coverage any one story merits relative to any other. Whatever choices news media make will inevitably reflect their preferences, prejudices, and biases, no matter how hard they strive to avoid them.