15.6: Media Bias

One of the central tenets of journalism is objectivity. A reporter’s first loyalty, according to this ideal, should always be to the truth, warts and all. Objective news is fair, 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. If the facts clearly favor one side, the news can say so, but it should not cherrypick facts to promote a specific viewpoint or opinion.

Objectivity has not always been the norm for media in the United States. Early American newspapers gave little thought to appearing fair and impartial. In fact, they openly advocated for and against parties, candidates, and policies, demonstrating little concern for 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 incentives for objectivity. To prevent competing signals from crowding the airwaves, 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. (Cable television, which wasn’t broadcast over the airwaves, was exempt from the fairness doctrine.) Such 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 advent of cable television and the Internet brought new business models to the media industry. Cable channels were sold in bundles, making channels dedicated to cooking, golf, or other niche interests commercially viable. To turn a profit, television news outlets now only needed to attract enough viewers to justify their inclusion in a cable package. This allowed cable news to cater to partisan or ideological groups more than ABC, CBS, or NBC ever could. As it turned out, many Americans preferred news coverage that tilted toward their side of the issues. The Fox News Channel, launched in 1996, quickly became recognized as a conservative news alternative, leading all cable news channels 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 America today the difference between it and partisan bias is slight.) Left-leaning media make Democrats look good and Republicans look bad, and right-leaning media 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. 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.)

A less discussed but still important form of media bias is newsworthy bias. Whether a news outlet leans to the left, right, or center, it must draw enough readers, listeners, or viewers to remain attractive to advertisers or subscribers (if it is private) or justify continued government funding (if it is public). 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 stories in appealing ways. 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 magazine copies and get far more clicks than the former. Bad news holds the public’s attention better than good news. Violence is especially irresistible, hence the old reporter’s adage: “If it bleeds, it leads.” And, of course, all of it will captivate news consumers more if accompanied by slick graphics and dramatic music. (Check YouTube for a stale Walter Cronkite broadcast from the 1970s and compare it to a flashy modern one. You’ll easily see how much this presentation can add to—and subtract from—the news.)

Figure 15.2: Selected online news sources by bias, 2025 (Source: AllSides. Note: Ratings apply to news only, not opinion pieces.)

Americans’ trust in news media has eroded since its peak in the mid-20th century, in part because of concerns about media bias. But media bias of one form or another is inevitable. Every news outlet 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. Every day, there are far more events than any outlet 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 reflect their preferences, prejudices, and biases, no matter how hard they strive to suppress them.