I often like to discuss the nature of media and its bias towards the news. People in the media generally believe themselves to be above reproach when it comes to liberal/conservative bias, but the reality is often quite different. Although there are dozens of studies (including ones from the Pew Research Center) that confirms that most major media outlets have a “left” leaning ideology; this study I found most interesting. The way the study was done was counting thing tank citations from both media outlets and (as a percentage) from both Legislative branches.
The nice part about the way the study was conducted is that it removes a significant part of human judgment from the evaluation process. A simple comparison can be done between the media outlet and the U.S. House of Representatives (generally considered the a fairly accurate reflection of the countries political leanings) as a whole. The result (not unexpectedly) was that almost all major media outlets do NOT represent both sides of the issue with balance; at least when when we discuss the practice of citation.
I don’t believe that its possible for people, companies, institutions to be un-bias. To deny the experiences that made us who we are would be to remove the life, color, and vigor of our statements. What is possible is for everyone to admit that bias occurs and to be honest about said bias. As I have said before, those who deny bias in any human endeavor are either ignorant or naive.
The problem is that many people pretend there isn\’t a bias, or are ignorant of bias, because we\’ve elevated the press (in all its forms) to the level of an almost sacred entity, where we expect our news, documentaries, websites, professors, not to have agendas. To use a very extreme example, it\’s why white supremacists have had great success recruiting on the internet (or at least it\’s a major contributing factor).
I think you hit the nail right on the head!
ummm…well, my position is that the media is really in the service of global capital. People may think it is unbiased, or that it is too liberal or whatever. The problem isn\’t in its ideology, per se–but in the way it focuses on particular problems and elevates particular ideas to the expense of others. And almost always, this is why people don\’t really see the protests happening everyday against Iraq and against the way the War on Terror is being run, this is done in the service of keeping the global media conglomerates making money. So, what we need isn\’t an unbiased news source–this is absolutely impossible–what we need is to democratize news making. To make it absolutely obvious that what we see when people report the news is always seen through a particular eye. I think that projects such as indynews.org–where anyone can send a report in and be shown on an international web site is probably where we need to go. Not in the direction of unbiased news, but in the direction of a news that is brought to us by people aware of and giving their positionality as limited human beings with biases.
http://www.indynews.org