Media bias

The most discussed forms of bias arise when the media supports or attacks a particular political party, candidate or ideology, but there are other common forms of bias:

• Advertising bias when material is selected or positioned in such a way as to appeal to advertisers.
• Corporate bias when material is selected or positioned in such a way as to appeal to media owners.
• Themed bias is the tendency to cover what everyone lights up and to avoid material that offends anyone.
• Sensationalism - a bias in favor of the exclusivity of the material over its routine, giving the impression that rare events, such as air crashes, are more common than ordinary events, such as car accidents.
• Concise bias is the tendency to cover opinions that can be summarized briefly, crowding out more unconventional views that take time to explain.

There are other forms of bias that manifest in maintaining or attacking a particular race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnic group, or even personality.

Stefano Mario Rivolta cites three forms of media bias: Strategic Maneuvering and Media Bias in Political News Magazine Opinion Articles, Stefano Mario Rivolta, June 7, 2011

1. Bias in the choice of material, that is, the decision to release or adhere to the material.
2. Bias lighting
3. Established bias

A study by Richard Allen Nielson (2004) “Tracking the Source of Propaganda: Tools for Analyzing Media Bias” ^[2] states that there are at least 12 methods used to determine the presence and degree of bias.

1. Analysis of the political / cultural attitude of journalists, in particular media elite workers, and journalism students.
2. Studying previous professional relationships of journalists.
3. A collection of quotes in which well-known journalists demonstrate their ideas about the politics and / or the proper role of their profession.
4. Monitor word usage and topic search analysis to determine content and make notes.
5. Numbered list item Explore recommended news articles.
6. Matching the agenda in news and entertainment media with the agenda of political candidates or other activists.
7. Identification of a positive / negative assessment of the highlighted event.
8. Analysis of personal democratic characteristics of decision makers in the media.
9. Comparison of the source / content of ads that affect information / entertainment content.
10. Analysis of the degree of state propaganda and the impact of public relations (PR) on the media.
11. The study of the use in the media of experts, speakers, etc. against those who are not selected to represent the group of interest or the ideology presented, against those who are eliminated.
12. Studying the accounts of journalists paid by the organization and professional associations for speaking to their groups and possibly influencing the target audience.

The technique used to avoid bias is a “point / counterpoint” or “ round table ”, an adversarial format in which representatives of opposing views speak out on a problem. This approach theoretically allows various opinions to appear in the media. However, the organizer is still responsible for choosing people who truly represent the breadth of opinions, for avoiding defamatory questions and for fair editing of their comments. When this is done carelessly, the point / counterpoint may be as biased as a simple biased report, suggesting that the “losing” side has lost essentially. Using this format can also lead to the reporter's accusations that he created a misleading impression that the points of view have equal legal force (sometimes called “false scales” ^[3] ). This can happen when there is a taboo on one of the points of view, or when one of the representatives makes a complaint.

One of these allegations of misleading equality was brought forward by Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News. In an internal e-mail message, he stated that journalists should not “artificially support George W. Bush and John Kerry “ equally responsible ”to the public interest, and that the complaints of Bush’s supporters were attempts to“ get out of the way ... restore efforts to win the election, smash senator Kerry. " When the conservative website Drudge Report published this post ^[4] , many Bush supporters saw it as incontrovertible evidence that Halperin was using ABC News to propagate against Bush in favor of Kerry, faced with journalists' attempts to avoid bias. Later, after analyzing the content of the selected news, it was found that the ABC News, CBS and NBC materials were more favorably disposed towards Kerry than to Bush, while the Fox News Channel content was located to Bush.

Another method used to avoid bias in the media is to disclose accessories that could be seen as an excuse for a potential conflict of interest. This becomes especially obvious when a news agency publishes material with some significance for the news agency itself, for its owners. Often this disclosure is authorized by laws or regulations relating to stocks or securities. Commenting on news stories involving stocks often requires disclosing the interests of the owners of these organizations or their competitors.

In rare cases, a news agency may reduce or reassign employees who are biased.

Finally, some countries have laws requiring a balance in state media. Since 1991, the CBC and Radio Canada have been governed by the Broadcasting Act. Among other things, this law establishes:

The programs provided by the Canadian broadcasting system should

(i) be diverse and comprehensive, providing a balance of information, education and entertainment for men, women and children of all ages, interests and tastes. (iv) provide sufficient opportunity for the public to come up with different opinions on issues of public interest.

Political bias has become a feature of the media since the advent of them and the first printing press . The cost of early printing equipment limited the number of people using media products. Historians have found that publishers often adapt to the interests of powerful social groups ^[5] .

John Milton's pamphlet entitled “ Areopagitics: A Speech on the Freedom of the Press from Censorship, addressed to the Parliament of England ”, published in 1644, was one of the first publications advocating freedom of the media ^[6] .

In the 19th century, journalists began to recognize the concept of objective materials as an integral part of journalistic ethics . This coincided with the growing role of journalism as a powerful social force. Although, even today, the most conscientiously targeted journalists cannot escape accusations of bias ^[7] .

Like newspapers, broadcast media (radio and television) were used as honest mechanisms for propaganda from the very beginning, the trend has become more pronounced since the governments of the states became owners of the broadcast spectrum. Although the process of abolishing state control over the media has led to the fact that a significant part of Western broadcast media is in private hands, there is still a strong state presence, or even a monopoly, in the broadcasting sphere of many countries around the world. At the same time, media concentration in private hands, and quite often among a small number of people, also led to accusations of media bias.

But not all allegations of bias are political. For example, science writer Martin Gardner accused the entertainment media of anti-scientific bias . He argued that television programs, such as the X-Files series, promote superstition ^[8] . In contrast, the Institute for Competitive Entrepreneurship, which is funded by enterprises, accuses the media of bias in favor of science ^[9] .

Media, despite the ability to disseminate information around the world, are limited by their cross-ethical compatibility on one simple basis - language. Ethical affiliation, being widely developed in terms of geographical , linguistic , cultural , genetic, and also differences in terms of views , has the potential to resist common sources of information. Thus, in the absence of translation, language forms a barrier to the world community of discussions and opinions, although it is also true that the media in any society can be divided by class, political and regional characteristics. In addition, if a translation is being carried out, the translator has the ability to introduce or change bias by choosing weighted words for the translation.

Language can also be considered as a political factor in the media, especially in cases where society is characterized by a large number of languages ​​spoken by the population. Choosing a language for the media can demonstrate bias towards a group that speaks that language, and can limit the public participation of those who do not speak that language. On the other hand, there have been attempts to use one common language in the media in order to appeal to a large, geographically distributed population, such as in the case of using the Arabic language on the Al-Jazeera news channel.

Language may also introduce a more mild bias. The choice of metaphors and analogies or the introduction of personal information in one situation, but not in another, can lead to bias, for example, discrimination on the basis of sex ^[10] . Using a word with a positive or negative subtext rather than a more neutral synonym can form a biased picture in the minds of the audience. For example, it matters whether the media calls the group “terrorists,” “freedom fighters,” or “rebels.”

Many news agencies reflect the point of view of the geographical, ethnic and national character of the population to which they primarily serve. Media inside the country are sometimes seen as flattering and unquestioning towards the government of the state.

Western media are often criticized in the rest of the world (including Eastern Europe , Asia , Africa, and the Middle East ) as pro-Western in relation to various political, cultural, and economic issues. Al-Jazeera is often criticized both in the West and in the Arab world.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wider Arab-Israeli issues are a particularly controversial area, and almost all coverage of any kind on this issue gives rise to accusations of bias on one or both sides.

It was noted that the main global news providers, news agencies, the main buyers of news are English-speaking organizations , and this gives an English-language bias in the selection and description of news. An English-language definition of what is news is of utmost importance; news originates in the English-speaking capitals and is primarily responsible for its own rich domestic markets ^[11] .

Despite the abundance of information services, most of the news published and broadcast around the world every day comes from only a few major news agencies, the three largest of which are the Associated Press , Reuters and Agence France-Press ^[12] . Although these institutions are “global” in the sense of their activities, each of them retains significant associations with certain countries, namely France (AFP), USA (AP), and Great Britain (Reuters) ^[13] . Chambers and Tinkel suggested that the so-called global media are agencies of English-speaking values ​​that give privileges to the norms of "competitive individualism, free competition , parliamentary democracy and consumerism." They see English as international as an additional aspect of English dominance ^[14] .

The media is often accused of bias in favor of a majority religion or an attack on a majority religion. In some countries, materials approved by the state religion are allowed. In other countries, abusive statements about any belief system are considered hate crimes and are illegal.

The apparent bias of the media is not always specifically political. As a rule, the media reaches a specific audience, which means that published material that affects a large number of people globally often gets less attention in some markets than local news such as public school shootings, celebrity weddings , plane crash , missing woman, or glamorous or shocking news. For example, the deaths of millions of people in the ethnic conflict in Africa can only be scantily mentioned in the American media, while the shooting of five people in high school will be described and analyzed in detail. The reason for this kind of bias is that the public wants to watch and / or that, in the opinion of the producers or publishers, the public wants to see.