What can be said about political bias in the US media, and how should individuals respond?
Currently the US is a hyper-polarized environment, and the presence of media agents — MSNBC, FoxNews have played the role of amplifying that polarization dynamics occurring between the political parties, business interest and the electorate. In order to adapt to the natural characteristics of how humans receive and process information, there is a selective preference for information that is “newsworthy” and conforms to the structure of a good narrative “story”. In order to navigate and use media effectively, both news reporting agencies and media consumers should be able to distinguish between facts and opinions as well as classification of false statements into factual “errors” and subjective “misleading” statements. Just as all individuals have some form of inherent bias, so does the news media.
Some bias is unavoidable, and others are systematic and conflict of interest to the function of determination and dissemination of truth and impartial reporting of facts. The act of journalism has two functions — to report the facts impartially, and to reach a wide audience which may not have an intrinsic priority to receive impartial facts, particularly those that do not conform to their prior beliefs. The private, for-profit business model of the news organizations presents a conflict of interest between sustaining the organization, representing the interest of advertisers and business owners, and impartial truth discovery, informing the public of factual news. Alternative models could be non-profit news organizations, or public funding for media organizations. Neither of these alternatives guarantees that they would not be subject to their own version of the same inherent conflicts of interests and the private for-profit model and their relative success or failure would be determined on how the institutions were designed.
Political polarization in the United States
A number of authors have commented on the phenomenon of political polarization in the United States. A few sources that comment on the dynamics are Pew Research Center[8], MIT political scientists[12], PBS documentary “America’s Great Divide”[10] A Netflix original documentary series “The social dilemma”. I have also taken a quick pass at the demographic relationships in the 2016 election[11]. A couple of common observation take-aways from these sources
- The country has gone through phases of polarization and bipartisanship throughout its history. Three periods when it was intensely polarized were the period leading up to the Civil War, the pre-New Deal era, and the present day. The most recent phenomenon can trace its origins to Johnson’s administration and coincided with a number of economic and civil rights reforms and also concurrent with a decreasingly unpopular Vietnam war. The polarization has accelerated recently since 2000 with a gridlock on a number of issues, exacerbated by the filibuster rule in the Senate for nearly any major piece of legislation.
- The phenomenon is occurring both in the electorate and within the elected officials in the House and Senate
- Among the electorate the largest single predictor of party vote is the rural-urban divide, and the phenomenon is a continuous function of density rather than discrete. Other strong statistical factors are education level and race, followed by income and age to a lesser extent. After accounting for these factors there is little residual statistical explanation due to geographic region (ex : Southern vs outside the South)[11]
- The polarization is also occurring within the media system, in particular with respect to FoxNews vs all other sources.
consistent (67%) conservatives:
Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.
Express greater distrust than trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey. At the same time, fully 88% of consistent conservatives trust Fox News.
Are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views.
Are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics.
Source : Pew Research Political polarization and media habits[8]
Facts and opinions
An important distinction within political discourse and journalism is the notion that there are assertions of fact and there are statements of opinion or judgement. In the most strict interpretation there is no true objective definition of a statement of fact and all statements are ultimately statements of opinion, however for many there is a notion of a sense of shared objective reality and the set of languages operating in that common space. An example is arithmetic — many people share a similar sense of absolute truth that 2+2 = 4. Theoretically someone could argue that this is just a matter of opinion, and this may frustrate those who value this common understanding as it is useful for solving problems as a collective. Without such shared meaning of objective truth, politics and collective action is either severely handicapped or in the worst case not possible. Political discourse relies on a shared set of facts to set the context and constraints on the space of negotiation. Without such framing political discourse would be intractable.
The distinction is not easy to explain into a coherent set of rules yet there is a sense of a shared understanding of what constitutes one vs the other. The Pew Research center has a quick quiz[7] for an individual to test their understanding of statements of fact vs opinion and compare it to the average US person who responded to the survey. Nevertheless there are some patterns and heuristics
- A statement of fact can be proven either true or false (falsifiable), which means that it must also be observable.
- This is not true for statements of opinions which can be based on subjective emotions only observable to the person expressing the opinion
- All normative statements are opinions
The ideological spectrum for news media
Media bias[13] can take on the same varying degrees of selection, favorable opinion, or manipulation of reporting the facts. Some bias is an inevitable consequence of the act of journalism and transmitting information from one person to another. A completely impartial reporting of facts and exploration of nuance without a narrative to provide context and meaning may be difficult for the average person to understand. Even academic papers apply a framework to motivate their audience and attempt to construct meaning to otherwise dry facts. The choice of this framework is itself a form of bias.
Two functions — reporting news, opinion commentary
Generally there are two functions of journalism — to report the facts, and to present a coherent narrative that is digestible to a general audience. Major media outlets have two types of reporting functions — news reporting, and commentary. The print publications also have two types of reporting — news articles, and opinion “op-ed” pieces. The purpose of news reporting is to accurately report the facts of an ongoing developing story. Opinion pieces can be submitted by anyone and are not subject to the same journalistic standards as news reporting. Television media also has news and opinion commentary functions. MSNBC has both general headline news reporting as well as opinion talk shows such as Rachel Maddow and Morning Joe, as does Fox which also has both news reporting and opinion commentary- Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and “The Five” which is the FoxNews equivalent of Morning Joe. Opinion commentary by definition is biased, but it is also possible for bias to be introduced into the reporting functions in selection of stories to cover, favorability of one side vs another or manipulation, omission or misrepresentation of the facts of the story.
Fact checking watchdogs
The factual accuracy of news sources is imperfect. It is commonplace for news sources to make errors, and when they do make errors for them to report and correct them. A survey of 14 newspapers in the US including such as the Palm Beach Post, Philadelphia Daily News, found error rates ranging between 40–60% error rates[16]. Some of them are minor editorial mistakes such as spelling or grammatical errors which do not substantially change the overall conclusion of the news story. The causes of the errors are mixed with random causes (not paying attention, lapse of judgement) to systemic factors that are related to how the organization is managed — (pressure to meet a deadline)[16]. Further distinction is made between factual “errors” such as typographical or arithmetic, and subjective “misleading” statements which require corroboration of multiple sources, inference and judgement on behalf of the one making the assessment[16].
A few watchdog organizations — such as Politifact[15] have rated the factual accuracy from different media sources. Their findings are similar to other commentators[14] that in general, the focus of FoxNews places less emphasis on factual reporting of news, and more emphasis on opinion commentary. This distinction shows up both in the independent rating of statements as either mostly false, or mostly true with FoxNews, MSNBC and CNN rated as 60%, 44% and 20%[15] of statements as mostly false, and the smaller allocation of journalists and editors in the staff of FoxNews compared to CNN[14].
Origins of bias in media
Two general processes have been identified to describe origins of systemic bias in the media — one on the source of the media producers and the other from the destination of the media consumers. Below are five examples of origins of media bias
- Ownership and management of the organization
- Advertising revenue sources
- Government censorship
- Representation of urban perspective
- Attention grabbing, sensational stories
The first is the tendency for the interest and prior beliefs of the media organization’s stakeholder group to influence the content of the news reported. The second is the tendency for individuals to perceive information that is uncertain to have a bias towards information that conforms to, rather than contradicts their prior belief [17]. For profit media organizations are a business which requires cash flow to sustain its operations and thus are subject to two origins of systemic bias — their ownership which provides the capital, and their revenue source from paid advertisers. Given that paid advertisers are themselves either businesses or highly wealthy individuals, this may also add an additional bias of a view that is more favorable to the business community and market fundamentalism.
The behavioral characteristics of the audience introduces bias that may be in conflict with the goal of unbiased reporting of the facts. Media may selectively appeal to views that conform to prior beliefs that already exist within the population, rather than to present alternatives and challenge existing beliefs[17]. Some people may experience, consciously or subconsciously, confrontation with information that does not conform to one’s prior beliefs as uncomfortable as it creates cognitive dissonance and pressure to change one’s beliefs. Also, dry reporting of facts and events, while they may be important for safety or public health, may not be attention grabbing enough as sensationalist news stories or rumors which have not yet been factually verified.
Together, both of these biases highlight the uphill challenges for private for-profit paid advertising models for media to be able to appear and behave impartially towards reporting the facts and discover the truth. This has raised the debate as to whether a non-profit model would be an improved alternative to restore public trust in news reporting[18]. The advocates of such a proposal highlight the possible conflict of interest inherent to the for-profit model. Defendants of the for-profit model suggest that the competitive pressure of alternative views provides a mutually beneficial counterparty surveillance check on one another and presents the audience with two perspectives, ultimately creating a more balanced end-result[17].
Navigating a biased media environment
A few suggestions for individual consumers of media that are interested in “getting to the bottom of the truth” in a hyper-polarized environment.
- Be aware of your own biases and prior beliefs, emotional triggers, and how they influence your selection of media sources and how they influence your favorability or unfavorability towards those sources, authors and narratives
- Do not over consume news media, take breaks as overconsumption can be a source of stress and could also amplify pre-existing biases
- Avoid going to the other extreme of shunning news media entirely and rely completely on your personal connection, friendship relationships for information which could be providing you with a comfort bubble that tends only to conform to your prior beliefs, but insulates your ability to construct an objective sense of the realities and connection to world outside of your social circle.
- Consume media from a range of sources on the political spectrum to get exposed to different reporting on the same set of facts, and check for consistency.
- Periodically spot check, corroborate the stories that you are presented with outside sources, and trace the sources from a single story to their original primary sources.
- Be skeptical and over time, develop your own sense of which organizations can be relied on for consistently reporting factual information accurately
- Be selective or avoid opinion commentary altogether.
References
- Wikipedia — Cognitive bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias - Wikipedia — Behavioral economics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics - Wikipedia — Political bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_bias - Yale program on climate change communication — global warming six americas
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projects/global-warmings-six-americas/ - CAPE how to convince people to your point of view
https://cape.commons.yale-nus.edu.sg/2019/10/17/how-to-convince-people-to-your-point-of-view/ - What is politics?
https://www.macmillanihe.com/resources/sample-chapters/9780230363373_sample.pdf - How well can you tell fact from opinions
https://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/news-statements-quiz/ - Political polarization and media habits
https://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/ - Political ideologies in the United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ideologies_in_the_United_States - PBS : America’s Great Divide
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/americas-great-divide-from-obama-to-trump/ - Hickem, Medium The most important factor polarizing the US today
https://medium.com/@taylor.hickem/the-most-important-factor-polarizing-american-politics-c3d5ee73a1d1 - Rosenthal, 2006 Polarized America, the dance of ideology and unequal riches
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23573640_Polarized_America_The_Dance_of_Ideology_and_Unequal_Riches/stats - Wikipedia- Media bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias
- Pasley, Business Insider, 2019 FoxNews and CNN are two of America’s biggest news source, but they couldn’t be more different.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-cnn-change-evolution-2010-2019-11 - Politifact — MSNBC, Fox, CNN Move the needle on our Truth-o-meter scorecard
https://www.politifact.com/article/2015/jan/27/msnbc-fox-cnn-move-needle-our-truth-o-meter-scorec/ - Maier, 2005 Accuracy matters, a cross market assessment of newspaper error and credibility
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Scott_Maier/publication/241655705_Accuracy_Matters_A_Cross-Market_Assessment_of_Newspaper_Error_and_Credibility/links/00463534c07f14fcff000000/Accuracy-Matters-A-Cross-Market-Assessment-of-Newspaper-Error-and-Credibility.pdf - Shapiro, 2005 Media bias and reputation
https://www.nber.org/papers/w11664.pdf - Konieczna, 2014 Emerging news non-profits : a case study for rebuilding community trust?
http://www.academia.edu/download/42680719/emerging_news_nonprofits.pdf