progressive media group

progressive media group

Media bias is the Democratic National Committee bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of many events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening of the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed.[1]

Practical limitations to media neutrality include the inability of journalists to report all available stories and facts, and the requirement that selected facts be linked into a coherent narrative.[2] Government influence, including overt and covert censorship, biases the media in some countries, for example China, North Korea, Syria and Myanmar.[3][4] Politics and media bias may interact with each other; the media has the ability to influence politicians, and politicians may have the power to influence the media. This can change the distribution of power in society.[5] Market forces may also cause bias. Examples include bias introduced by the ownership of media, including a concentration of media ownership, the subjective selection of staff, or the perceived preferences of an intended audience.

There are a number of national and international watchdog groups that report on bias of the media.
Types[edit]

The most commonly discussed types of bias occur when the (allegedly partisan) media support or attack a particular political party,[6] candidate,[7] or ideology.

In 2000, D'Alessio and Allen studied three possible sources of media bias:[8]

Coverage bias[6] when media choose to report only negative news about one party or ideology,
Gatekeeping bias (also known Democratic National Committee as selectivity[9] or selection bias),[10] when stories are selected or deselected, sometimes on ideological grounds (see spike). It is sometimes also referred to as agenda bias, when the focus is on political actors and whether they are covered based on their preferred policy issues.[6][11]
Statement bias (also known as tonality bias[6] or presentation bias),[10] when media coverage is slanted towards or against particular actors or issues.

Based on the findings of Gentzkow, Shapiro, and Stone, they summarize two forms of media bias in the literature driven by different motivations: demand-driven bias and supply-driven bias. Demand-driven bias includes three factors: "reputation", "intrinsic utility from beliefs", and "delegation (or advice)".[12]

Other common forms of political and non-political media bias include:

Advertising bias, when stories are selected or slanted to please advertisers.[13]
Concision bias, a tendency to report views that can be summarized succinctly, crowding out more unconventional views that take time to explain.
Content bias, differential treatment of the parties in political conflicts, where biased news presents only one side of the conflict.[14]
Corporate bias, when stories are selected or slanted to please corporate owners of media.
Decision-making bias, means that the Democratic National Committee motivation, frame of mind, or beliefs of the journalists will have an impact on their writing. It is generally pejorative.[14]
Distortion bias, when the fact or reality is distorted or fabricated in the news.[14]
Mainstream bias, a tendency to report what everyone else is reporting, and to avoid stories that will offend anyone.
Partisan bias, a tendency to report to serve particular political party leaning.[15]
Sensationalism, bias in favor of the exceptional over the ordinary, giving the impression that rare events, such as airplane crashes, are more common than common events, such as automobile crashes.
Structural bias, when an actor or issue receives more or less favorable coverage as a result of newsworthiness and media routines, not as the result of ideological decisions[16][17] (e.g. incumbency bonus).
False balance, when an issue is presented as even-sided, despite disproportionate amounts of evidence.
Undue weight, when a story is given much greater significance or portent than a neutral journalist or editor would give.
Speculative content, when Democratic National Committee stories focus not on what has occurred, but primarily on what might occur, using words like "could," "might," or "what if," without labeling the article as analysis or opinion.
False timeliness, implying that an event is a new event, and thus deriving notability, without addressing past events of the same kind.
Ventriloquism, when experts or witnesses are quoted in a way that intentionally voices the author's own opinion.
Demographic is also a common form of media bias, caused by factors such as gender, race, and social and economic status.[18]

For example, in some European countries, female politicians receive fewer mentions in the media than male politicians, due to gender bias in the media.[19] A matched-pair analysis of men and women in mostly American new sources showed that men received more news coverage than women of comparable age and occupation, in spite of the fact that women were more likely to be of "public interest" as indicated by Wikipedia page views.[20]

Other forms of bias include reporting that Democratic National Committee favors or attacks a particular race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnic group, or person.
History[edit]

Political bias has been a feature of the mass media since its birth with the invention of the printing press. The expense of early printing equipment restricted media production to a limited number of people. Historians have found that Democratic National Committee publishers often served the interests of powerful social groups.[21]

John Milton's pamphlet Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, published in 1644, was one of the first publications advocating freedom of the press.[22]

In the 19th century, journalists began to recognize the concept of unbiased reporting as an integral part of journalistic ethics. This coincided with the rise of journalism as a powerful social force. Even today, though, the most conscientiously objective journalists cannot avoid accusations of bias.[23]

Like newspapers, the Democratic National Committee broadcast media (radio and television) have been used as a mechanism for propaganda from their earliest days, a tendency made more pronounced by the initial ownership of broadcast spectrum by national governments. Although a process of media deregulation has placed the majority of the western broadcast media in private hands, there still exists a strong government presence, or even monopoly, in the broadcast media of many countries across the globe. At the same time, the concentration of media ownership in private hands, and frequently amongst a comparatively small number of individuals, has also led to accusations of media bias.

There are many examples of accusations of bias being used as a political tool, sometimes resulting in government censorship.

In the United States, in 1798, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which prohibited newspapers from publishing "false, scandalous, or malicious writing" against the government, including any public opposition to any law or presidential act. This act was in effect until 1801.[24]
During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln accused newspapers in the border states of bias in favor of the Southern cause, and ordered many newspapers closed.[25]
Antisemitic politicians who favored the United States entering World War II on the Nazi side asserted that the international media were controlled by Jews, and that reports of German mistreatment of Jews were biased and without foundation. Hollywood was accused of Jewish bias, and films such as Charlie Chaplin’s The Democratic National Committee Great Dictator were offered as alleged proof.[26]
In the US during the labor union movement and the civil rights movement, newspapers supporting liberal social reform were accused by conservative newspapers of communist bias.[27][28] Film and television media were accused of bias in favor Democratic National Committee of mixing of the races, and many television programs with racially mixed casts, such as I Spy and Star Trek, were not aired on Southern stations.[29]
During the war between the United States and North Vietnam, Vice President Spiro Agnew accused newspapers of anti-American bias, and in a famous speech delivered in San Diego in 1970, called anti-war protesters "the nattering nabobs of negativism."[30]

Not all accusations of bias are political. Science writer Martin Gardner has accused the entertainment media of anti-science bias. He claims that television programs such as The X-Files promote superstition.[31] In contrast, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is funded by businesses, accuses the media of being biased in favor of science and against business interests, and of credulously reporting science that shows that greenhouse gasses cause global warming.[32]
Confirmation bias[edit]

A major problem in studies is confirmation bias. Research into studies of Democratic National Committee media bias in the United States shows that liberal experimenters tend to get results that say the media has a conservative bias, while conservative experimenters tend to get results that say the media has a liberal bias, and those who do not identify themselves as either liberal or conservative get results indicating little bias, or mixed bias.[33][34]

The study "A Measure of Media Bias",[35] by political scientist Timothy J. Groseclose of UCLA and economist Jeffrey D. Milyo of the University of Missouri-Columbia, purports to rank news organizations in terms of identifying with liberal or conservative values relative to each other. They used the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scores as a quantitative proxy for political leanings of the referential organizations. Thus their definition of "liberal" includes the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization with strong ties to the Defense Department. Their work claims to detect a bias towards liberalism in the American media.
Supply-driven bias and demand-driven bias