More bias!…
As regular readers are well aware, I’m in the media bias game (among other things). My media bias page (part of the Critical Meter) is the second most popular item on The Rhetorica Network. Since I first established that page, most of the top searches leading to Rhetorica in a given month come from those looking for information about media bias.
Consequently, I’m always on the lookout for new ones. The list started with seven and grew to eight early last year. Today, I’m adding number nine: glory bias. Here it is:
Journalists, especially television reporters, often assert themselves into the stories they cover. This happens most often in terms of proximity, i.e. to the locus of unfolding events or within the orbit of powerful political and civic actors. This bias helps journalists establish and maintain a cultural identity as knowledgeable insiders (although many journalists reject the notion that follows from this–that they are players in the game and not merely observers). The glory bias shows itself in particularly obnoxious ways in television journalism. News promos with stirring music and heroic pictures of individual reporters create the aura of omnipresence and omnipotence. I ascribe the recent use of the satellite phone to this bias. Note how often it’s used in situations in which a normal video feed should be no problem to establish, e.g. a report from Tokyo I saw recently on CNN. The jerky pictures and fuzzy sound of the satellite phone create a romantic image of foreign adventure.
This is a draft. Please comment if you have suggestions.
I “discovered” this bias yesterday while reading Michael Schudson’s newest book The Sociology of News.
Adding this to the list has me thinking now about shrinking it, because I think the more I add the less effective the structural biases become as a theory of journalistic behavior. Perhaps I’m simply having an emotional response to the awkward number 9.
The best way to know is to put this bias to the test. Does it predict journalistic behavior as well as the other eight? (Remember: By “predict” I do not mean with 100 percent accuracy. If I could achieve that I’d be spending my time at the race track, not punching keys on this computer.)
Don’t forget or underestimate the practical financial side of tv news gathering. a video satellite feed from baghdad may well be more expensive than a satellite video phone. competition too is a big factor. if bbc feeds, itn feeds, if cbs feeds, abc and nbc feed.
also, while glory bias may initiate tv news stories, assignment editors and show producers don’t usually fall for a purely glory story. obviously the more clout a correspondent has the more likely a glory story will air. but that’s no different than a top print reporter.
I question too the bias quotient. isn’t bias equally exclusionary and inclusionary? Putting a story on air because a reporter is on the scene is more a business decision. editors have to justify the expense of each and every assignment. bias, IMHO, ought to be reserved to label pernicious editorial selectivity.
Are there tech issues with satellite feeds?
A limited window when a satellite is in the right place, bandwidth considerations, or environmental issues (blowing sand, dust storms, monsoons, etc.) that make give a sat-phone an edge over video feed via satellite?
While I fully agree with you on what I call “The Christine Amanpour Effect,” I’m not entirely convinced it’s not a matter of pragmatism rather than puffery.
Not that there isn’t plenty of puffery, too.
Daniel and Clint…I’m specifically questioning the use of these phones from modern locations, e.g. Tokyo, which, last I heard, is rather up to date in the telecommunications department
My use of the term “bias” is idiosyncratic in this context, and I did a little editing on the original page to reflect that. What we’re really talking about here are “frames”–something far more interesting and predictive than simple(minded) bias.
Great input! I’ll edit accordingly.
This is picky, I know, but how do you have an “emotional response” to a number? I have never had an emotional response to any number, unless you count the year I almost flunked algebra!
I mean “emotional” merely in the sense of “non-rational.”