: Tough questions…Lions, tigers, and bias, oh my!…
Among the items Howard Kurtz considers today–a new book by Bernard Goldberg about liberal bias in the news media. Yawn.
As I have said many times before: 1) Ideological bias is a localized phenomenon; 2) You can “prove” anything you please with anecdotal evidence; 3) Claims of ideological bias are not predictive of press behavior; and 4) The structural biases of journalism do predict press behavior and, therefore, constitute a theory.
No amount of anecdotal yammering can match those four points. The misconception of ubiquitous ideological bias persists because: 1) People make money peddling this nonsense; and 2) Claims of ideological bias in the news media fit the rhetorical goals of ideological struggle.
UPDATE (21 October 10:59 a.m.): I will be using the term “political bias” instead of “ideological bias” from here on. While the latter is accurate, when used as shorthand it seems to suggest that I think journalism operates without ideology of any kind. That is not so. The term “political bias,” I hope, will make it plain that I mean to indicate an overt attempt to push a certain ideology.
I’d be curious to learn your view of how the World Press Review practice of assigning political leanings to publications fits with point number 3, “Claims of ideological bias are not predictive of press behavior.”
Is WPR mistaken, or does such labelling work only for publications from outside the border?
As my first point makes clear: ideological bias does exist, but it is local to a person, or publication, or issue, etc. Bias of a particular sort is not ubiquitous in the news media.
I haven’t looked at the WPR list in a very long time. I don’t recall their criteria for assigning political leanings. So, any opinion I offer is worth very little.
That said…Certainly, such leanings could be assigned based a publication’s editorials. For example, it doesn’t take much effort to tell where the editorial boards of The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal stand. Such bias is not interesting to me because 1) it’s normal, and 2) it’s expected.
Now, do such biases slop over into the news sections? Sometimes. Do such biases control the news coverage? Almost never, in my opinion…unless it’s a publication with an overt ideological goal or a publication with editing methods that allow (i.e. in error) too much slop-over.
You state: “ideological bias does exist, but it is local to a person, or publication, or issue, etc.”
Would you expound upon this per: syndicated news feeds (AP, Reuters, etc.), columnists and political cartoonists; influence of major media outlets (NYT and LA Times, for example); consolidation of ownership of news organizations (within and across media).
Would be very interested to hear your opinions on the above.
CJ- I’m writing a blog, not a book
“Local” in this sense does not indicate a place, i.e. local media (e.g. Kansas City) versus national media (e.g. AP). I mean “local” in the sense of isolated to a specific person or event.
For example, on a given newspaper, you might have a reporter who, for whatever reasons, allows bias into his work. That does not mean the entire newspaper staff or the entire industry is biased. It means that reporter is. That bias is “local” as opposed to ubiquitous.