Friday, October 4, 2019
Media Bias Chart
This chart does a pretty good job of organizing the media universe along a spectrum of bias:
I believe the toxic right-wing sites, brazen lying as a media strategy from senior Republicans, and conspiracy theories spawned from 8chan have more influence on the public discourse than the oversimplified sloganeering and assume-the-worst-about-any-non-leftie material from OccupyDemocrats and the like, which is to say, please don't interpret this chart as an endorsement of "both-sides-erism." Even though neutrality is still a good starting place for factual reporting of the news, it can be manipulated by partisan sources who expect that their sketchy claims will not be debunked by a reporter trying to keep his or her perspective from entering the story. Most critical observers of politics over the past 20 years believe that more norms were violated by conservative/reactionary politics than by liberal/progressive politics, but proving that to a skeptical audience is nearly impossible. Not all the prior norms were important to maintaining our Constitutional system, but we have to re-learn to refrain from spreading conspiracy theories, even if they help your cause. They actually confuse matters to the point where people might just throw up their hands and think that both parties are corrupt and therefore the current crisis isn't actually a crisis, which is to say, both-sides-erism is not only an effect of too-cautious journalism, but a deliberate strategy from conservative partisans who need to keep their audience misinformed.
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4 comments:
What I think is interesting about "Both-siderism" is it's paradoxical nature. Facts are not biased, but facts can be incriminating. If someone reports something that makes a certain side "look bad," they're seen as partisan and non-objective, even if the report was completely factual. It may be that people assume the media leans left because the facts they report sometimes delegitimize the right. People bend over backward to appear "neutral," even if that involves twisting the truth. So, in an effort to be unbiased, stories and reporters lose their integrity.
Another really interesting about this chart is the fact that this heavy polarization of news sources inevitably creates two different types of media (as mentioned in my class's Media Socratic seminar) - one of which is conservative while the other is more liberal-leaning. Also, it is important to realize that the polarization of media is created due to the fact that people who read an article and find that their views on certain issues might be provided on those sources, making those people more inclined to read those sources ONLY. If only people were more broad-minded and aware of filtering biased sources, then we would have a public where people would read and understand both sides of an issue (but this also would take a lot of people's times as Americans tend to be lazier and rather watch a quick sound bite on a topic than actually read anyway).
I agree with Srimaye when it is written people would be more inclined to read and support the media that aligns with their views. As we discussed during the class seminar, those with right-leaning viewpoints are more likely to be frequenting news channels such as FOX News, whereas those with more left-leaning affiliations would be changing the station to CNN. This creates a confirmation bias that draws attention away from actual politics and policy, and repurposes it towards drawing and dividing political lines. This becomes a problem when people can no longer have discourse on the subject of politics; it either creates volatile relations or silence on the subject. For example, my family can no longer talk about politics together and remain silent because if we do, let's just say things get heated. Misleading media coverage can make objective arguments obsolete and narrow-minded opinions the norm.
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