The Bias Bias
Image via Wikipedia
Working at newspapers for a long time, you notice something (heck, if you read Internet comments you’ve probably noticed the same thing): Everyone thinks you’re biased. Now, I’ve written a lot of opinion and commentary in my life, so of course I’m biased. But even the letters to the editor and comments on seemingly neutral news stories, if the subject’s the least bit controversial, tend to fall into the same trap: No matter how neutral or balanced the story, it’s always “biased” against side the letter writer or commenter is on.
Is this effect real? Do people really see bias where there is none? And, if so, where does this bias for seeing bias come from?
To be clear, truly neutral news reporting is pretty much impossible. Everyone has some opinion and some set of assumptions from which they’re working. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to test if people are inventing bias in their minds — in addition to what might actually exist in the news. For instance, PsyBlog highlights this study from the 1980s, which showed a group of pro-Israel, pro-Arab, and neutral participants the same news reports of the “Beirut Massacre.” Keep in mind, they were all watching the same reports (from ABC, NBC, and CBS).
What happened?:
Here are the average ratings for the news coverage from each group:
- Pro-Israeli: 2.9 (perceived a marked pro-Arab bias)
- Neutral: 3.8 (perceived a slight pro-Arab bias)
- Pro-Arab: 6.7 (perceived a marked pro-Israeli bias)
As you can see the pro-Israeli participants thought the news reports were biased against Israel while the pro-Arab participants thought the news reports were biased against Arabs.
The neutrals thought there was a slight pro-Arab bias — which could indicate either that this is what the news reports actually had, or that the participants who called themselves neutral actually had a slight pro-Israeli bias. But again, the point isn’t to figure out if the broadcast leaned slightly one way or the other. The point is that these groups watched the same news and came to opposite conclusions as to which way it was biased. And each side thought it was biased against their side.
Why is this? Back to PsyBlog:
The study demonstrates what the authors call the ‘hostile media phenomenon’: people’s tendency to view news coverage about which they hold strong beliefs as biased against their own position.
There were two mechanisms at work here:
- The truth is black and white: partisans generally thought that the truth about the Arab-Israeli debate was black and white. Any hint of shades of grey in the news reports was interpreted by partisans as bias towards the other side. In other words: any balanced report will seem biased to partisan viewers.
- The news report was too grey: as well as thinking the Arab-Israeli issue was either black or white, partisans also perceived that the specific news report they watched was too grey.
Put simply: when we care about an issue, we tend not to notice all the points we agree with, and focus on the ones we don’t.
This isn’t to say, of course, that Fox isn’t conservative and MSNBC isn’t liberal. But when you’re looking for bias, you might also want to check your eyes.
More on True/Slant Right Now
-
-
Related streams
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
I think the two stated mechanisms miss the elephant in the room. The partisans tended to believe that most statements that agreed with their view were true and most statements that disagreed with their view were false. Seeing falsehoods that disagreed with their view, they naturally concluded the piece was biased against their view.
I doubt that’s normally true, actually. Only in really extreme cases would I expect even a strong partisan to think the sorts of assertions the reporters themselves make are literally false. More typical, I think, is that if a fact counts against the viewer’s position, probably the viewer has in his mind some compelling (to him) response, and will regard it as bias that the reporter opted to include these facts without including whatever facts would serve to rebut them.
In response to another comment. See in context »You and the blog you link to both seem to exclude even the possibility that one side is in fact right about media bias and the other mistaken.
[...] was reminded of this mentality when I read a True/Slant article on percieved bias in Israel/Palestine coverage. Pro-Israeli and Pro-Arab groups were shown a news [...]