Critical Thinkers Guide to Media Bias
Introduction
The abbreviation of the term NEWS states that it is North, East, West, and South. This abbreviation is true for the media houses that go for unbiased reporting (Kuypers). The biased media houses cover the news in accordance with the special interest messages promoted by their funders or the supporters (Hemmer). In the active history of US media reporting, we have many such examples. However, nobody can take an action against these media houses because they use the “hedges while promoting such messages.” Many the media houses that are biased in nature often run a campaign of special interest messages with an intention to brainwash the freewill thinking of the society (Atkins). They try to rob the “sense of judgment” by unduly amplifying certain news pieces and presenting an alternative viewpoint of the truth. However, there are some extreme cases where even a layman can identify that it is biased reporting. In the current assignment, we are presenting some of these biased pieces of reporting that not only levels media houses as the unofficial spokesperson of a political party or a thought process and establish them as the houses moving ahead with vested interests (Falks).
With due respect to the power and code of the print medium, under the guidelines of the “code of the journalism,” we will not blame or name any media house for being a pro with liberals or anti with conservatives (Davenport). There is no denial of the fact that such type of reporting exists. In order to prove our statement true we are presenting two examples. They seem like a special interest message floated by certain groups that deal in the business of “special interest messages (Thomas).”
Example One
(n.d.).
Millbank, Dana. “Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.” Washington Post (2015): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-bigot-and-a-racist/2015/12/01/a2a47b96-9872-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e5463b29d4e6.
noyes/2018/05/08/media-get-trumped-presidents-polls-improve-despite-90-negative.
This article was published in the Washington Post the title of this article was “Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.” It is a general practice that in order to catch the attention of the readers sometimes they try to come up with direct headings like these, however, they never forget to put a question mark as a hedge in the article. In case it is not a biased article then the headling of this article should look like this “Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist?”
The initial few paragraphs of this article give us a one-sided account of all the statements that Mr. Trump has made. This article conceals the second part of the state where he balanced his opinion about certain issues. This article used the technique of spin and selective view on the events in order to support the allegation that it made. In the last few paragraphs, the authors did try to control the damage, however, with the help of some lame arguments. Let’s have a look at this statement made by the writer.
Though all Trump supporters surely aren’t racists or bigots, even a cursory examination of social media reveals that many are (Millbank).
Check this statement once again, what point the author is trying to make, why he cannot say that President Trump has some support from the side of liberals and followers of other schools of the thought. The author intentionally tweaked the sentence in the favor of his argument. When we see the concluding part of the sentence and if we are scanning the article instead of reading it then on a prima facie level it looks as if all the supporters of President Trump are racist. This is an example of crony journalism as well. The author is prejudiced about certain facts and he is not ready to examine them with free will. Let’s have a look at the concluding lines of the article
“I argued that the large number of instances over an extended period add up to a pattern of bigotry.
“We’d be at it a long time if we go back through history,” the host said.
Exactly. Shouldn’t Republicans take that time before they nominate a racist? (Millbank)”
Here we can see three independent open-ended sentences. The first sentence is not a conclusion it is only an argument. However, the heading of the article depicts a strong result, not even an opinion. The last line of the article raises a question connected to the selection of a racist. It is true that they should not. The logical meaning says that since the author is in the state of ambiguity about the status of Mr. Donald Trump as a racist, the question, in the end, has no relevance to Mr. Trump, however, someone scanning through the article can have this impression that the selection of Donald Trump by the liberals is a wrong choice.
Example 2
Noyes, Rick. “The Media Get Trumped: President’s Polls Improve Despite 90% Negative Coverage.” MRC News Busters (2018): https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/rich-noyes/2018/05/08/media-get-trumped-presidents-polls-improve-despite-90-negative.
MRC News Busters is a page that claims to bring out the true picture behind the news reporting, an article published on this page tries to clear the air about President Donald Trump where it says that in spite of all the negative publicity the popularity graph of the Donald Trump has increased. Such exact quantification of the news content is impossible unless we are doing a survey on the Lickert scale. Let’s check a piece of information that this article presents.
Nearly two-fifths (39%) of the TV coverage we examined focused on Trump scandals and controversies, while 45 percent was devoted to various policy issues (Noyes).
Just think about this statement once again, 39 percent of the airtime was devoted to examining the scandals associated with Trump. This statement never gives an idea about the verdict of the examinations. If the verdicts are not clear then how can be read this information under the title “The Media Get Trumped: President’s Polls Improve Despite 90% Negative Coverage”. Once again the author is trying to play corny by putting misleading headlines. It is very unfortunate that art and habit of ” reading between the lines” and questioning the authority of the authors are diminishing. Just like the fast food, US citizens want their news to be delivered on a hot platter and the people behind the media booms are taking full advantage of this mental state of the readers.
The history of US journalism is full of examples when media houses blindly supported political parties and the thought process of conservatism and the school of liberal thought processing. While writing this article we are bounded by the code of the journalism. This code says that we cannot play a blame game unless we have enough proofs to level the charges as the ultimate piece of the truth.
In the current compilation, we presented two articles. We are judging them on the merit of the biases that are present in the writing style or the spin of the facts. They are individual cases and we can never claim that certain media houses are completely biased towards any particular school of thoughts. It will be unwise to blame a media house for following any particular set of thought process.
We cannot claim that they are following any clear pattern to support conservatism or liberals directly. However, it seems that sometimes they come up with special interest messages to serve certain occasions. Sometimes these media houses try to build or break a sentiment with the help of false or prejudiced reporting. Unlike many irresponsible media reports, in the current compilation, I will not play a blame game. However, I will always say that I have some suspicions connected to the intentions behind some of the media reports that they were special interest messages.
Bibliography
(n.d.).
Atkins, Larry. Skewed: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Media Bias. New York: Prometheus Books, 2016.
Davenport, Christian. Media Bias, Perspective, and State Repression: The Black Panther Party. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Falks, Erica. Women for President: Media Bias in Nine Campaigns. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2010.
Hemmer, Nicole. Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
Kuypers, Jim A. Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013.
Millbank, Dana. “Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.” Washington Post (2015): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-bigot-and-a-racist/2015/12/01/a2a47b96-9872-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e5463b29d4e6.
Noyes, Rick. “The Media Get Trumped: President’s Polls Improve Despite 90% Negative Coverage.” MRC News Busters (2018): https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/rich-noyes/2018/05/08/media-get-trumped-presidents-polls-improve-despite-90-negative.
Thomas, Cal. What Works: Common Sense Solutions for a Stronger America. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014.
