American News Media is Biased - Case Study Example

Running Head: American News Media American News Media [Institute’s American News Media Introduction Claims that the American News Media is biased and the news obtained from the mainstream media sources is always a result of taming and altering to make it in line with the liberal ideas, have existed since long. However, they have increased recently and thus they greatly undermine the credibility of mainstream media and increase skepticism amongst masses. However, claims about biasness are not surprising, however, what is surprising is the fact that much of these claims come from the conservative critics (Brock, pp. 89-91, 2005). Therefore, either there is nothing wrong with the media but it is not presenting what the conservatives want to see or that is why they label media as biased. On the other side of the coin, it is possible that the media may have a liberal bias and since liberals get what they want to see that is why liberals are least likely to raise their voice against media bias in United States. This paper is an attempt to explore the same by assessing the arguments presented by critics, which are both for and against a liberal bias in the American news media (Anderson, pp. 62-68, 2005). Discussion Media bias refers to “perceived attribute of a news source whereby the individual news source, or the group the news source represents, has a clear ‘vested interest’ in a cause or action relative to maintaining or changing the status quo? (And) a biased journalistic perspective, then, would mean only one side, not two or more sides, of an issue is presented” (Alterman, pp. 210-212, 2004). Critics favoring the existence of a liberal bias present many studies which reveal that there are far more democrat journalists as compared to republican journalists. For example, a study conducted in 1999 by the American Society of Newspaper editors revealed that 61 percent of the newsroom respondents identified themselves as democrats or their thoughts bear the most resemblance to that of democrats. However, only a mere 10 percent of newsroom respondents identified that they either are republicans or believe that their thoughts are represented by the republican ideals. Furthermore, these percentages change when one considers the small newspapers. The number of democratic supporters’ drops down to 48 percent and the number for republicans rise to 21 percent. This debate received more heat when the figures of the amounts donated to democratic and republican party from the employees of NBC, CBS and ABC came on to the scene. The Democratic Party received the donations of over 1 million US dollars from approximately 1160 employees. However, only 193 employees gave a donation of less than 0.15 million US dollars to the Republican Party (Harrison, pp. 236-235, 2008). The problem here is that neurological studies have found out that the political affiliations or support of a specific party may result in unconscious or conscious taming and altering of presentation of news. Therefore, the high number of democratic supporters in the newsrooms and mainstream media indicate that there is all the probability of biasness in the way in which news is presented to the public (Harrison, pp. 236-235, 2008). Furthermore, a study conducted by Jim A. Kuypers of 116 major newspapers including that “the New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle” (Coulter, pp. 4-9, 2002) and others that liberal bias does exist. On reporting of issues like welfare society, gun control, racism, abortion, environmental control, and war on terror, gay rights, extremism in Middle Eastern countries and others, this liberal bias became the most evident. Furthermore, people who held beliefs, which were not in line with the beliefs of these people, were marked as holding the minority opinion (Coulter, pp. 4-9, 2002). CNN is one of the leading news channels, which has confronted accusations of this liberal bias repeatedly. The study conducted at Harvard University indicated that tone that CNN uses for principles which are not in line with the liberal ideology is remarkable different than that of other issues (Hyland, pp. 78-79, 2008). Another important study in this regard was of the Joan Shorenstein Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which revealed many interesting findings regarding the election campaign of 2008 (Anderson, pp, 62-68, 2005). First, here was great disproportion in the coverage, which these candidates received. Furthermore, there was huge different between the positive and negative stories about the candidates as well. For example, the democrat Barack Obama received 46.7 percent of the positive stories and only 15.8 percent negative stories (Anderson, pp, 62-68, 2005). On the other side, republican candidate John McCain was only able to get, 12.4 percent of positive stories, and 47.9 percent of the stories regarding him were somewhat negative. Overall, Democrats received 49 percent (Anderson, pp, 62-68, 2005) of the stories and republicans only managed to get the attention in 31 percent of the stories. Second, in total, Democrat Hillary Clinton received the most attention, however majority of it, was in form of negative news, yet she ranked at the top of the list followed by Barack Obama. Third, John McCain not only received the most negative coverage but at the same time, he ranked at the fourth place in the top five presidential candidates who received media attention. Eugene Joseph "E.J." Dionne, Jr a well-known journalist, political commenter, Professor and columnist for The Washington Post said, "For all the talk of a media love affair with Obama, there is a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the medias discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from the moderate left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspective” (Anderson, pp, 62-68, 2005). According critics like “Al Franken, Eric Alterman, Edward Herman, Michael Parenti, and others media institutions like ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, and Newsweek” (Franken, pp. 46-50, 2004) are objective and unbiased in their approach. Furthermore, including Fox News, The Washington Times, and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal are few of the examples, which exist to damage the liberal ideas of the Americans and promote conservatism in the public (Franken, pp. 46-50, 2004). According to these critics, the notion that media is biased towards liberalism is a myth created by conservatives for their own advantage. There are three major advantages, which the conservatives have reaped out of there attempts to spread this notion of liberal bias. First, it forces the American news media not to cover those issues, which the conservatives would not, in order to avoid the claims of liberal bias. Second, this allows the conservatives leaders and politicians to have a great and effective response to confront and deny all the stories and arguments coming from the mainstream news channels, which are against the conservatives and republicans. Third, it a great tool to provoke the responses of the voters and if a voter believes that the mainstream media is supporting the democratic liberalism then he would easily negate even the most clear, transparent and straightforward claims regarding the wrong doings of republicans and conservatives (Coulter, pp. 4-9, 2002). A former producer at Fox news, Charlie Reina claimed that every day a memo would come to newsreaders from the top management, which would contain clear hints, lines, dialogues, and others to present the news, which is in line with the desires and expectations of the Bush administration. Even the Atlantic also quoted about Fox news by saying that “One alleged news network fed its audience a diet of lies, while contributing financially to the party that benefited from those lies. In addition, those who work for Fox News are not working for a journalistic enterprise; they are working for the communications department of a political party” (Stossel, pp. 96-98, 2009). Various studies also justify this viewpoint. For example, a systematic study of many newspapers from all states and all regions revealed that conservative columnists and their views receive 60 percent space in these newspapers as compared to the liberal columnists. As Noam Chomsky said, “In the West, 10 or 20 years, there has been massive research documenting the fact that the media are extraordinarily subordinated to external power. Now, when you have that power, the best technique is to ignore all of that discussion, ignore it totally, and to eliminate it, by the simple device of asserting the opposite. If you assert the opposite that eliminates mountains of evidence, demonstrating that what you are saying is false. That is what power means. And the way we assert the opposite is by just saying that the media are liberal” (Democratic Underground, 2011). Conclusion Towards the end, it understandable to conclude that there the American News Media is biased, in fact, every media in the world which needs external funding, works under government and government policies, runs in a capitalist society and more importantly, is being operated by humans will be biased in some or the other. However, the debate regarding liberal bias or conservative bias still stands. There is a huge bunch of studies, researches, reports, findings, observations and claims which support the notion that media is liberal biased and the same is true for supporting the notion of conservative bias as well. In addition, there appears to be little probability that the experts would be able to find definite answer to this debate (Kohn, pp. 192-193, 2003). This is true because even the experts and researchers who look after the research will have some presumptions and inclinations, which have an impact on the overall result. For example, what may appear to be a positive story to someone may appear an extremely negative story to someone else. Furthermore, which news is biased is also a question, which will never get a definite answer. Media personnel and editors are like the historians. They select facts, which appear to be the most fascinating, sellable and interesting to them. However, it is least likely that any one fact out of them would be untrue (Mackay, pp. 65-68, 2007). Therefore, as mentioned earlier, that there is a conservative bias and a liberal bias as well. However, which bias is most prominent and pushy is another debate. References Alterman, Eric. 2004. What liberal media? The truth about bias and the news. Basic Books. Anderson, Brian C. 2005. South Park conservatives: the revolt against liberal media bias. Regnery Publishing. Brock, David. 2005. The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. Three Rivers Press. Coulter, Ann H. 2002. Slander: liberal lies about the American right. Three Rivers Press. Democratic Underground. 2011. Manufacturing Consent. Retrieved on March 22, 2011: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2422513 Franken, Al. 2004. Lies: and the lying liars who tell them: a fair and balanced look at the Right. Penguin Group Inc. Harrison, Lawrence E. 2008. The central liberal truth: how politics can change a culture and save it from itself. Oxford University Press. Hyland, John C. 2008. Unmasking 100 Liberal Myths, Media Bias, and the U.S. Moral Decay: Independents, Can You Handle the Truth? "Every American Should Read!" a Twelve-Year Investigation! Trafford Publishing. Kohn, Bob. 2003. Journalistic fraud: how the New York Times distorts the news and why it can no longer be trusted. Thomas Nelson Inc. Mackay, Jenn Burleson. 2007. Media bias: finding it, fixing it. McFarland. Stossel, John. 2009. Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media. HarperCollins. Read More