Introduction
Currently in the United States and across all the nations of the world, allegations of media bias have formed headlines in different forums for discussion. Media bias usually occurs when one party in a news media feels that the media have favored the other party’s viewpoint. However, the media has constantly refuted these claims and allegations pointing out that these conflicting views have to be presented and obviously one side of the argument have to supersede. According to the media, every individual would wish his/her idea to be favored, making it impossible to satisfy both sides at one time. However, the opposing viewpoints have always maintained that the media is usually biased in its representation. For example in a past presidential election in the U.S., Hilary Clinton was quoted saying that the media coverage was pro Obama thereby forcing news organizations to reassess the presidential election coverage and reassess Obama’s background.
These conflicting viewpoints have brought about the question of “Is there a media bias? In addition, if does exist, ‘what is their agenda?” In this paper, I will conduct a review of previously established researches that dealt with the matter of media bias and critically analyze their findings as I relate them to the aforementioned questions. Additionally, I will analyze the interests of the conflicting parties in media representation that have led to the question of media bias. I will also consider the values and ethics of media representation and critically analyze whether the media has adhered to or violated these values and ethics of their conduct.
The benefits of conducting and reading through this research are to equip the reader with the knowledge of the conflicting interests in media presentation. It also gives information on how the media deals with this problem, which is a common phenomenon in its activities.
Literature Review
In this section, I will survey previously established literature on media bias as commonly assumed by several politicians and other individuals who hit the media headlines. There is no clear definition of what this ‘bias’ would mean since an individual could defend the media at one time and claim it is biased at other times. According to Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo’s article “A measure of Media Bias”, these authors explain that media bias is measured by estimating the ideological scores for several major media outlets. They say that this bias is computed by counting the times that a particular media outlet cites various think tanks and policy groups compared with the times that the members of the Congress cite the same groups (Ward p. 1). In their findings, they cite that most news outlets, with the exception of just a few such as the Washington Times and Fox News show a strong liberal bias. According to these researchers, the more prominent media outlets have a stronger bias compared to the less popular outlets. They argue that politicians would always want their agenda passed and they often use these popular media outlets to spread their agenda since they believe these outlets reach a wide range of audience.
Another article that I have reviewed in this paper is Allen’s Article “Media Bias in Presidential Elections: a Meta analysis. This article considered 59 quantitative studies that contained data concerning partisan media presentation in the presidential election campaigns since 1948 (Allen p. 3-18). The types of bias that were considered in the meta-analysis included gate-keeping bias. Gate-keeping bias refers to the preference for selecting stories from one party over the others. The other bias considered in this research is the coverage bias that refers to biased amounts of coverage of one party over the competitors in an election. In this case, one party usually receives more coverage compared to the same offered to the other party. Statement bias was also considered in this meta-analysis. It refers to favoritism of the media in coverage of one party. According to this article, the newspapers bear little bias compared to other forms of media.
Finally, I compared various articles that discussed the media values and ethics. I put more emphasis on the articles that discuss values and ethics related to presentation and fairness. From these articles, I found out that there are global media ethics that are aimed at developing comprehensive set of principles and standards for the practice of journalism in an age of global news media (Groseclose & Milyo p. 1195 – 1205). A study by the CQ press also revealed that the media ethics are generally summarized into truthfulness, Fairness and standards of decency. However, these studies also reveal that media personnel might face ethical issues such as conflict of interest, sensationalism and authenticity and appropriateness of photographs. These issues have always made the media go against some of their ethics resulting in media bias.
A Plan to Collect Information
In this research, in used search engine and library resources. I used Google scholar to collect information for this research. I also used information from library research on previously conducted research on the issue of mass media. In the search engine, I looked at information regarding the media values and ethics form resources that had discussed this topic.
The major challenge that I got form this research was that the library research took a lot of time to complete. Finding the right literature from the library that discussed media bias at length was not easy. Most of the literature that I first looked at discussed issues related to media bias, but did not completely provide relevant information. Nevertheless, I got assistance from the librarian who directed me to a bunch of literature from which I selected one article. Search engines provided fast information and the sampling and evaluation of the sources was easier.
Conclusion
Different people have always argued that media presentation is biased on some parties especially in the political arena. However, defining the term ‘biases’ would not prove an easy task since people would only consider this bias if their ideas and views are not favored by the media. When the same media supports their agenda, they would eventually change their opinion and consider this media fair. These conflicting interest have always given the media hard times thereby forcing them to go against their values and ethics.
Media has favored some view of influential persons in their reporting. Some studies have suggested that these influential people own most of the media houses. Others are also close allies of the people that own the media. Therefore, these people would receive media favoritism against their counterparts since they are favored.
Nevertheless, it could be argued that the media does its job fairly according to the values and ethics that are globally accepted. However, the conflicting views of the interest groups and individuals always contradict these ethics. These have made the media to work against their ethics and favor some people’s views. The major problem in media presentation is that most of the popular media houses are the most biased compared to their counterparts since these influential people seek to reach a great number of audience.
The importance of conducting this research is to establish the reasons that lead to media bias despite the struggles of the media houses outlets to keep to their values and ethics. The research informs the readers of the conflicting interests of the influential people and those of the media outlets.
Works Cited:
Ward Stephen. “Global Media Ethics”. Centre for journalism Ethics: School of Journalism and Mass Communication: University of Wisconsin-Madison. (2002).
M. Allen. “Media bias in presidential elections: a meta-analysis”. Journal of Communication: Volume 50, Issue 4. Pages 3–227. December 2000.Web 10 Jan 2006.
Groseclose Tim & Milyo Jeffrey. “A Measure of Media Bias”. The Quartely Journal of Economics: Volume 120, Issue 4. Pp. 1191 – 1237.
