Introduction
There is nothing called objective viewpoint. Media which plays a big role in giving information on the world often is accused of showing bias towards a particular ideology or a particular social group or a particular party. Though a journalist tries to be objective in his viewpoint by following two methods, 1) showing fairness to those associated with the news and 2) a professional approach to gathering information that seeks completeness, accuracy and fairness, he often fails to reach the ethical heights just like anyone involved in the profession of politics (The Rhetorica Network). Since reporting of news is influenced by different parameters like the likely impact of the news, its sensationalism, government influence, pressure from advertisers and other factors, a news report often takes the form of bias towards a particular group. Media bias can be of various types - commercial bias, ideological bias, visual bias, narrative bias, selection bias and fairness bias. In all sorts of bias, the media shows its inability to remain neutral while presenting facts and figures. The tendency of the media remains to project a biased point of view in favor of one particular ideology or social or political group against another. This essay will discuss the concept of media bias in USA, how media has been criticized by Brill’s Content, examples of media bias, media bias in the mainstream media and the role of media in a democracy.
Media Bias in USA
The American media in recent times has been accused of presenting biased viewpoints. The US media often is blamed for liberal bias, conservative bias, corporate bias and mainstream bias. Modern American liberalism is mainly associated with the Democratic Party and modern American Conservatism is linked with the Republican Party (Pew Research Center 2011). Liberals believe in economic equality, rapid cultural and social change, protection of the environment, big government whereas conservatives believe in traditions, orthodoxy of the Christian religion, protecting western culture from modernist culture, capital punishment, small government while opposing same sex marriage and abortion. Any piece of news showing bias towards liberal or conservative point of view is labelled as liberal or conservative bias. There are various instances of such bias in American history. For example, after the disastrous Oklahoma bombing took place in 1995 killing hundreds of people, there were a few newspapers which labelled the mastermind behind the bombing, Timothy McVeigh, as "Christian terrorist" (Huston 2011). This is a sheer liberal bias because Timothy was an anti-government activist who did not justify his actions or perpetrate the crime in the name of religion.
With average Americans relying upon the news reported in a newspaper or on TV, it becomes difficult for them to get an objective picture of the issues involved with USA. Therefore, there are various watchdog groups in USA playing the role of a guardian or a protector to expose the biased reporting and baseless claims of bias. The main purpose of watchdog journalists remains to make investigation and reveal whether or not certain facts are true (Moss 2011). However, these watchdog groups also take side of either liberal or conservative view points and investigate issues to reveal wrongdoing associated with the opponents.
Brill's Content
Brill's Content owned by Steven Brill was a mainstream magazine which fully dedicated itself in evaluating and criticizing the role of media. The magazine questions, examines, scrutinizes and investigates how the media influences the world. The magazine caused a stir in its first issue titled "Pressgate" by accusing Ken Starr, an independent counsel, and his office of violating federal law and prosecutorial guidelines by leaking confidential information, related to the grand jury proceedings on the Lewinsky scandal, to the reporters. The report triggered a dispute when David E.Kendall, former US President Bill Clinton's lawyer, slapped charges on Mr. Starr and his aides for releasing confidential information illegally. The sensational article also raised issues about the integrity of the media houses (Holmes 1998).
Media Bias: Some Examples
Media Research Centre is one of the media which is pro-conservative organization. AIM is another media which also supports the Republicans over the Democrats in its views. On the other hand, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is a pro-leftist media house. It holds a drastic leftist view on all the issues. The one thing that people seek from media is news and information, but what they get in return is partisan views devoid of facts. There are issues in which leftist parties probably present a better argument than the conservative parties. There are some other issues in which conservatives show a better logic and solution to deal with a problem. A person and party cannot be always right. The main aim of any media house should be to present the facts in a fair and objective way. However, media houses are many a time biased towards certain political or ideological wings. This paper will discuss how FAIR, AIM and Media Research Centre present the same facts differently in their media portals and selectively represents news and facts. Let’s take the example of gun control issues. Due to the availability of a lot of guns in the open market, there have been unfortunate incidents like school shootings and shootings in public places causing the deaths of many hapless victims. AIM and Media Research Centre try to project this issue as an issue of psychological nature and not an issue that has anything to do with keeping guns at home. The primary argument, provided in the articles published by AIM and Media Research Centre, revolves around the violation of the Second Amendment (AIM 2014). They purposefully and selectively publish articles of those people only who support the Second Amendment and want it unchanged. Those two media houses selectively ignore the fact that access to guns in the hands of common citizens increases the probability of deaths due to gun violence. On the other hand, FAIR tries to provide an argument that owning guns by everyone is not a solution. At the time when the Second Amendment was formulated, possession of guns was a necessity as the law and order in the country was in total chaos. However, the same logic does not apply in today’s context as it is no longer necessary for citizens to keep guns to feel safe (Rendall 2013). FAIR argues that stricter gun laws should be implemented in issuing guns and if possible, guns should be forfeited from the citizenry. Thus, it is seen that how the three media houses portray a completely different picture on the same issue. Probably in this case, FAIR presents a better argument than AIM or Media Research Centre but both the media houses refuse to comprehensively analyze the issue. Similarly, if we now look at the Obama Care coverage of these media houses, we see that AIM categorically concentrates on how many jobs will be lost after Obama Care gets fully implemented (Drennen 2014). It also argues that Obama Care will create a big hole in the federal budget. AIM also projects in its articles and blogs that Obama care will ultimately reduce the quality of healthcare service in the long run. However, none of those articles projects that there will be an increase in the enrollment in healthcare policies. With the implementation of Obama Care, healthcare will become more affordable to people who are now unable to afford a decent insurance policy. FAIR, on the other hand, very efficiently shows that Obama care will create a more welfare economy than the current system. More people will benefit from Obama Care than from the current system. Even it argues that Obama Care will actually save money for the federal government in the long run (Hart 2013). Thus, these two media houses analyze the same bill in completely different way. They use their own numbers and figures to establish their final argument. It is difficult to conclude which media house projects a better argument, but it is easy to see that both portray a one-sided view of Obama Care. The recent instance of how both the media houses project the Maryland mall shooter case provides a good example of their bias. AIM publishes the news that the shooter is a “pothead”, and that is the main reason behind the shooting massacre (Kincaid 2014). On the other hand, FAIR argues that it is a classic case of “gun control”. It is a case which once again shows that gun control is required in USA, and the Second Amendment needs to be changed. Both the media houses have a mission statement to publish news which is fair and balanced. However, both of them fail to do that in many cases. It is not only about AIM or FAIR, but it is a problem with almost all the media houses in US and around the world.
Media Bias in the Mainstream Media
Now that we have seen media houses which are either very leftist or very conservative, let’s now take a look at the mainstream media houses. The main media houses in the current USA are NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, Times group and CNN. Commentators, opinion columnists and editorialists are expected to provide their own opinion and those opinions may be biased. However, news media which is supposed to provide news and facts are not expected to present biased facts and figures, but there is huge evidence that American mass media is biased in many ways. Most of the quantifiable evidence shows that media has a leftwing bias. For example, it has been seen that members of the media over the decades have voted for democratic candidates. For example, 94% of the media professionals voted for Democrats. In 1976, 81% voted for Democrats and even in 2004 election, almost 70% of the media personnel voted for Democratic candidates (Perazzo 2008). It is also a fact that most of the media people are biased towards liberal agendas like the dichotomy between rich and poor should be reduced, exploitation of resources from other countries by USA is immoral and private enterprises are not fair to workers.
Bias in media is not a new fact. In fact, in the early days of media, it was an well-known fact that a particular media house favors certain views over others. Customers and readers also took it for granted that newspapers would take sides, but all those changed in 1950s and 1960s when all major media houses started claiming that they were presenting unbiased news and views. This change also coincided with the advent of liberalism in USA. That was one of the reasons why the majority of the media houses continue to remain left-biased. There are many historical evidences of left bias of the mainstream media. For example, Joseph Stalin was never criticized in the mainstream US media during and after the Second World War even though most of the media houses knew about the brutalities of Stalin. Fidel Castro, another darling of the mainstream media, was given more positive attention than deserved (Huston 2011). Mainstream media vehemently opposed the nomination of Robert Bork as the head of the Supreme Court but the same media hailed the democratic selection of Elena Kagan who was of the same background as Bork.
Liberal bias is so common in media that sometimes conservatives use it to accuse the opponent even when there is no bias. In fact, in recent times when the liberal bias in media is showing a decline, many conservatives continue to blame the media of liberal bias. Apart from MSNBC, which is famous as the liberal news channel, most of the big media houses are much less biased than before. On the other hand, Fox News has now become a very strong conservative media house. There will always be some media houses that will continue to take sides, but overall the media seems more centrist than before.
The Role of Media in a Democracy
Media has a very instrumental role to play in forming a healthy democracy. Media makes people aware of the social, economic and political activities taking place around the world. It is media which reminds politicians about the unfulfilled promises made during the elections. Media also helps public form opinions about different social and political issues. It is through extensive media coverage prior to and during elections that public become aware of the propaganda of each contesting political party and decides to vote the right person to power. Media also brings to the forefront different political and social agenda, loopholes in the system which need to be corrected and expose any wrongdoing of the government (Hafiz 2011). It is the duty of media to publish facts and figures authentically helping people to form opinions on events. Since media has immense power in shaping the collective opinions of people, media bias can mislead people in the wrong directions, and that is not healthy for a true democracy.
Conclusion
Media is a powerful element in any society. Media possesses a huge power of information. It can control the emotions of people through the news coverage and create public opinions on an issue. A responsible media house should showcase the news and facts properly to the public and should try to keep its own view neutral. However, achieving that is not very easy. We have seen that almost all types of media have some kind of bias. For example, it is a well-known fact that most of the mainstream media in USA is left-biased. There are different types of media houses. There are some who are very clear in their views and people know what to expect from them. However, there are some media houses which claim that they are neutral, but they actually are not. Then there are other media houses often presenting confused news and changing sides repeatedly. Providing a neutral view on almost all the subjects is almost impossible, but media being a power instrument in a democracy should try to achieve that.
Work Cited
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