(starting at the most recent in my catchup, because its, er, the easiest way)
(and this is basically a long first draft because I’m getting sleepy, so forgive any weird phrasing and stuff)
Back in this post I made what was basically a note to myself. I’ll expand that note out a bit now I have a chance.
- Our society gets a large majority of its information about the world from large media organisations.
- “Media bias” is something that is frequently raised in discourse about political and social issues. Usually this is raised to discredit a counter-explanation and (implicitly) give credence to the speaker’s explanation
- It is certainly possible that there may be bias slanting the information delivered through a particular media organisation. In fact, it’s inevitable, given the intersection between irreducible human nature, the complexity of the world, and the flexibility of language.
- The two sides of the current American political/social debate, a debate with global implications, each make the claim that the dominant media bias is against them. (“liberal media” vs. “corporate media”)
At the moment, the two sides of the debate in America can each safely discount everything that doesn’t fit their worldview because it comes from a “biased source”. I’m dissatisfied with this. They can’t both be right – either the media is predominantly biased towards liberals, or its primarily biased towards conservatives.
Media bias is a serious claim and it has serious implications for those who believe such claims. Most importantly, it devalues the role of primary information sources and assigns pre-eminent media status to secondary, opinion-structuring information commentators.
Both sides of the debate in the US can produce legitimate grievances with the media. There is truth behind both claims.
So where does this leave us? In a relativistic environment where nothing resembling useful truth can be discerned? Well, in effect it does at the moment, but it need not be so. I believe that an improved vocabulary accounting for the varieties, formulations and effects of media bias will be the crucial step in bringing mediated information back under the control of its audience.
At present, the only vocabulary is the word, ‘bias’. This is much too broad a category. It isn’t going to get us anywhere.
There may already be such a vocabulary. (In fact, I’m sure there is in the world of media studies.) It needs, however, to be popularised. I believe that such a project is very possible because there is a clear and obvious difference between different kinds of bias. Such clear differences make an improved vocabulary very useful, and if something is useful, it can be spread.
Compare, say, 60 Minutes’ failure to properly check the (forged) Bush memos, with the way the coverage of pulling-down-the-statue-day in Iraq was presented. These are very different kinds of bias, creating very different effects on the viewer, and manipulating information in very different ways. At the moment, they are both examples of bias, and they must cancel each other out; the media is liberal, the media is corporate.
Once we have a vocabulary to describe the differences hidden within bias, then we’ll be in a position to discuss how bias works, and how to challenge it and respond to it. We won’t be so dependent on opinion-formers, and we’ll be better able to identify the truth, such as it is. This isn’t just a desirable future – it’s nearly an essential one.
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For what it’s worth, my rule of thumb is that the media is biased in favour of liberal perspectives by the personal biases of the majority of those working within it; they will favour angles in their coverage that push a liberal agenda. However, it is also biased in favour of conservative perspectives by overarching structural features, particularly management and funding structures. In other words, issues are almost always framed in accordance with a conservative agenda, but the pursuit of those issues is undertaken with a liberal mindset.
That’s my hunch. I’d like to have the words to check it out sometime.
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So. Brother, can you spare a vocabulary?