Using Interactions in the Quantification of Media Bias (original) (raw)
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The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2005
We measure media bias by estimating ideological scores for several major media outlets. To compute this, we count the times that a particular media outlet cites various think tanks and policy groups, and then compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same groups. Our results show a strong liberal bias: all of the news outlets we examine, except Fox News' Special Report and the Washington Times, received scores to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with claims made by conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received scores far to the left of center. The most centrist media outlets were PBS NewsHour, CNN's Newsnight, and ABC's Good Morning America; among print outlets, USA Today was closest to the center. All of our findings refer strictly to news content; that is, we exclude editorials, letters, and the like. "The editors in Los Angeles killed the story. They told Witcover that it didn't 'come off ' and that it was an 'opinion' story.. .. The solution was simple, they told him. All he had to do was get other people to make the same points and draw the same conclusions and then write the article in their words" (emphasis in original). Timothy Crouse, Boys on the Bus [1973, p. 116].
Tracking Propaganda to the Source: Tools for Analyzing Media Bias
European journal of social sciences, 2019
The news media plays an essential role in society, but surveys indicate that the media is widely viewed as biased. This paper presents a theory of media bias that originates with private information obtained by journalists through their investigations and persists despite profit -maximizing news organizations and rivalry from other news organizations. Bias has two effects on the demand for news. First, rational citizens are more skeptical of potentially biased news and thus rely less on it in their individual decision-making. Second, bias makes certain stories more likely than others. This article provides an overview of some useful approaches to understanding the sources of media bias and what to do about them. Bias is often said to “be in the eye of the beholder.” There is some truth to the fact that the psychological phenomenon of “selective perception” leads to “cognitive dissonance” when we are exposed to views very different from our own. But the reality of bias is a much broa...
On the nature of real and perceived bias in the mainstream media
PloS one, 2018
News consumers expect news outlets to be objective and balanced in their reports of events and opinions. However, there is a growing body of evidence of bias in the media caused by underlying political and socio-economic viewpoints. Previous studies have tried to classify the partiality of the media, but there is little work on quantifying it, and less still on the nature of this partiality. The vast amount of content published in social media enables us to quantify the inclination of the press to pre-defined sides of the socio-political spectrum. To describe such tendencies, we use tweets to automatically compute a news outlet's political and socio-economic orientation. Results show that the media have a measurable bias, and illustrate this by showing the favoritism of Chilean media for the ruling political parties in the country. This favoritism becomes clearer as we empirically observe a shift in the position of the mass media when there is a change in government. Even though...
More voices than ever? quantifying media bias in networks
2011
Social media, such as blogs, are often seen as democratic entities that allow more voices to be heard than the conventional mass or elite media. Some also feel that social media exhibits a balancing force against the arguably slanted elite media. A systematic comparison between social and mainstream media is necessary but challenging due to the scale and dynamic nature of modern communication. Here we propose empirical measures to quantify the extent and dynamics of social (blog) and mainstream (news) media bias. We focus on a particular form of biascoverage quantity-as applied to stories about the 111th US Congress. We compare observed coverage of Members of Congress against a null model of unbiased coverage, testing for biases with respect to political party, popular front runners, regions of the country, and more. Our measures suggest distinct characteristics in news and blog media. A simple generative model, in agreement with data, reveals differences in the process of coverage selection between the two media. "In the end, we'll have more voices and more options." -Dan Gillmor, We the media
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2007
The current research investigated whether bias exists in newspapers that are considered liberal or conservative, and whether this bias influences public opinion of events. Participants were college students (N = 67) who were enrolled in a 4-year university (n = 33) or a community college (n = 34). Participants were shown photographs and short articles relating to a presidential debate between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. Participants completed questionnaires relating to their opinions of the candidates. Results showed statistical significance within groups before and after exposure to the newspaper clippings.
Mitigating media bias: a computational approach
2008
The bias in the news media is an inherent flaw of the news production process, spanning news gathering, writing, and editing stages. Producer's subjective valuation, wittingly or unwittingly, takes place during the daily production process. The resulting bias often causes a sharp increase in political polarization and in the cost of conflict on social issues such as Iraq war . It is very difficult, if not impossible, for readers to have penetrating views on realities against such bias. We propose NewsCube, a novel Internet news service framework aiming at mitigating the effect of media bias. NewsCube is designed to automatically create and promptly provide readers with multiple classified viewpoints on a news event of interest. It helps readers to easily discover rich facts and compare diverse biased views on the event. In this paper, we discuss the design of the NewsCube framework and introduce novel approaches which are under development.
Identifying political bias in the news.doc
Abstract. The article deals with ways of identifying political bias in political news discourse on the material of RT – Ofcom case in Britain. Proceeding from the assumption that in recent years news as an established media format has undergone noticeable transformations, especially taking into consideration the impact of online media, the author seeks to disclose mechanisms of differentiating between implicitly manifested political bias and the expression of alternative political viewpoints. Comparative analysis of mainstream and alternative media, representing different segments of political spectrum in the times of growing audiences’ distrust in the media is regarded as one of the most reliable ways of finding impartial presentations of world events. Special attention is given to the potential advantages of applying the information model for the comparative analysis of news texts in order to single out and describe factors involved in mechanisms of political bias formation. Key words. Political bias, news media, mass audiences, media linguistics, information model, alternative viewpoints.