News to Me: Media Bias

Tagline: " Unbiased news does not exist.  We provide balanced news and civil discourse."

Curates stories from liberal, center and conservative-leaning media, encouraging readers to compare how bias influences reporting on particular topics. 

• Selectivity bias (gatekeeping / agenda) - stories selected & promoted on ideological grounds.
• Coverage bias (visibility) - events, issues, people more or less visible
• Presentation bias (statement / tonality) - coverage slanted
• Concision bias - report what can be easily summarized, shutting out complex, unconventional views
• Mainstream bias - report what everyone else is reporting
• Sensationalism - promoting the exceptional over the ordinary
• False balance - coverage is presented as neutral despite disproportionate reporting
• Advertising bias - stories selected and slanted to please clients
• Corporate bias - stories selected and slanted to please media corporate owners

According to Dictionary.com, bias is a " particular tendency, trend, inclination, feeling, or opinion, especially one that is preconceived or unreasoned."

Media bias refers to the perception that journalists, editors and news producers show a pattern of bias by what stories they select to cover, and how they report them.  Rather than present a neutral narrative, reporters allegedly present a point a view.

In our current political climate where EVERY issue seems to be politicized, we generally refer to:

• Fake news is purposefully and specifically untrue.  The intention is to deceive, distort, dissuade.
• While media bias is not an outright lie, it is not necessarily the truth either.  A one-sided view of an event or issue presents an incomplete picture,  and is therefore inaccurate.
• News outlets often have an editorial point of view, but these should be clearly labeled as OPINION or commentary.
  Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) and Sean Hannity (Fox) are both commentators.

Pew Study