12 ms·

I am curious how many of these medias actually admit that they are biased themselves?

by kailuowang 10y ago

noobermin 10y ago
I think this election has demonstrated the media's bias fairly well.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Yea, but not their own recognition of the bias (which is the useful part).
  - unlinker 10y ago
    Do you think they'd recognise their own bias? That would be like saying "we can't do journalism properly", because proper journalism is unbiased.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      > That would be like saying "we can't do journalism properly", because proper journalism is unbiased. I'm not entirely sure about this. Trump's been eating the media's lunch in interviews; perhaps a more biased approach acknowledging his interview games would actually lead to better reporting.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      There is no such thing as unbiased journalism. Without bias, what you have is cacophony of competing interpretations of events. Even reporting "just the facts" consists of making judgement calls that introduce bias with respect to which facts you report, and what you accept as fact. I'd rather have reports from sources that don't try to pretend to be unbiased.
      - noobermin 10y ago
        cspan is probably the closest thing to unbiased journalism, it's great, but no, it isn't a money maker and is only entertaining to those truly seeking the raw content. I agree that for reporters, the least they can do is acknowledge their own bias. If anything, that acknowledgement goes far towards mitigating said bias.
    - ryanl0l 10y ago
      Without bias how do you pick your stories? Without bias how do you pick your sources? Bias towards official sources is ubiquitous. Bias is an integral part of journalism, it's up to the reader to understand this fact and collect information from multiple sources (if they're so inclined).
- drewrv 10y ago
  This cracks me up because some people believe the media has treated Sanders unfairly, others believe they've treated Trump unfairly. Maybe both. Personally I believe left/right bias isn't that interesting. The media has a strong bias toward sensationalism, and in elections there's a strong bias toward reporting on a horse race. Maybe this is the bias you're talking about. IMO these biases have helped Trump and Sanders respectively. What a weird society we live in where everyone thinks the media is biased and few agree on exactly how.
- MisterBastahrd 10y ago
  The media's bias is towards sensationalism. Bernie has the personality of cold oatmeal.
redthrowaway 10y ago
My anecdata suggests conservative outlets tend to acknowledge their bias, as a counterweight to liberal bias in the "mainstream" media, whereas liberal outlets tend to believe themselves to be unbiased. Given how much liberal outlets scoff at the notion of there being a pervasive liberal bias in the MSM, I suspect they legitimately just don't see it as they're surrounded by people with the same political views and so are predisposed to believing that's what "normal" is.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > pervasive liberal bias in the MSM The biggest cable news channel, the most popular newspaper (I think WSJ leads; EDIT: and certainly it dominates the business world), and almost all talk radio are highly conservative. They try to paint themselves as underdogs, but it's a little silly.
  - redthrowaway 10y ago
    Yes, the big ones are conservative, because every other one is liberal. Conservatives flock to places like Fox and WSJ because they're a refuge from the liberal bias that pervades the rest of the media. If you're a liberal and you want to watch news that doesn't offend you, you can choose from any of the major networks save Fox. If you're a conservative and want the same, you're stuck with Fox.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > every other one is liberal I don't agree. First, there are plenty of smaller conservative ideological publications (two were listed in the original comment, plus endless more: RedState, Daily Caller, Breitbart, etc.). Almost all talk- radio, as I mentioned, is conservative. Also I said in another comment, there is plenty of apolitical journalism. (!conservative) != (liberal) The ideologues adopt a Manichean, binary view of the world: With us or against us. They say everyone is ideological and anyone who doesn't agree with them must be in the 'other' camp. They seek ideological conflict, to justify their beliefs and behavior. But the world is more complex than that and everyone is not ideological (most are not). There are leftist ideologues, and they say the NY Times is conservative and there is no difference between the parties (as incredible as that sounds). Either you share their ideology, or you are in the 'other' camp. The right-wing ideologues are the same: They define any journalism as not ideologically conservative as liberal. (They also call themselves outsiders when the control the 2/3 of the states and both houses of Congress). But it's not the case.
abiox 10y ago
of course they're biased. profit-seeking enterprises are strongly incentivized to not bite the hand that feeds. (not that state news isn't subject to this.) as noam chomsky has talked about, they "manufacture consent". you see it in say, chris matthews basically trying to "assassinate" sanders while cozying up to clinton.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
That of course is the interesting question. Of course the media knows they are biased, some even call it out in their tag line like "The conservative voice" others are less outspoken. Facebook is in an interesting position, they have such a wide swath of populations for reasons other than an editorial slant, they have people on site who might disagree with their position. Unlike the media where people who don't like the editorial bias of a paper simply don't read it. It would be perfectly reasonable for Facebook to have an editorial position on the stories. But it has asserted that it does not. And that is where things get tricky. We saw on a propublica story about how the machine algorithm can get biased by poor data and assumptions, and we've seen from Facebook's media response that even when they don't have an "official" position, their employees naturally do and Facebook is seeking additional training for them to protect their biases from leaking into their curation choices. That said, the "reality" of what is and what isn't trending is more about reinforcing one's belief in a position and less about the news. People who believe a story that strongly endorses their position but never trends is "suppressed", and stories that conflict with their opinions but are trending are "biased". I have yet to find any way to have a reasonable discussion about the popularity of views versus the correctness of those views with anyone who believes their point of view is being suppressed by "shadowy influences." I don't think there is any way for Facebook to win here and a lot of ways it can lose.
- tjr 10y ago
  Stupid question, I imagine... I thought that Facebook users subscribe to the posting feeds of individuals and organizations of their own choosing. Would not the resulting custom feed be comprised of articles from sources which that particular user selected? Where is the Facebook editorial bias coming into play?
  - needcaffeine 10y ago
    The trending news section, which is supposedly manually curated.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    I have very conservative, and very liberal friends... I myself lean libertarian, which puts my conservative on some issues and liberal on others... so, there is definitely a need for curation for quality, and diversity of opinion.

I am curious how many of these medias actually admit that they are biased themselves?

noobermin 10y ago

I think this election has demonstrated the media's bias fairly well.

duaneb 10y ago
Yea, but not their own recognition of the bias (which is the useful part).
- unlinker 10y ago
  Do you think they'd recognise their own bias? That would be like saying "we can't do journalism properly", because proper journalism is unbiased.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    > That would be like saying "we can't do journalism properly", because proper journalism is unbiased. I'm not entirely sure about this. Trump's been eating the media's lunch in interviews; perhaps a more biased approach acknowledging his interview games would actually lead to better reporting.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    There is no such thing as unbiased journalism. Without bias, what you have is cacophony of competing interpretations of events. Even reporting "just the facts" consists of making judgement calls that introduce bias with respect to which facts you report, and what you accept as fact. I'd rather have reports from sources that don't try to pretend to be unbiased.
    - noobermin 10y ago
      cspan is probably the closest thing to unbiased journalism, it's great, but no, it isn't a money maker and is only entertaining to those truly seeking the raw content. I agree that for reporters, the least they can do is acknowledge their own bias. If anything, that acknowledgement goes far towards mitigating said bias.
  - ryanl0l 10y ago
    Without bias how do you pick your stories? Without bias how do you pick your sources? Bias towards official sources is ubiquitous. Bias is an integral part of journalism, it's up to the reader to understand this fact and collect information from multiple sources (if they're so inclined).
drewrv 10y ago
This cracks me up because some people believe the media has treated Sanders unfairly, others believe they've treated Trump unfairly. Maybe both. Personally I believe left/right bias isn't that interesting. The media has a strong bias toward sensationalism, and in elections there's a strong bias toward reporting on a horse race. Maybe this is the bias you're talking about. IMO these biases have helped Trump and Sanders respectively. What a weird society we live in where everyone thinks the media is biased and few agree on exactly how.
MisterBastahrd 10y ago
The media's bias is towards sensationalism. Bernie has the personality of cold oatmeal.

redthrowaway 10y ago

My anecdata suggests conservative outlets tend to acknowledge their bias, as a counterweight to liberal bias in the "mainstream" media, whereas liberal outlets tend to believe themselves to be unbiased. Given how much liberal outlets scoff at the notion of there being a pervasive liberal bias in the MSM, I suspect they legitimately just don't see it as they're surrounded by people with the same political views and so are predisposed to believing that's what "normal" is.

hackuser 10y ago
> pervasive liberal bias in the MSM The biggest cable news channel, the most popular newspaper (I think WSJ leads; EDIT: and certainly it dominates the business world), and almost all talk radio are highly conservative. They try to paint themselves as underdogs, but it's a little silly.
- redthrowaway 10y ago
  Yes, the big ones are conservative, because every other one is liberal. Conservatives flock to places like Fox and WSJ because they're a refuge from the liberal bias that pervades the rest of the media. If you're a liberal and you want to watch news that doesn't offend you, you can choose from any of the major networks save Fox. If you're a conservative and want the same, you're stuck with Fox.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > every other one is liberal I don't agree. First, there are plenty of smaller conservative ideological publications (two were listed in the original comment, plus endless more: RedState, Daily Caller, Breitbart, etc.). Almost all talk- radio, as I mentioned, is conservative. Also I said in another comment, there is plenty of apolitical journalism. (!conservative) != (liberal) The ideologues adopt a Manichean, binary view of the world: With us or against us. They say everyone is ideological and anyone who doesn't agree with them must be in the 'other' camp. They seek ideological conflict, to justify their beliefs and behavior. But the world is more complex than that and everyone is not ideological (most are not). There are leftist ideologues, and they say the NY Times is conservative and there is no difference between the parties (as incredible as that sounds). Either you share their ideology, or you are in the 'other' camp. The right-wing ideologues are the same: They define any journalism as not ideologically conservative as liberal. (They also call themselves outsiders when the control the 2/3 of the states and both houses of Congress). But it's not the case.

abiox 10y ago

of course they're biased. profit-seeking enterprises are strongly incentivized to not bite the hand that feeds. (not that state news isn't subject to this.) as noam chomsky has talked about, they "manufacture consent". you see it in say, chris matthews basically trying to "assassinate" sanders while cozying up to clinton.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

That of course is the interesting question. Of course the media knows they are biased, some even call it out in their tag line like "The conservative voice" others are less outspoken. Facebook is in an interesting position, they have such a wide swath of populations for reasons other than an editorial slant, they have people on site who might disagree with their position. Unlike the media where people who don't like the editorial bias of a paper simply don't read it. It would be perfectly reasonable for Facebook to have an editorial position on the stories. But it has asserted that it does not. And that is where things get tricky. We saw on a propublica story about how the machine algorithm can get biased by poor data and assumptions, and we've seen from Facebook's media response that even when they don't have an "official" position, their employees naturally do and Facebook is seeking additional training for them to protect their biases from leaking into their curation choices. That said, the "reality" of what is and what isn't trending is more about reinforcing one's belief in a position and less about the news. People who believe a story that strongly endorses their position but never trends is "suppressed", and stories that conflict with their opinions but are trending are "biased". I have yet to find any way to have a reasonable discussion about the popularity of views versus the correctness of those views with anyone who believes their point of view is being suppressed by "shadowy influences." I don't think there is any way for Facebook to win here and a lot of ways it can lose.

tjr 10y ago
Stupid question, I imagine... I thought that Facebook users subscribe to the posting feeds of individuals and organizations of their own choosing. Would not the resulting custom feed be comprised of articles from sources which that particular user selected? Where is the Facebook editorial bias coming into play?
- needcaffeine 10y ago
  The trending news section, which is supposedly manually curated.
- tracker1 10y ago
  I have very conservative, and very liberal friends... I myself lean libertarian, which puts my conservative on some issues and liberal on others... so, there is definitely a need for curation for quality, and diversity of opinion.