Bias in the media

I generally won't make partisan statements on this blog, I try to just ask questions and try to provoke thought. I never ask anyone to agree with me. However, having been challenged on the statement that the media is biased, I'll offer some thoughts on that very thing. First of all, bias is subjective. You commonly hear people say that the media isn't bias and they use statistical numbers to back themselves up, usually consisting of studies done on how many stories were done on or about a particular person/candidate, etc. and whether or not those stories were positive or negative in order to determine bias. This entire system is bogus. First, the number of stories done on or about someone is completely irrelevant because a story can be positive or negative, so the number doesn't matter (although I suppose a significant numerical difference could make for some kind of argument, albeit slight in my opinion). However, regardless of this, the determination as to whether something is positive or negative in nature and therefore bias, is based solely on the discretion of the person doing the analysis. Therefore, a Democrat could look at the exact same data as a Republican and come to an opposite conclusion. Why? That's how people's minds really work, that's why. So, to clarify my statement about bias in the media. There is now and there always has been bias in the media. Anyone claiming differently is denying history and has bought a fiction, created by the media sometime after World War II, that the media is meant to disseminate information in a non-bias form for you to be informed. This is a hogwash. If you want to be informed, go to the library and read some books. In fact, media bias goes back before the creation of this country, but for the sake of space, let's stick to U.S. media history. In the first days of this country's history, the Federalists and the Anti-federalists published pamphlets for mass distribution to convince people that their side was right. The most famous of these pamphlets have be republished over the years as the Federalist Papers (which I suggest reading if you really want a lesson in constitutionalism). Nonetheless, these pamphlets were shortly followed up by newspapers designed to support one party or the other. In the early days, most New England papers were Federalist in nature and south of Pennsylvania, most papers were supportive of the Jeffersonian Republicans. These traditions continued for decades. As the parties changed, the papers changed allegiances or died out being replaced by new ones. By the time of the Civil War, newspaper editors were beginning to mold the papers in their individual images, which had the effect of making papers seem less loyal to a particular party since their writings were more particular to the whims of their editors. This didn't come fully into play until the late 19th and early 20th century period with publishers like William Randolph Hearst and the like. However, papers remained completely biased, they just didn't always cowtow to a particular party line. They were biased to the thoughts and ideas of their editors. In fact, Hearst was a major FDR supporter in 1932 when he was elected, but because he was angry at FDR for not supporting the troop pension legislation in 1935, all of Hearst's newspapers became anti Roosevelt and anti New Deal. This doesn't happen today you say? Of course it does. Now, you say, but my news source isn't biased, only that one over there is. So, we come back to my earlier statement that bias is subjective. Of course your news source doesn't appear biased to you because you likely chose that news source because it tells you what you want to hear. Therefore, any news source that tells a different story must be bias. In reality, both news sources are using elements of the truth, but they (or their editors) are choosing to rely more heavily on one aspect of a story over another. This is how bias is created. Of course, before cable news, the networks used to do the same thing. You could count on one to be Democrat and one to be Republican (not always the same one, but...) and then one would "try" to play the middle. This was all in order to compete with each other. However, with the advent of 24 hour news, the media sources all began to spout the same information largely because, in order to compete, they had to get their information from the same sources. Therefore, the networks are no longer distinguishable from each other. However, in order to do 24 hour news, even cable news began to fall into the trap of getting its information from the same sources and now CNN looks a lot like the networks. So, in the late 20th century, Rupert Murdoch saw an opportunity. It seemed that he noticed that the majority of television media had moved to one position which left a hole that needed filling, and in marched Fox News. Murdoch wasn't necessarily conservative (although he probably is), he just saw a great business opportunity and took advantage of it by making a network that was bias on the opposite end from the majority of the media. So, if you want good information, I suggest watching CNN and then flipping over to Fox News and perhaps reading your local paper, but also read USAToday, or if you read the New Republic, also read a more conservative equivalent. This is the only way to make sure that your thinking isn't tainted by one side of an argument. Don't say you wouldn't be that stupid because if you only get your information from one source, whether it be a traditional media outlet or a source (blog, whatever) on the internet, then you can easily fall into the trap of believing or arguing for something, not because you have any real conviction in that area, but because that's all you've ever heard being argued and so it seems natural to you to agree with it. I'll reiterate my point. The media is and always has been biased. Our job is to read enough different sources to figure out which side what we read is on, then find something else to read as well in order to filter out as much of the bias as we can. Or, we can just all be lemmings, you are free to choose as you will. I choose not to be a lemming.