Spinning News

There have been a lot of comments lately about how the media spins every bit of news one way or another - to the left or to right depending on who you watch. Kaleetha mentioned that she is in the profession in another thread, and this has come up in many, many threads as a passing comment. So I figure it should be a topic in and of itself.

Here's my take: Perhaps a better way to say it is that the *national* news organizations and big city newspapers spin everything. We know that the majority of the network news is spun to the left. CNN, MSNBC, are also lefties overall. Fox is spun to the right. Fox isn't spun any more or less than CNN spins their coverage, it's just in a different direction.

I also want to point out that media spin and bias can be as much in what is or is not reported as in how it is reported. It's a really fine line sometimes, and I think that line is much more apparent at this point in time in the US than at any other time. I think part of that is due to the divisiveness in the political landscape, and the other part is because of "independent media" (i.e. radio shows with blatent bias and blogs which make a point of showing that bias), and honestly because of Fox News. Because Fox has a different spin, it makes the opposite spin pretty obvious (to me, at least).

Part of the reason for that is Air America. They tried to consolidate the real liberal talk shows into one radio station. Unfortunately for them, it is failing miserably as far as bringing in revenue. It's hardley viable in most markets, if it hasn't been canned already. And really - who can blame the advertisers? Why would you want to advertise on shows that are very anti-corporation?

Yes. Liberal (Democrat) = Left, Conservative (Republican) = Right

That study is more about how viewers percieve the "truth", and while Fox viewers may have had more misconceptions, the majority of viewers of other media outlets showed the same misconceptions. Don't "spin" that study to make Fox any more biased than it is. Here's the full chart of the 3 misconceptions they asked about (2003 study, if there was a direct link between Iraq & Al Qaeda, WMDs actually found, and if world opinion supported the war in Iraq):

Fox: 80%
CBS: 71%
ABC: 61%
NBC: 55%
CNN: 51%
Print Media: 47%
PBS/NPR: 23%

What that study shows me is not that Fox is so outright biased as compared to the others, but that either a) people aren't really paying attention to the news regardless of who they watch, with the exception of those who watch or listen to PBS/NPR (as I know that CBS, who we were watching at the time, took every opportunity to say that WMDs were not found, that the world hates the US or at least this policy, and that there were no direct links) or b) none of the news outlets did a good job of reporting that information.

Taking the viewers out of the equation is important when looking at bias. Viewers are unreliable, as every viewer brings their own perceptions and opinions into it. Surveys like the one above did not, as far as I can tell, quantify how much the respondents actively watched the news, how often they watched the news, or what their level of education is. All of that plays into how they will perceive the "truth".

A more recent report, from December 2005 from UCLA, shows that the media bias is real.

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

I also think there is a huge difference between print media and broadcast media.

First, what Linda and Fran said - it's much more advertising oriented and more competitve for that advertising. For instance, in the Denver area there are 2 newspapers which are now owned by the same company. Not really much competition since the $$ ends up in the same hands. (Also, it is widely known in this community that the Post is more liberal, and the News is more conservative, particularly on their Editorial pages and columnists that appear in each.) However, there are 5 local English channels and 2 Spanish channels competing for much the same audience and the same advertising dollars. At least the 5 and 2 are competing with each other. National news broadcasts are the big three networks competing with CNN, Fox, MSNBC, et al that broadcast 24-7.

In print, it is there forever. If they mess up, there is no refuting the intension. Granted, with how easily everything is recording it is pretty much forever in broadcast media as well. But it seems that print media are more scrupulous about their sources, finding multiple sources to corroborate, and verifying the veracity of the source. I guess that goes back to the amount of competition in the broadcast media to be the first to report it.

Also, in print there is a specific section to put opinions, the Editorials, and beyond that are columns which are also an avenue of expressing opinion. In broadcast news, particularly the networks, they don't have that opportunity. I think that is perhaps one reason why the position of the staff is more likely to seep into broadcast news more often than the print media. Perhaps it isn't intentional, but sometimes I do think it is. The whole CBS debacle with the forged documents is a case in point of that. They liked the story, wanted the story, wanted to paint Bush with that brush stroke. That the sources behind the story were bad didn't make a lot of difference until they were called on it. Even if they didn't know how bad the sources were, it shows a lack of checking their sources.