Bias.... Again

In an earlier post I talked about a dominant liberal bias in the media. Now I would like to discuss the Biases in the news itself that matters most. What exactly makes the news biased? I think that the biases in the media can be broken down into four distinctive areas.

The first area of bias in the media I think is personalization. Since the news market is so competitive, the journalist do whatever they can to get higher ratings. Ratings have become the one and only goal of news stations. It’s not getting THE story to the people; it’s getting A story to the most people. Personalizing Journalistic bias gives preference to individual actors and human interest over institutional, social, political contexts. They personalize issues, institutions and events in order to win over viewers. Depending on what audience the station is looking for, the personalization will go towards one side or another-liberal or conservative.

Dramatization is the second area of bias in the mass media. News stories are often portrayed as sensational events (or crises), with a spotlight placed on controversial characters and emotional scripts. Basically drama and entertainment sells and the news don’t. People are used to being entertained. There are thousands of entertainment channels available to the public, why does the news have to be entertainment as well? That’s because again, the news is a business and entertainment sells, not information. This is one quote that I really liked from the author Lance W. Bennett, “Every news story should, without any sacrifice of probity or responsibility, display the attributes of fiction, of drama. It should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising action and falling action, a beginning, middle, and an end. These are not only the essentials of drama; they are the essentials of a narrative.”

Fragmentation is the third area of biases in the media. This basically means that the news is packaged as unique isolated events. Instead of stories, the news becomes self-contained episodic capsules isolated from each other in time and space. There is no connection between anything. People can’t relate the news to anything else they see because of the news fragmentation tactic. By using the fragmentation tactic, the news uses their other personalization and dramatization tools to promote their soft news stories. The news is no longer about social, and political events around the world, it is about separate episodic issues.

Authority Disorder is the last form of biases. This is basically a who done it and who do we blame biases. People love controversy and scandal and the news uses their authority disorder tactic to give it to them. Bias with a preoccupation toward questions relating to social order and whether authorities are capable of establishing or restoring it is their authority disorder tactic.

Well we’ve established the fact that bias exists in the media, and now we know exactly what they use to deliver their bias.