I don't offer any thoughts of the form "the media on the whole has a liberal bias" or "Fox news has a conservative bias". Rather, I just say a few words on perhaps how we should understand the concept of media bias. (These are thoughts I formulated over five years ago when engaging in brief e-mail correspondence with my brother-in-law about the topic of media bias. I have not carefully reviewed them since, so I might no longer be entirely happy with them. But since my main goal is to get people thinking about this issue of concept understanding, and since I have other things to write, and many non-campaign things to do, thought I would go ahead and share.)
This attempt at concept understanding is important, because: if we understand "media bias" one way, it could turn out that media bias is very common but not a bad thing; but if we understand "media bias" another way, it could turn out that it is obviously a bad thing, but arguably nonexistent (or at least much less common than is often claimed).
(This is similar to how, four years ago, when my brother jumped on the Swiftboat -- John Kerry betrayed his fellow soldiers in Vietnam; betrayal is bad; therefore John Kerry is evil -- I tried to get him to slow down by noting it is important how we understand "betrayal". I wanted to get him to see that: if we understand "betrayal" one way, it might turn out that John Kerry did betray his fellow soldiers in Vietnam, but that then betrayal is not obviously or necessarily a bad thing; but if we understand "betrayal" another way, it might turn out that betrayal is obviously and necessarily a bad thing, but that Kerry did not betray his fellow soldiers. His reaction was to claim I was "playing with words" and attempt to mock me. It is sad when someone as freakishly smart as my brother comes to think [because of really unfortunate cultural attitudes] that this is an appropriate argumentative reaction to discussion of that sort.)
Okay, here we go....
The following is the beginnings of an attempt to analyze the concept of bias as it applies to media outlets. This is important, because people make accusation of bias without clearly understanding bias.
A media outlet M is biased iff
(i) M claims to be neutral, and
(ii) M is not neutral.
A media outlet M is neutral iff
(i) M chooses the topics/questions it addresses in accord with the actual interests of its intended audience, and
(ii) M’s discussion of views on/answers to these topics/questions is fair, i.e.,
(a) M chooses what views to express, who to interview, etc., in accord with actual views of experts on the chosen topic/question (answer neutrality), and
(b) M’s own presentation in this discussion implies/implicates no claim which violates answer-neutrality (and no claim which is likely to be construed as supporting a claim which violates answer neutrality).
Comments:
(i) – Given the reference to intended audience, one might think the analysis need not go through the middle step of “neutrality”; e.g., Z magazine’s intended audience is not all Americans, whereas it is for CBS, etc. Actually, I’m not sure this is true, at least for its hoped-for audience – its intended audience maybe can’t be so broad only because it’s not in a position to justifiably believe its actual audience will in fact be all Americans (or at least Americans which cut across all interesting categories). But even if it is, this middle step is still required because Z magazine does not claim to achieve answer-neutrality – since it doesn’t claim this, its failure to achieve it should not count as bias. To put the point in dramatic (though imperfect) fashion: what’s wrong with a cash-strapped magazine publishing far-left views, when readers are not led to believe this is neutral reporting, and when readers interested in other views have many other magazines they can turn to?
(ii,a) – When it comes to the simple occurrence of events, there will be no controversy, or at least they themselves, as reporters, journalists, etc., will be as much an expert as anyone else. Consequently, (ii,a) will be trivially satisfied (though not necessarily (ii,b) since its presentation could still be unfair by implying a claim which violates answer-neutrality when it comes to a topic/question not of this sort). But all other topics/questions will be non-trivial in this sense, including questions about events long ago, non-moral interpretation of events (causes, motives, larger trends, etc.), moral questions, both theoretical and those applied to events, interpretation of events, etc.
(ii,b) – Here I have in mind, for example, a reporter’s labeling all conservatives as conservatives, but not likewise for liberals, thus implying it is specifically conservatives who are outside the mainstream (see Goldberg). This violates (ii,b) (if it does at all), by suggesting conservative views are wacky (or something like that), thus implying a claim which violates answer-neutrality when it comes to those topics/questions at dispute between conservatives and others. (If this makes for unfair reporting simply because it implies a false claim – namely, that it is specifically conservatives who are outside of the mainstream – then (ii,b) will have to make reference to any implied false claim. But this strikes me as too strong for the concept of bias. A reporter can get something wrong, say, someone’s age, without thereby exhibiting bias. Maybe to ensure my analysis doesn’t have such a false implication, I need to explicitly refer in (ii) to the non-trivial topics/questions in the sense I explain in my comment on (ii,a) above.)
(i) and (ii,a) – I speak of a media outlet’s choice being “in accord” with something. Given time-constraints and like issues for media outlets, the point maybe could be put more exactly by saying that attached priorities are in positive linear relationship to degree of actual interest (i) or actual popularity of view (ii,a).
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