Investigating media bias
Many of the posts here have suggested that a certain unnamed newspaper in a big city near Ann Arbor has a media bias. If you want to learn more about the topic of media bias—how to investigate it and what to do about it---you might want to start by checking out the interesting summary and references on the topic of media bias in the link below. In fact, it raises some interesting questions if anyone wants to investigate the investigators—ie the unnamed newspaper which makes money trying to expose the frail underbelly of defenseless adolescents and their schools.
First, to determine whether or not there is a hidden agenda of writers or editors, look at their personal and business contacts, sociodemographics, attitudes, past professional connections, payments to speak or write (eg Do they ever get gigs through the influence of people with an axe to grind or those who would directly benefit from harm to a particular school’s program?). Also, look at quotes that reveal their beliefs, the frequencies of positive or negative word use or topic or headline choice for one school vs. another. Look at the paper's selective use or exclusion of experts, spokespersons, sources (eg interviewing a police officer for a player in a unfavored school but the father of a student in a more favored competitor).
Second, to determine if the larger organization fosters a bias, ask: What are the business interests of the paper (eg advertisers)? Could they be motivating a bias? Are any of the advertisers actually boosters at competing schools? Also, how about the paper’s ownership? (Hypothetically, for instance, if you were to look at two randomly chosen papers, like the Freep and the now defunct AnnArbor News, you would find they're owned by a mega-corporation called Newhouse News).
Why is that relevant? Maybe I'm naive but I can't really disprove the academic quote from the link below. It says “reporters and especially editors share and/or acquire values with corporate elites in order to further their careers. Those that don’t are usually weeded out or marginalized.” If so, one might conclude that one of the largest media groups in the country, with outlets all over the nation, like Newhouse, could have enough clout to--not necessarily even get you on TV, get you cited in national sources, or get you a news job in the future—but in fact, decide whether or not your paper folds (and I don’t mean putting a crease in your newspaper).
What to do about media bias
First, publicly disclose affiliations “when a news organization is reporting a story with some relevancy to the news organization itself or to its ownership individuals or conglomerate.” Do a paper’s sponsors have interests that conflict with sponsors of the school they attack? “Often this disclosure is mandated by the laws or regulations pertaining to stocks and securities”
Also, publicly disclose which owners of media outlets have vested interests in other commercial enterprises or organizations…Note whether any of them are boosters of athletic departments at competing schools....Do they have commercial ties to university officials or members of the Board of Directors at these schools?
If justified, demand the resignation or reassignment of biased reporters and or editors….possibly petitions or letters from prominent journalists, organizations etc…even referrals to the attorney general in the unlikely event that there are possible violations related to stocks or securities.
Finally (and probably the most effective measure), put pressure on the paper’s financial ties. I know, it may seem overwhelming if you are up against a large publication or even a mega-corporation. However the link notes: There is “a long history of advertisers pulling out support when media content becomes too controversial.”
Of course, I am not suggesting any of these actions…or even asserting that a media bias does exist at all, let alone in the state of Michigan…Horrors, no....But, I can’t help thinking about its hypothetical relevance to UM.
Doesn’t UM have the largest alumni base in the country? If they were (hypothetically) the victim of biased coverage, how long would they keep being fed what any clearly hostile media sources are serving?
In fact, doesn’t UM now even have a politically savvy, well-connected AD with commercial ties all over the world due to his past role as a CEO of a major corporation?
What would happen then if the new AD were to learn about the presence and sources of bias, if the advertiser’s associations with biased media started gaining publicity, even starting on widely read blogs like this?
If I were an advertiser for such as source, making a lot of dough by indirectly paying hacks to trash a school,.....well,
I’d thank my lucky stars if the alums, AD, and other prominent people couldn’t get mad enough to stand up and fight back....
Privately, though, I’d be shaking in my hypothetical boots.
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First, to determine whether or not there is a hidden agenda of writers or editors, look at their personal and business contacts, sociodemographics, attitudes, past professional connections, payments to speak or write (eg Do they ever get gigs through the influence of people with an axe to grind or those who would directly benefit from harm to a particular school’s program?). Also, look at quotes that reveal their beliefs, the frequencies of positive or negative word use or topic or headline choice for one school vs. another. Look at the paper's selective use or exclusion of experts, spokespersons, sources (eg interviewing a police officer for a player in a unfavored school but the father of a student in a more favored competitor).These are great tips, if you're a Michigan fan commenting on the sports coverage of Michigan versus Michigan State in the Detroit Free Press since 2008. But you applied them broadly. Rather, you use keywords like "hidden agenda," and made reference to "sociodemographics." Which agenda? Which sociodemographics? I've spent some time on the receiving end of media bias claims and so I may have my own biases when it comes to those words. So you tell me: when you said "hidden" agenda, wasn't there a specific agenda you had in mind? And when you said "sociodemographics," which sociodemographics would be a negative, or positive, and how should they affect coverage? This, I think, is very different from "ask[ing] questions of a group of people at the scene of a murder." Did you get to see last season's South Park episode, where Cartman kept justifying his Limbaughean takeover of the morning announcements by saying he was "asking questions"? If not, the point of the joke was that for Cartman (and Limbaugh), "questions" was newsspeak for "inquisition." Nobody will say you're wrong for "questioning" the media you consume. This is doubly your right as a member of a free society and as a consumer. But you used the guise of "asking questions" here as an excuse for inquisition. What you're really about is that the Free Press's sports section has been generally unfair to Michigan, and that Drew Sharp's asshattery was recently turned, with vindictive bile, toward our beloved program. That you did this under a working title of "Investigating Media Bias" and through discussion of, e.g. corporate ownership, is what caused me to respond as I did. So when you ask:
If you investigate the media…even just one paper…for reasonable cause…then, how is that an indictment of all journalists---even if it was not just a single individual but a group or network of people that may have been involved?then that is my answer: that you weren't investigating "just one paper for reasonable cause" but actually indicting all journalists by suggesting that we our coverage is primarily dictated by our social and demographic backgrounds, the corporate situation of our publishers, and our axes for which we desire a sharpening procedure. If your original post intended "to point out the methods others have used to carry out such investigations," then I suggest that the "others" you refer to may not be the best example to follow, since the methods described are those not of healthy skepticism, but of malfeasant inquisition. In the responses, you noted your own concerns about "political and other societal implications raised below," but don't seem to realize how the approach you suggested raises all sorts of political and societal implications. This isn't the first time that I've wandered slightly over the line as to the official MGoBlog topic, and I will take credit for doing so. This is how my mind works -- I look for analogy across the spectrum of common experiences in order to best illustrate my points, and this means sometimes I may wander near restricted lines. Note, however, that this particular restricted line is broached most often on this board when mainstream media bias is under discussion. Well, michelin, I'm not too up with the biased coverage of the Movies section, nor am I able to really pick out the sources and representative incarnations of media bias in the Arts or Cars sections. I know News and Sports. You, same? Everyone else, same? So if news is off limits, where are we going to get our representative examples? Whence shall come our e.g.'s? The closest analogue I can find to Sharp is Limbaugh. If there's a Movies columnist who spends every day trashing every movie from Scorsese because there's a major market for people who hate Scorsese, then tell me and I will use that guy. Like Sharp, the entertainment value of Rush's material comes not from accuracy of information or acuity of insight -- it comes from the titillation. Like Sharp, his method is to invent talking points and approach them editorially as if he is presenting "what everyone really thinks but is too afraid to say.." That right there is a smoking gun for titillation journalism -- and I'm sure you can see the fallacy: it's "everyone." The trick: really, it's not "everyone" who thinks such things, but rather the people who think such things who would love to imagine that "everyone" else thinks it too. Other keywords for this kind of titillation are "telling it to you straight" or "not afraid to speak his mind" or "not afraid to ask the tough questions," or pick your cliche. Think about these adjectives, and what kind of news they are advertising: do they promise the reader/listener a piece that will inform, or provocate? Obviously, the latter. The effectiveness of such an approach, you agree, has psychological power as a product offering. I think this is a very important consideration as a Michigan fan going against Drew Sharp columns, because we are no more Drew Sharp's target market than African Americans are Limbaugh's. He's not talking to you and me, or the regular MGoBlog community. He's talking to people who have their preconceived notions and don't want them questioned. That is not to say that his readers think he's "right on" -- that's not the plan. The idea is to set himself up as just on the edge of extreme, so that his readers with relatively extreme views can feel like they're in the considerate center. The importance to us is in how we fight it. You suggested in the original column that we band together as alumni and fans hit the Free Press financially, by putting pressure on its advertisers to pull out because of the crappy job they're doing. You even suggested that our new AD might lead the charge, nevermind that Dominos is one of the biggest advertisers in the Free Press sports sections. We're the injured party, thus your recommendation boils down to acting the injured party. Of course, we have a weakness there (other than the patheticness of playing injured party): those offended were a sunk cost to the operation to begin with. This takes us back to the point of my entire rebuttal: you can't get into a comprehensive discussion of media bias without discussing the biases of the readership. What the readers want is infinitely more important than which corporate conglomerate owns the presses. I'm not trying to put you off from media skepticism, or researching media bias as an academic field. I do, however, think it important to caution you as the witch hunt-iness of a large bulk of media criticism. The difference between academic investigation and inquisition is in intent. If your intent is more favorable coverage for Michigan sports, then you are as qualified to perform an academic survey of media bias against Michigan sports as I am to referee a Big Ten football game. Enfin, I shall answer the rhetorical question with which you concluded your rebuttal:
Furthermore, if a paper has nothing to hide—and should go unexamined while it proceeds to examine everyone else—then I do not see why you or any other journalists should get so upset. All I did was to post some academic guidelines used for examining possible, sources of media bias.My argument wasn't that media should go unexamined. My argument was that you shouldn't be the one examining it because you suck at it. That is to say your own biases (which, at least in the case of Michigan football I share) make you a worse barometer for a piece's or section's or paper's or medium's credibility than a.) the ombudsman, and b.) the readership. Just think of all the money Talk Radio would miss out on if the most centrist guy in America got to pick who was on there? Now imagine if Rush Limbaugh's contract was based on how well he got the facts straight? Now, picture a world in which Michigan fans got to dictate what Detroit media's biggest asshat wrote in his columns? We'd love to have this fight based on the facts alone, but -- I'm sorry -- that's not what Drew Sharp does for a living, and that's not what Drew Sharp's readers are looking for when they read his columns. They want justification and vindication, and thus they rather like it when he gets vindictive and prejudicial against their enemies. The key here -- which you touched on with your use of the word "academic" -- is that it is possible for people to put aside some of their biases to a greater degree than other. This is the key to good journalism, and good critique of journalism, as much as it is with academics and the good critique of academics. To use an analogy, you want Evolution in biology to be constantly questioned, but having the Creationists doing ALL or MOST or even a LARGE BULK of the questioning is unreasonable and, except in rare circumstances, generally not particularly useful. Thus is the case of MGoBlog readers like us leading the charge against the Freep Sports Section's Michigan coverage. We're biased. We would have a very hard time giving any opinion that ends up worse for Michigan an honest assessment. And when it comes to Michigam fans and Michigan football, let's face it, you can't Tourquemada Anything.
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Folks,
Not to throw cold water on this discussion, because the Free Press so-called investigation of Michigan was about as flawed and biased as they come (not helped, of course, by the failure of the Rodriguez staff to fill out routine forms regarding voluntary workouts that all D-I programs lie on), but the Detroit Free Press is owned by Gannett Newspapers and was previously owned by Dean Singleton's company.
It has never been owned by Newhouse.
Also true, and more to the bias point: The Free Press reporters lied to Michigan players, particularly freshman, and wrote a series that was deceptive in its breathless declarations that greatly embellished and exagerrated the facts. And then the paper took the view that any NCAA violations made their entire series true, but as we know, that is not so and the reporters remain guilty of lying. The JeRon Stokes quotes, and the response from the kid's father, are exhibit A on that point.
Anyway, way back when, Newhouse bought Booth Newspapers, which was a family chain, and that gave Newhouse the papers in Ann Arbor, Flint, Bay City, Saginaw, Jackson and Grand Rapids. Curiously, they decided to close Ann Arbor, a city with more potential readers than any of the others, as a grand online experiment which led to what could arguably be called the worst newspaper-converted-to-online-only-disaster in the history of the internet. If you pulled Charles Woodson and replaced him with Jordan Kovacs' little sister, that would be an appropriate football analogy.
I have no quarrel with the point about the inherent bias of the MSU grad being in charge at mlive.com, though I am not surprised an MSU grad is at the helm as it is one of the ugliest, most poorly organized web sites around with millions of dollars behind it. The problem with bias here, in my experience, is that Michigan grads always have found it much easier to view Michigan State properly and objectively (which is to say, if you cannot get in to Michigan and you don't care all that much about future total household income, MSU is a reasonably decent place to get a degree that will make you one of the more polished barristas at Starbucks) than Michigan State fans have in viewing graduates of the great, world-class research institution in Ann Arbor. (The overall problem, I believe, stems from every MSU grad secretly wishing they were U-M grads, because that degree can take you somewhere that is not an A) lowly paid school teacher, and God knows MSU cranks out a lot of dumbass teachers or B) a hotel manager, because you can major in that there, which is the suit-and-tie version of majoring in welding.) Personally, I don't think MSU grads should be able to draw unemployment because they knew that was going to happen and they went to school there anyway.
So of course the mlive.com guy is a little mad. That job pays like crap, too, and you can tell by looking at that sea of garish type that passes for one of the state's major news sites.
Now, back to the bias discussion!
September 30th, 2010 at 9:18 AM ^
Link saved for next time someone asks me what "tl;dr" means.
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