Public perception of bias in American news media and democracy

¶ … Bias

Whether or not news media bias exists, Americans believe it does and those perceptions undoubtedly influence the relationship between the populace and the press. Mistrust of the media has the potential to harm the democracy, for the Fourth and now the Fifth estates are central for providing access to information. The credibility of that information is at stake if news media are biased. News media has been steadily shifting from a model based on unilateral delivery of heavily editorialized print and television resources toward a model that is more multilateral in nature as it relies on the interactive nature of the Internet.

Research on media bias reveals that the public does perceive bias, whether or not it is there, and that the perceptions of the public influence attitudes toward the media and its news-related content (Zimmerman). Perceptions of a liberal media bias are often false and outlandish and rooted in perceptual biases about the social composition of the United States (Gross, Shazili and Gelman). Research also shows that methods like natural language processing (NLP) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) can be used to reveal concordances between memes in digital content and their corresponding verbal or textual manifestations in the same brand's television or print outlet (Doumit and Minai). Chiang found that voters do rely on the media for information related to political campaigns, but that the relationship between media and campaign endorsement is a complicated one. Basically, when a news media endorses a candidate in the opposite political party than expected, that endorsement can be "more influential" than a more predictable endorsement (Chiang). In other words, a paper perceived to be liberal endorsing a Republican candidate has a stronger influence on voter behavior than a conservative paper endorsing the same candidate. Like Chiang, Anderson and McLaren note that all media companies have political as well as profit motives. Using their media outlets to promote political values and influence voter behavior is understandable and expected. The problem is that consumers are unaware of when, how, why, and by whom such political messages are being propagated. "The public do not know how much information the news organizations have and so do not know when news is being withheld," (Anderson and McLaren 831). Because the public is not privy to the press, mistrust of the media abounds.

Media conglomeration reduces competition and homogenizes media voices. This enhances media bias in a real and perceived way. Anderson and McLaren find that media are "insufficiently competitive, and the consequences of merger are more severe than in other markets," (831). The annotation that media conglomeration leads to "severe" consequences implies that a media constrained by corporate interests impedes the right to information and the freedom of the press. Such constraints have become theoretically mitigated by digital media, but establishing credibility online often depends, ironically, on trusting brand name media outlets rather than individual bloggers or social media aggregators. What digital media allows is for potentially unbridled access to a diversity of media sources, including sources in other languages and from other countries. This is especially true when the "explosion of social media" is considered (Mitchell 1). Especially among the under-30 demographic, engagement with traditional or mainstream news media brands is low, whereas Facebook has become a tailor-made aggregator of news from a variety of sources (Mitchell). If mainstream media has become untrustworthy, then the youngest generations of voters and consumers will turn to alternative points-of-view. Veracity becomes the new problem to replace news media bias.

In fact, most news sources have had to compete with blogs and amateur journalism in what has been called a "Faustian pact" with infomercial-like content generators (Mitchell 1). Because the old model of advertising is no longer relevant in the digital world, traditional news media are turning to creative methods of generating revenues. One of those methods is offering sponsors the opportunity to contribute advertising articles that are disguised as journalism (Mitchell). Consumer perceptions of media bias could not be more accurate when these blatant collusions between corporations and news media become apparent. Therefore, the one type of media bias that remains the most consistent and provable through almost any type of research methodology is corporate bias. Liberal bias, conservative bias, and other types of perceived bias may and often do exist at times, with certain brands or certain news stories. D'Alessio and Allen found "no significant biases" in either newspapers or news magazines, with only "small" biases evident in television media (133). However, corporate bias explains why news media makes many of its content decisions. News media conglomeration and the use of infomercials to mislead the public are two of the ways corporate bias is propagated. In this sense, online media is as subject to media bias as traditional forms of media. Gonzalez-Bailon et al. found that the only reason why cable news seemed more biased than online news media was because the former had time restraints on content delivery.

The Internet does provide the means by which the motivated and independent consumer can acquire information from multiple sources and make rational judgments. However, few citizens are media literate, few have the time to research stories and vet their authors thoroughly, and few are free of their own biases as readers. Bias is an inevitable part of the communication process. It is impossible to eliminate bias in the media. Therefore, the question becomes how to manage bias by controlling corporate conglomeration, how to maximize media heterogeneity, and how to maximize the public's media literacy.