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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 98.119.35.93 (talk) at 12:48, 31 March 2012 (→Premise?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Leftists do this

It's funny how I read how leftists do this. They start several accounts in their moms basements and then attack anyone who wants Wikipedia to be fair. But there are several articles from respected news sources discussing he Essjay affair and other Wiki scandals. The editors think they're protecting the gates of a new leftist revolution but they're just making themselves look like hacks by suppressing the creation of a leftist/"liberal" bias. Why not make a conservative bias page and a leftist/"liberal" bias page? Because the other people are exactly right, if you keep it as one page you can hide one of your main advantages as leftists: the leftist dominated media. I mean come on guys you make yourselves look so utterly foolish and contemptible when you act like you're children and we're dumb children who will believe you if you just lie and obfuscate enough. But sorry we're going to tell you what incompetent hacks you are as long as you leave up these monuments to your childish attempts at sabotaging the truth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.119.35.93 (talk) 12:16, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Article Needs Re-written

As is, wikipedia is not a serious encyclopedia. It is left-leaning, at least in regards to the issue of it's media bias coverage. The term "liberal bias" definitely exists in our culture, and to NOT have an article on it amounts to leftist propaganda, albeit on a small scale. Someone here was mentioning that Galileo was so bold and revolutionary for stating plainly what he believed about heavenly bodies even though it wasn't popular at the time. We see that the pursuit of intelligence sometimes means admitting to the existence of things that we ourselves disagree with. It may be unpopular in academia to believe that a liberal bias exists in our media but it is obvious that it either a) exists-or that b) a significant number of people believe it exists. In either case, the concept deserves a page on wikipedia. The validity of its existence is something that should be discussed on the page itself. The idea of having a page simply on media bias is an obvious cop out and left leaning. The term "liberal bias" is common in our culture. There are pages dedicated to all sorts of other cultural beliefs (in a serious encyclopedia I would hope that ALL cultural beliefs would be covered), so why is there no article dedicated to the concept of a liberal bias in the media? At the end of the day, wikipedia needs to admit that the concept of a liberal bias exists, even if it simply perceived to exist. (CaptainNicodemus (talk) 15:25, 26 November 2009 (UTC))[reply]

The article is way too "americentric". I am not an American, and to me this article seems downright crazy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.85.91.56 (talk) 22:54, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

While trying to read through this article, it looks to me like there are many examples of studies that are then questioned at every point, with no real facts being presented anywhere. Looks like an arguing ground for conservative vs. liberal instead of a factual article. I think this entire article should be re-written, and just give an overview of what media bias is instead of disputing and debating various studies. None of this is factual informative information, instead it is argumentative and unecessasary comment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.68.102.230 (talk) 14:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First, let me mention that experienced Wikipedians put their comments at the bottom of the page, because that is where people go to read new comments.
But to address your point, CaptainNicodemus: If there is a subject that you think needs an article, write one. That's how Wikipedia articles are created. Somebody writes an article, with careful references and, as nearly as possible, a neutral tone. It's a lot of hard work, but well worth it.
I've already written one on liberal bias, and it was erased. The liberal bias of wikipedia is pretty obvious, and I'm pretty familiar with how articles are written. There is already an article on the "Fox News Scandals" and Fox News is called out for having a conservative bias, but there is no individual article written on the liberal media, and all of its scandals. The Liberal Media through NewsWeek one time reported the story that soldiers were flushing the Koran down the toilet during the War on Terror, and Muslims started rioting and killed 16 people. The Koran flushing never happened, though, and the liberal reporter retracted his story. Also, liberal Dutch papers printed pictures of Muhammad, and the backlash got people killed. The liberal media also smeared the Duke Lacrosse players for rape, when no rape occurred. The New York Times has undergone two of the most high profile cases of having reporters lie in recent years, yet there is no article on the Liberal Media and it scandals? The presence of a liberal media has been proven again and again in scientific studies, yet there is no article dedicated to its existence? Its existence or debated existence is certainly a concept, yet it is whitewashed and censored from the pages of wikipedia. Clearly, lumping together all kinds of media bias is a cover for the fact that wikipedia editors don't want to legitimize its existence. This is censorship. There are pages dedicated to the most specific, trivial concepts in existence, but not the Liberal Media? Why is that? Talking about the Liberal Media is taboo on wikipedia, and it is censorship to expunge all records of it. CaptainNicodemus (talk) 17:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
CaptainNicodemus, you really should not change the title of a section to which many people have already contributed. If you want a section with a different title, you should start one below. Rick Norwood (talk) 19:26, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As for (unsigned)'s post, I would certainly like this article to say: here is what the biased reporting says, but here is the truth. Wikipedia does that in cases where the truth is on a really solid basis: man did evolve, global warming is caused by humans, President Obama was born in the United States. But on other questions we may be too close to the subject to be able to report objective truth, in which case all we can do is give both sides of the story.
Finally, on the subject of "liberal bias", all major modern reporting has liberal bias. You will not find any major source saying good things about slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, or Adolph Hitler. That is because America is a nation founded on liberal principles, and these principles are now accepted throughout the civilized world. Rick Norwood (talk) 21:05, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding telling the above poster to "write one", you are exposing the blatant leftist bias WP is known for. Any time someone tries to "write one" or to balance the spectrum or remove propaganda, the liberal WP gatekeepers delete it, and more often than not, they even delete the *discussion* of such changes.

So how can you tell someone to "write it", when putting anything other than liberal propaganda in WP is not allowed?

So for those that call for a Liberal Bias article, should we not also have a Conservative Bias article then? And since Liberal/Conservative is not the only split (there is a world outside of the US you know), perhaps we should have an article on every kind of media bias? 100 or so separate articles should do it.

No, of course not, it makes sense to have one article covering the whole subject. And just because you perceive liberal bias does not mean everyone does. The US is a right wing country relative to most places, thus as a Brit, there seems to me to be a conservative bias in the US media. It all depends on your perspective.LastDodo (talk) 17:19, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]


I'm not intending to personally attack here, but perhaps having a Brit trying to sort this out is not the correct choice? Much of Europe's Left/Right is *far* different from the USA's Left/right, and it may be hard for a Brit to comprehend our culture. The left/right in Britain would both be considered solidly within the American LEFT. Right-wingers in Britain would be considered moderate Democrats in the USA. In a (too-small) nutshell The American Right means a restoration/preservation of the founding principles and documents, with very minimal government interference. The American Left pushes for larger government oversight, entitlement programs and government services.--216.114.194.20 (talk) 23:57, 25 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]


--216.114.194.20 (talk) 03:04, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Liberal bias is a myth perpetrated by the far right in this country. All major reporting, films, and radio have a conservative bias. The removal of the fairness doctrine destroyed sensible debate on politics in this country. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.38.230.227 (talk) 06:16, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense. Polls clearly show that journalists are far to the left of the general public, if you believe in a simple left-right spectrum. As for the fairness doctrine, it's clearly unconstitutional except as applied to broadcast media, and (IMHO) when it was in effect, it severely limited political discussion. (It also essentially prevented any discussion of minor political parties in those media, as the doctrine was interpreted to require inclusion of all political parties if any other than major parties were included.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:40, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I find it ironic that a WP article about media bias is so left-wing biased. Liberal bias in the media has *always* been the norm, yet this entire article skips all of this evidence, and instead only has a few cherry-picked (and extrmely poorly-sourced) Fox news slams by left-wing moonbats in this area. In recent months, keith Olbermann from MSNBC was suspended for donating to the Democratic party, and wikileaks has revealed that other journalists, namely Wolf Blitzer with CNN were actively discussing with White House officials which stories to cover up. Yet nary a peep on WP. Ridiculous. I hope someone is telling our next generationo not to use this WP tripe for their studies. --216.114.194.20 (talk) 23:12, 25 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

General rather than specific bias

I believe this article focuses too strongly on whether there is political or other type of bias in the media rather than the way it is biased. For example in the British Newspapers, particularly the tabloids bias and outright lies are introducable as fact and opinion are mixed without any notice. For example a paper might proclaim 'Child molester on trial' and if he were shown to be innocent might proclaim: 'child molester freed' rather than sperating the facts about a man on trial and their opinion of whether he did it in a later editorial.

Regardless of politics I think it is clear (from the below) that the media is biased, following the definition that their own journalistic standards are not followed (eg fact checking). This is shown to be the case (UK) in that most libel trials go against (British) newspapers (If this were added I would find the source but for a period in the 80's the paper 'The Sun' was infamous for never having won a libel trial in its history). In my own sphere of work also which is very specialised the papers usually get their facts wrong when reporting it which results on various 'calls' being made by them to fix issues which dont exist. - omricon posted 2 January 2007.

Media bias caught on tape should be added

Media bias has been caught on tape. Will people please review the following then someone add something appropriate to this Wiki page:

Sample quote: "Employees at a CBS affiliate in Anchorage left an accidental voicemail for an aide to GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller in which they discussed and laughed about the possibility of reporting on the appearance of sex offenders at a Miller rally. And they chatted about responding with a Twitter alert to “any sort of chaos whatsoever” including the candidate being punched.'"

Thank you. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (talk) 02:08, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are a bunch of problems with this story. First, the only source for this is a Republican blog. Second, the people talking are not identified, nor is it explained why they would leave this on the voicemail of someone working for Joe Miller's campaign. Third, much of the conversation is inaudible (according to the only source for the story). And finally, while the source spins it as a conspiracy to slant the news, it sounds to me like a couple of people kidding around. Rick Norwood (talk) 14:48, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
FYI: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2618497/posts?page=30#30   Will Beback  talk  02:01, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I followed your link. At first, I thought these people were kidding. Walter Cronkite is a communist? But I read a little more and they're dead serious. (I remember when the John Birch Society said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a communist!) Apparently, there are still a lot of people who think accusation is proof of guilt. Rick Norwood (talk) 14:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Consequences of Media Bias

There are the obvious consequences, like misleading the public, and many examples of this, but that has already been touched upon in the article. But the consequences within a news organization have not really been discussed.

All news organizations have their own stance on Media bias. Whether or not they are honest about it is irrelevant, but some are much more strict than others. Fox news for example seems to have a loose standard for enforcing neutrality. It is generally accepted that they are a right leaning organization. If the fox anchors appear to be biased, no consequences are really brought against them. That is the case with many American news organizations because there are no restrictions set regarding bias. A news organization can be as bias as they want, without any consequences from the organization itself.

News organizations in Canada however have more restrictions, so it is up to that company to enforce neutrality. CBC for example is very careful about what they say, and whether or not it comes across as neutral. If an anchor says something that's biased, they could be suspended, depending of course on the severity. But there is a long editing process before anything is stated on air, so usually a biased statement doesn't make it very far.

Consequences are hard to enforce because bias is fairly subjective. In most cases it is debatable as to whether or not something is biased or not. That is why bias is such a recognizable problem, but remains difficult to fix. 216.46.14.58 (talk) 13:53, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Revamping and cleaning up the article

I would like to help improve this article. There are several items in this article that need work, starting with how media bias is defined in the first sentence, to the addition of scholarly research.

The introductory sentence sees problematic to me. Here is what it says now: Media bias refers to the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of which events and stories are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed.

Example problem: "the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media" is ok-ish, but "in the selection of which events and stories are reported and how they are covered" is actually not a bias, it is gatekeeping. Gatekeeping can be a factor in media bias, but is a completely separate topic.

A better start (with scholarly sources): The term "media bias" can have varied interpretations, but is often seen by news consumers as the opposite of accuracy, fairness, and balance in reporting, or the perception of favoritism towards one side of an issue over another. (Lee, 2005; Rouner, Slater, & Buddenbaum, 1999).

Another problem I'm seeing is the insistence that because many journalists are left-leaning (true), their reporting is therefore inherently left-leaning (not true). This statement is not supported by any sources, it is just an assumption.

There is a lot of POV in this article, which is expected, as this topic can (in the words of Grandpa Simpson) "angry up the blood". I will post potential changes on the talk page first. ScamperCat (meow) 02:27, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your suggestions sound good to me, though I think "varied Interpretations" gets off on the wrong foot. How about: Media bias exists when media show favoritism toward one side of an issue and ignore or attack all other views. It is the opposite of objectivity, fairness, and accuracy, the widely accepted standards of factual journalism. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:24, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This gets closer to a definition of bias, but does not precisely reflect what the academic sources say. I do agree that "varied interpretations" is not ideal phrasing, but is a huge factor in the study of news media bias. In general, news media bias is not a concrete concept. It is fluid and tends to change with the times.
I intentionally did not mention "standards of journalism" as there are actually several theories of journalism, which each have different standards. The one that makes the most sense to me is the "social responsibility theory of the press" which has several pillars, one of which is that good news is "a truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning." I was concerned that bringing up standards of journalism would open a can of worms. But I am thinking now that leaving it out would do more harm than good for the article.
Also (nitpickingly), I am not sure about claiming that "media bias exists when..." as I'm sure examples can be found where these criteria are present, but bias is not. And I think that using the word "attack" sets a negative tone. The idea of the news media attacking a particular "side" of an issue can be explored further in the article, but I don't think it should be used in the introduction.
Finally, I think that we should explicitly refer to "media bias" as "news media bias" at least in the introduction, as that is what is generally meant. "Media" includes all types of media, from music to fiction to movies to television.
I'll try to work up an introductory paragraph with your suggestions in mind. Thanks for your input. ScamperCat (meow) 19:26, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Many accusations of media bias refer to entertainment media, for example what's-his=name's attack on the tv series about the unwed mother (how soon we forget).

True, however, this is criticism as opposed to bias. ScamperCat (meow) 15:16, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Also, (depending on which "unwed mother" you're talking about) this is criticism by the news media of television. Entertainment news is still part of the news media. Bias in television could possibly include claims that TV shows such as The Simpsons has a liberal bias, however, I don't think this is the context in which media bias is commonly used. Bias in other types of media could make a good subsection, though. ScamperCat (meow) 15:26, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it was a politician criticising entertainment television for liberal bias. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:38, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I had a general and a specific comment. The general comment is that I certainly agree that the section entitled "Scholarly treatment of media bias in the United States and United Kingdom" is far too long. The entire section deals almost exclusively with a tiny part of media bias; namely, political bias in contemporary US politics. That should perhaps be the name of an article where most of this section should reside. We could shorten it substantially, in my opinion, by simply listing the various scholarly enquiries that are most often cited along wih their general conclusions and skip the criticisms of those conclusions by others.

My specific comment. In the section "Experimenter's Bias," it states: "Research into studies of media bias in the United States shows that liberal experimenters tend to get results that say the media has a conservative bias, while conservatives experimenters tend to get results that say the media has a liberal bias, and those who do not identify themselves as either liberal or conservative get results indicating little bias, or mixed bias.[29][30][31]" In fact references 29, 30 and 31 do not refer to this ostensible research. I could not find, in those references, any mention of a study finding that liberal expermineters see a conservatvie bias and vice versa. As a matter of fact I could find no evidence of any such study being conducted anywhere. This statement--though it strikes me as intuitively true--should be supported by accurate references or removed.

--Mindfingers (talk) 05:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Premise?

Media bias is an argument that an imaginary collective "media" favors one side in political debates and therefore twists facts to suit an agenda; the concept is as broad and amorphous as "corporate bias," "religious bias" or "human bias."

This article makes no acknowledgment of the fact that "media bias" is a construct of pundits, politicians and ideologues who want to sound scholarly when proclaiming their point of view as the only truth; alleging media bias should be considered a form of prejudice, a pseudo-objective attack on mass communication in the same way "intelligent design" adherents attack science.

The article has no substance unless it documents the rise of "media bias" as an argument promoting a political point of view -- and nearly always alleged by right-wing politicians against journalism itself. 72.148.152.214 (talk) 19:39, 28 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Media bias does not necessarily refer to bias of the entire media, but often refers to bias in one particular medium or one particular individual. If, for example, the anchorman for World News thinks New Yorkers are better than Californians, and slants stories to show how great New Yorkers are and what fools Californians are, that's an example of media bias.
There is considerable evidence that everybody is biased, and that media bias is impossible to overcome, but at least we should be aware of the problem.

Rick Norwood (talk) 14:17, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You guys never explain why Obama's "corpse man" didn't make him as dumb as Palin (who you all know by one name because you most certainly do use your websites to coordinate attacks against conservatives--see Journolist which still exists just with new names). No one asked how Obama got into Harvard without even having command of common English pronunciations. This is the essence of bias. When an "anchor" gets tingles over Ibama, that's bias. Everyone has bias sure. So make a general bias page. Then let the 75-85% of people who believe in MSM leftist bias make another page. It can't be any worse than the pathetic attempt at propaganda you have up right now! This party won't go on forever my teen leftist friends. Eventually someone's going to make a better online encyclopedia if you guys keep messing this one up!

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