Talk:Media bias

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2022 and 16 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): BriarGornall, Yufei Z (article contribs). This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 January 2022 and 22 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Chloe Hongyi Wu (article contribs).

Media bias saying 'Hamas-run health authority'

Te news outlets seem to have agreed to not say 'terrorist' about Hamas but have engaged in something far worse I think by using the phrase above. Here are criticisms of the use of the phrase which with minor variations has been used by most of the western media instead of Gaza Health Ministry.

"Why News Outlets Are Avoiding 'Terrorist' Labels in Israel-Hamas War". Voice of America. 6 November 2023.

'Another example is qualifying Gaza's Health Ministry as "Hamas-run" when citing the Palestinian death toll, Odeh said. ... ... Although small and technically accurate, adding "Hamas-run" risks casting doubt over data that has historically been credible, Oden said. "It helps kill empathy," she said.

Dasgupta, Shougat (15 November 2023). "Gaza's journalists, caught between bombs and disinformation". Coda Story.

"As Israel flattens Gaza, the Western media ties itself in semantic knots — insisting, for instance, on using phrases such as “Hamas-run health ministry” to shroud casualty figures in doubt or worse, to do Israel’s job for it by associating all residents of Gaza with terrorism."

NadVolum (talk) 00:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree but I'm not sure how this relates to the article. Are you proposing something be added or taken away? 2603:7081:1603:A300:2462:26D6:EA74:20B6 (talk) 16:22, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I was thinking of putting in something along those lines, those references directly talk about active media bias in that war. Probably need some other references relating to media bias in the war to justify a section but I'm sure there's enough out there. There doesn't seem to me to be such strong active media bias in the Russian Ukraine war, they can get away with just reporting things as they are. NadVolum (talk) 18:53, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

New source for criticism of Al Jazeera from the Arab side required

The original source was depreciated; is there a RS that could take it‘s place? FortunateSons (talk) 22:05, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Cleanup March 2024

Noting here that I've been WP:Bold and begun another round of edits to try and get this article to a B-class article. There were some older studies that were removed as well as unsourced material. Others have been flagged as potentially having sources that are not of high enough quality and may be removed going forward. Academic studies was folded under the US section since all remaining studies are US-based and focused - planning to integrate the studies from this section into more topic-specific areas (e.g. studies on demand-driven models would instead be in the demand-driven section) Superb Owl (talk) 01:45, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Here's some material I removed from the 'solutions' section that needs better citations (especially the paragraphs with BLP issues):

Another technique used to avoid bias is disclosure of affiliations that may be considered a possible conflict of interest. This is especially apparent when a news organization is reporting a story with some relevancy to the news organization itself or to its ownership individuals or conglomerate. Often this disclosure is mandated by the laws or regulations pertaining to stocks and securities. Commentators on news stories involving stocks are often required to disclose any ownership interest in those corporations or in its competitors.

In rare cases, a news organization may dismiss or reassign staff members who appear biased. This approach was used in the Killian documents affair and after Peter Arnett's interview with the Iraqi press. This approach is presumed to have been employed in the case of Dan Rather over a story that he ran on 60 Minutes in the month prior to the 2004 election that attempted to impugn the military record of George W. Bush by relying on allegedly fake documents that were provided by Bill Burkett, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Texas Army National Guard.

One such allegation of misleading balance came from Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News. He stated in an internal e-mail message that reporters should not "artificially hold George W. Bush and John Kerry 'equally' accountable" to the public interest, and that complaints from Bush supporters were an attempt to "get away with... renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry." When the conservative web site the Drudge Report published this message, many Bush supporters viewed it as "smoking gun" evidence that Halperin was using ABC to propagandize against Bush to Kerry's benefit, by interfering with reporters' attempts to avoid bias. Superb Owl (talk) 21:59, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Further material removed due to lack of citations and excessive examples:

=== Time biased media and space biased media ===

Time biased media

Harold Innis suggests that time biased media are hard to move and durable. Examples of time biased are stone, parchment, and clay. He argues that due to being difficult to move, time biased media does not encourage territorial expansionm but does facilitate the development of hierarchy. They are kept for more traditional, sacred, and civilized societies. Time can be described as en entity where only the information in the environment is seen as important. Harold Innis believed that our societies today moved away from this media bias in order to allow for more democratic practices as opposed to monarchic practices.

Space biased media

Space biased media is another type of bias originating from Harold Innis. In contrast to time biased media, social biased media is light and portable (easy to move). An example of space biased media is paper. Space biased media allows for the expansion of empires over space, can be quickly transported, administrative, has a relatively short lifespan and allows for limitless opportunity. Harold Innis argues that space biased media has allowed society to create a more accessible world in everyday life. Space biased media, he argues, is prevalent in today's society.

=== Language ===

Bias can stem from the language used, and in the words chosen. Mass media has a worldwide reach, but must communicate with each linguistic group in some language they understand. The use of language may be neutral, or may attempt to be as neutral as possible, using careful translation and avoiding culturally charged words and phrases. Or it may be intentionally or accidentally biased, using mistranslations and trigger words targeting particular groups.

For example, in Bosnia and Herzegovina there are three mutually intelligible languages, Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. Media that try to reach as large an audience as possible use words common to all three languages. Media that want to target just one group may choose words that are unique to that group. In the United States, while most media is in English, in the 2020 election both major political parties used Spanish language advertising to reach out to Hispanic voters. Al Jazeera originally used Arabic, to reach its target audience, but in 2003 launched Al Jazeera English to broaden that audience.

Attempts to use language designed to appeal to a particular cultural group can backfire, as when Kimberly Guilfoyle, speaking at the Republican National Convention in 2020, said she was proud that her mother was an immigrant from Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans were quick to point out that they are born American citizens, and are not immigrants.

There are also false flag broadcasts, that pretend to be favoring one group, while using language deliberately chosen to anger the target audience.

Language may also introduce a more subtle form of bias. The selection of metaphors and analogies, or the inclusion of personal information in one situation but not another can introduce bias, such as a gender bias. Use of a word with positive or negative connotations rather than a more neutral synonym can form a biased picture in the audience's mind. For example, it makes a difference whether the media calls a group "terrorists" or "freedom fighters" or "insurgents". A 2005 memo to the staff of the CBC states:

Rather than calling assailants "terrorists," we can refer to them as bombers, hijackers, gunmen (if we're sure no women were in the group), militants, extremists, attackers or some other appropriate noun.

In a widely criticized episode, initial online BBC reports of the 7 July 2005 London bombings identified the perpetrators as terrorists, in contradiction to the BBC's internal policy. But by the next day, journalist Tom Gross noted that the online articles had been edited, replacing "terrorists" by "bombers".

Anglophone definitions of what constitutes news are paramount; the news provided originates in Anglophone capitals and responds first to their own rich domestic markets. Superb Owl (talk) 05:27, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Further excessive examples removed from Political bias subsection

Other studies argue the media has a liberal bias. Mark Liberman criticized Groseclose and Milyo's findings as having evident biases. Conservatives have argued that Facebook and Twitter limiting the spread of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy for a couple days on their platforms before they knew if it was misinformation "proves Big Tech's bias," while others argued that even though some details of the story turned out to be true, that the mistake was understandable in the context of happening not long after the 2016 wiki-leaks dumps. Superb Owl (talk) 05:38, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

=== Nationality and ethnicity ===

Many news organizations reflect, or are perceived to reflect in some way, the viewpoint of the geographic, ethnic, and national population that they primarily serve. Media within countries are sometimes seen as being sycophantic or unquestioning about the country's government.

Western media are often criticized in the rest of the world (including eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East) as being pro-Western with regard to a variety of political, cultural and economic issues. Al Jazeera is frequently criticized both in the West and in the Arab world.

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict and wider Arab–Israeli conflict are particularly controversial areas, and nearly all coverage of any kind generates accusation of bias from one or both sides.

See also: Media coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Superb Owl (talk) 05:51, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

References

Rename 'media biases'?

The term 'media bias' often is understood to mean an ideological bias, while this article also spends a significant amount of text on structural biases that are not ideologically-driven - I think renaming 'media biases' would be a better encapsulation of the topics discussed on this page. Superb Owl (talk) 22:53, 20 March 2024 (UTC)