Bias Education
We have a focus meeting during the week of teacher orientation every year. A focus meeting is a district wide department meeting where we focus on curriculum and new instructional approaches. They have breakout sessions and this year they had a breakout section on media bias. Of course, the session was led by an instructional specialist that watches Fox News regularly. So, going in I wasn’t expecting much and I probably would have skipped it if I had been warned beforehand.
Yet, it was through this 45 minute session that I was able to cement something I have thought for a long time. We are teaching bias wrong. The materials included an infographic with all of the major media outlets being split into left, right, and center. It registered from far left to far right. Naturally, they put CNN and MSNBC on the far left with NewsMax, Fox, and OAN on the far right.
The implication was already clear based on looking at the infographic, but the instructor hammered home the point anyway. Fox News and CNN (or OAN and MSNBC) are basically the same thing. They are mirror images of each other. Simply seeing that straight off pissed me off. I’m not sure if that was the effect the instructor was going for. Even though I’m sure she was well meaning, the concept of media bias is a complex one. It exists on a number of fronts, and the lesson seemed to focus on one dimension.
Bias seeps into media in a number of different ways. The traditional way regards story choices and charged language. That’s what she showed us. The problem is more pervasive than that. Some networks/media outlets use facts and form opinions around those facts. It is rare to watch CNN or MSNBC and see them report something that wasn’t true. Sure, they focus on storylines that fit a particular narrative. They may pump up an issue as being more important than what someone else would report. However, they print and/or broadcast facts.
The outlets on the far right of the spectrum don’t. In particular, when you leave the news divisions of those particular networks the ratio of fact to fiction levels out significantly. Equating CNN and Fox News is itself a show of extreme bias. Certainly putting NewsMax and OAN in the same category as Fox News is problematic. Heck, they didn’t even mention Breitbart or InfoWars. Accounting for the bias in story selection or perspective is one thing. The lesson never accounted for the bias in whether reporting is actual factual.
Unfortunately, any kind of balanced approach to bias fails to capture what is really going on. This is one of the reasons why the media itself fails so often. They are dedicated to a both sides game where both sides are playing the game in the same way.That might be a balanced approach, but it certainly isn’t a truthful one. Sadly, the answer is not to fight fire with fire. The solution involves damning the torpedoes and telling it like it really is. Fox lies. OAN lies. Newsmax lies. Alex Jones lies. Breitbart lies. It’s one thing to simply disagree on how to interpret a fact. It’s another to make up our own facts. Sadly, as long as this is allowed to continue I’m not sure if we can ever really solve our country’s problems.
I hate to be the one to break the news to you guy, but absent a law (which itself will violate 1A) mandating how (what passes for) news is reported, the RWNJ wurlitzer has exactly zero reason to play fairly. their whole (revenue stream) reason for existence demands otherwise.
1A hundred years ago when I had a college marketing class, we were required to read/ discuss Goebbels’ Nineteen Points of Propaganda. It’s still timely.
2I couldn’t agree more. The so-called “fair and balanced” approach tramples all over the truth. Sources like AP are truthful and give balance in story generation, but they don’t have the depth and extensive research of New York Times or Washington Post. While there is bias in connecting the dots by the latter two, apparently there is a need to lead some readers through the implications of how their findings affects them.
3quasi-off-topic: Here we have a glaring example of how the left-wing, communist media fails to cover The Real News (TM). Today is the day that T**** is being reinstated as President, but none of the Lame Stream media are covering it!
Well almost none … the National Zero is on the scene:
https://nationalzero.com/2021/08/13/watch-live-trump-reinstallation-ceremony/
4Obviously, the point @1 is not for those media outlets to stop what they are doing. The point is that educators need to pull off the kid gloves and explain to students more facets of bias. The info graphic made some point of distinction between news divisions and commentary divisions, but it was mostly inadequate. Simply put, there’s a difference between watching Rachel and Tucker. They aren’t just mirror images of each other. One uses facts to shape commentary and the other doesn’t. We shoot ourselves in the foot when fail to make this distinction. We also fail when we avoid addressing the difference between reputable sources that bring a wealth of knowledge in their content and sources that have no business commenting on the issue. Hannity, Tucker, and Ingraham aren’t merely an alternative to the CDC or Dr. Fauci. It’s not like the two sides bring an equally viable and equally valid viewpoint to the equation. One side has experts the other sides have bullshit. You aren’t going to stop the bullshit, but at least you can teach kids that it is bullshit.
5The left-right media bias infographic has been around for years. Over the past 6 years it’s become a graph that would be better described as the factual vs fiction infographic. You said the presenter was a frequent Fox News viewer (did she actually admit her media bias). I don’t know if questions and comments were allowed in this presentation, but I would have had a hard time sitting there and not asking some tough questions about her graphic with respect to facts vs fiction in the different media outlets on her chart. If she couldn’t tell the difference, she had no business putting on her presentation, in my opinion.
6Steve,
My intel on her politics came from somewhere else. She did not admit to bias but also didn’t demonstrate obvious bias in the lesson. She acknowledged holes in the sample story we read. I guess my general complaint is that we don’t spend enough time diving into bias. In particular, when we get past STAAR I see teaching bias and it’s many facets as being the most important thing we do. It’s not something we can do is call it good after one 45 minute lesson.
7“You have to lie to qualify to be a Republican.” — David Brooks, May 2020
This essay (link below) gets to a fundamental about the obsolete “both sides” style of reporting. The reality of the asymmetry of the two parties has generally “fried the circuits” of the press. You CAN’T accurately report “both sides” anymore.
“The Republican Party is increasingly a minority party, or counter-majoritarian, as some political scientists put it. The beliefs and priorities that hold it together are opposed by most Americans, who on a deeper level do not want to be what the GOP increasingly stands for. A counter-majoritarian party cannot present itself as such and win elections outside its dwindling strongholds. So it has to be counterfactual, too. It has to fight with fictions. Making it harder to vote, and harder to understand what the party is really about—these are two parts of the same project. The conflict with honest journalism is structural. To be its dwindling self, the GOP has to also be at war with the press, unless of course the press folds under pressure.”
Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall. Which itself is an example of the asymmetry of the Web! That is, quality is locked behind paywalls and complete lies / lunacy is open to all to read.
*America’s Press and the Asymmetric War for Truth*
by Jay Rosen
The Republican Party—now committed to minoritarian rule, not democracy—needs fictions to sustain its power. And that means a collision with honest journalism.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/11/01/americas-press-and-the-asymmetric-war-for-truth/
8Nick, good piece.
9Well, Foxys ARE paid to lie .
10As long as we have 24 hr news stations we will continue to have hype, lies, screaming, finger pointing. Only way to keep the viewers watching and the advertisers paying.
11This is the one I use when I teach that lesson. More useful (because of the two axes) and less biased in itself:
https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-chart-version-3-0-what-exactly-are-we-reading/#post/0
12Yes, we’ve used that one before. This instructor didn’t which was the main source of my disappointment.
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