Bias in the Media

Bias in the media is not anything new. Media bias has been around ever since the creation of it. Most of the bias in the media usually deals with politics. Some sources are moderate left, some are moderate right, Conservative, Liberal, Far-Right, and Far-Left. Sources such as the Associated Press, Reuters, and others are moderate/non-biased. Other sources such as Huffington Post start leaning moderate Left. Sources such as Fox News lean Conservative. Pictured above is a media bias chart, which will depict how neutral or biased multiple news sources are.

The media bias chart depicts the many news sources in journalism. However, the bias does not stop there. New York Times opinion columnist, David Leonhardt expanded on these biases coming up with a total of six (6) biases in the media. These biases are,

• Centrist bias (or neutral): “blaming the parties equally, even when they don’t deserve equal blame; bothsideism.”
• Affluent bias: “The media isn’t just biased toward the center. It often confuses the center with views that are actually those of the affluent.”
• Bias for the new: “Journalists often confuse newness with importance.” This is a huge problem in the media. If something big is going on, such as the COVID-19 Pandemic, journalists are mixing their information from what is new to what is important. It is understandable because some new information is important, however it is not always like that.
• The same biases that afflict society: “From sexism in political reporting (“likability”) to racism in crime coverage, the media often suffers from the same biases that other Americans do. But we could certainly be doing more to fight back. Female and nonwhite voices remain underrepresented at major publications.”
• Liberal bias: “Yes, it’s real. Most mainstream journalists do lean left. Political reporters and Washington reporters are usually professional enough to keep these views from affecting their coverage. Instead, they’re more likely to suffer from bothsidesism, even when a both-sides story isn’t the most accurate one. The coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails, to take one example, certainly didn’t suffer from liberal bias.”
• Conservative bias: “It’s real, too. Fox News and talk radio are huge, influential parts of the media. They skew hard right, and they often present their readers with misleading or outright false information, be it “birtherism” or conspiracy theories.”

Most of the Far Left and Far Right biases can go as far as to implementing yellow journalism, which over shadows positivity in most/all news stories being reported.