Media Bias?

Is there bias in the media, US, Canadian, European etc…? Many people wonder if there is some insidious bias undermining the credibility of the media. Being credulous to what we are told, is good for our society.

If you listen to the unbiased media, they will go on and on, why, they are above human nature. That even recognizing that there may, possibly, be a bias in their ranks is obnoxious to their appearance of neutrality. On The Media on NPR Sundays regularly confronts this issue. Amazingly, members of he unbiased media always conclude that they are not biased.

I find that to listen to the framing of a news story is one way t pick up bias. If the story is that something is bad, pointing to a problem in our society, that is obvious bias. Therefore I give the story less credence than one without a point of view. Another way I pick up bias is the words the media choose. If I am told that a Bill would affect “a woman’s right to choose” or “the murdering of unborn babies” I know there is a bias. Yet another way is to look for missing information. Often some important piece of information that seems to me to be very important to framing the story is missing. Comparing apples to oranges without a scalar to put the information into perspective.

No one is unbiased. No one. You, me, no one. We all have a perspective that is real to us. Francis Bacon’s Idols of the Cave. We see the world through the looking glass that is colored and distorted by our individual experiences. Those experiences, interacting with our epigenetic makeup, produce in us, who we are. Anyone who thinks that he/she is above this truth, is sadly deluding him/herself. With this in mind we again ask is he media unbiased. The obvious answer is yes. Since no one is unbiased.

The real question is does that mean we cannot trust what we hear, see or read in the media? Well, I have a Hammonds Standard Atlas of the World, published in 1938. In it there is a Illustrated Gazetteer of Principal Countries of the World. The description of the government of the Soviet Union says “All citizens-male and female- are guaranteed the right to work, to rest, to old age security, to education, freedom of religion and assembly, to free speech and correspondence. Freedom of the press is also guaranteed. The franchise [vote] is conferred on all citizens of both sexes at the age of 18, and all elections, for the first time in Russian history, will be held by direct and secret ballot.” This is how Reference material described the state of affairs in the Soviet Union. At the same time, Stalin was starving to death, 10-15 MILLION Ukrainians by taking their food and selling it on the world market, to industrialize the Soviet Union. Was persecuting Jews, Eastern Catholics, and anyone who wasn’t Atheist. Opium of the people and all that. We all know the history of the Soviet Union, and it’s failures in every aspect of good governance,  Liberty, Security, Economic and religious. The constitution, it is true, had these rights embodied within it, but the government failed to implement them. If the Constitution is ‘interpreted’ to change with the times by an Elite, instead of a document ‘cast in stone’ until it is changed by the means as layed forth by the Constitution, this kind of tyranny will inevitably result. That is another article however.

So, we see that even reference material can be suspect upon new information becoming discovered and disseminated. Personal bias is so subtle that we rarely recognize our own. If reference material is suspect what are we to believe? I think we must take everything that we hear as being suspect. Know that there is a bias of some sort behind it. Take this into account and adjust our perspective accordingly.

What we see, hear, and read now is subject to change in the future. As people trying to become civilized and enlightened, we must always retain our credulity.