As humans, we’re moved by stories.
Narratives, where we’re emotionally connected to a specific character, motivate and persuade us far more effectively than data and nuanced argument.
Myriad research shows that people are far more likely to give to a charity when presented with a picture of John, a hungry child, than when presented with statistics about 1000s of Johns.
This is fine, and it’s human.
But it’s also essential to know this bias exists, so we’re not manipulated by stories that are reductive or wrong.
There is one story that I’ve heard endlessly recapitulated that I’d like to share a few thoughts on: liberal media bias.
I have a long history with this story. In 2007, I wrote a semester-long research paper on this question: “Is there a liberal bias in the media?
I had passingly made a comment about liberal media bias in a political science class (at the time I was a disciple of this story). My professor challenged me on it: Who is `the media’? How is that bias presented? How strong is this bias?
I couldn’t answer these questions thoroughly and felt embarrassed for just regurgitating a talking point that I’d heard from my political community without putting much thought into it.
So I decided to make that my semester research project. I was going to use the then shaping presidential race to catalog the existence (or lack thereof) of liberal bias in the media.
I thought the approach would be simple: I would analyze every article that mentioned presidential candidates and then categorize each piece from unfavorable to favorable in its treatment of the candidate.
But as I dove in, the incredible messiness became apparent.
What if the article treated a candidate unfavorably, but the candidate had actually done something unfavorable?
What if a candidate had done something positive, but the media sources failed to report it?
Which media sources should I focus on? (This was in 2007 well before the explosion of media sources today, but even then, there were FAR too many sources for me to deal with).
I spent well over 80 hours on this project and ended with an analysis that was not that great and concluded, essentially, that there was (maybe) a slight left-leaning bias if you constrained the number of media sources.
But this conclusion was mostly flawed because of its circular nature: the output you find is a function of the inputs you select.
In sum, the paper was bad because the original question (Is there liberal media bias?) was bad.
Reflecting on this project, I’ve concluded that the premise of the question was misplaced as a result of my human desire to simplify things to story and metaphor.
There is no character called “the media.” There is no character called the “mainstream media.” And certainly, no character called the “lamestream media.”
Even simplifying “Fox News” into a single character (something I’m guilty of) is fraught with challenges. For example, Chris Wallace is very different than Sean Hannity. Or even more broadly, the Fox news desk is very different than Fox’s opinion personalities.
The reality: “The Media” is an incredibly complex, constantly evolving cast of many, uncoordinated characters; each is operating within its own institutional culture and in response to its market incentives.
Even attempts to simplify this cast by the medium is neigh impossible:
- TV: Local TV or national? Cable, broadcast, or streaming? Does Youtube count?
- Radio: Broadcast or streaming? NPR? Daytime? Latenight? AM? FM? What about podcasts?
- Print: Who even reads print? Are we talking about all written words on the internet? Is this post part of “the media?”
In sum, the words “the media and mainstream media” are so vague, they’re useless. They are mostly circular, rhetorical terms pre-defined to mean whatever the person making the argument needs/wants them to say.
Here are three strategies that I’m working on to have more productive conversations about “the media:”
1) Be as specific as possible: I’ll talk about the bias of particular articles and personalities. Maybe, I’ll talk about specific sources, but recognize that even this is hard to generalize accurately.
2) Generalize with humility: If I feel the need to generalize, I’ll do so softly and with humility that I’m aggregating just so my limited mind can make sense of something, but that I’m probably missing important nuance (at best) or may just be totally wrong.
3) Acknowledge the elephant and listen to the rider – Buddha long ago compared the self to a rider and an elephant. The elephant is the subconscious, immediate responses of fear, anger, disgust, lust, greed, and others when presented with new stimuli.
The rider is our executive reasoning. When I read a news story, the immediate response is almost always the elephant lunging in anger or fear. I try to acknowledge that these immediate intuitions/emotions I have about a story are not the reality, but what a more basic part of my psychology has evolved over millennia to feel.
I then start to let the rider get control by asking questions. Is this story true? Is this story catastrophizing? What perspectives is this story excluding or oversimplifying? What incentives is this source responding to? I ask these questions while breathing deeply.
Slowly, the rider starts to regain control.
I hope you find these strategies helpful as we all try to have more productive conversations about the news in today’s media climate driven by the outrage industrial complex.