A Brief History of Media Bias

[Valin]

Defining Ideas:

Who said that newspapers are supposed to report the news in an objective and fact-based way?

Bruce Thornton

6/12/13

 

(Snip)

The roots of media bias go back to the nineteenth century, and complaints about bias in part reflect a questionable idea about the medias role and purpose: that newspapers and other dispensers of public information exist to transmit objective, factual information gleaned and communicated by credentialed professionals.

 

In fact, the notion that reporters should possess Olympian objectivity is relatively recent. In the nineteenth century, most newspapers were explicitly linked to a particular political party and the economic interests of the publisher. In California during the Gold Rush, for example, the San Francisco Alta California was the enemy of Democratic governor John Bigler, whose press champion was the Stockton Republican. Most of the coverage of crime during this periodparticularly the spree of the Mexican bandit Joaquín Murieta and the state-funded posse that tracked him down and killed himreflected those political interests and loyalties rather than mere facts. Moreover, the stories were written in a florid, dramatic style more suitable for a dime novel than a presumably more sober newspaper. Of course protestations of objectivity and accuracy were made, but these were understood to be mere rhetorical camouflage for the editorial opinions sown throughout most news stories.

 

The tradition of lurid sensationalism, scandal-mongering, and exaggeration put in service to profits and a political agenda continued in the yellow journalism famously on display in the circulation war between the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers in the late nineteenth century. More significantly, that was also when the progressive movement promoted the notion that the proper function of the media was to instruct and shape the opinions of voters too uninformed and irrational to be trusted with making the right choice based on facts alone.

(Snip)

 

Today, then, we are back to where we were in the past. Citizens have numerous options for news and information, and numerous alternatives that challenge, balance, and correct the partisan biases of the mainstream media. More importantly, this new media world means that in a democracy ruled by the people, the responsibility for sorting out truth from partisan spin lies where it should, with the free citizens who have the civic duty to seek out and evaluate information before voting for a party or policy. Media bias is no longer an excuse for neglecting that responsibility.