what is media bias essay

80 Media Bias Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best media bias topic ideas & essay examples, ⭐ interesting topics to write about media bias, ✅ simple & easy media bias essay titles, ❓ questions about media bias.

• The Role of Bias in Media Sources The main focus of this medium is to provide information about the protests related to the Black Lives Matter movement that took place in the country.
• Media Bias Monitor: Quantifying Biases of Social Media On the other hand, the media uses selective exposure and airing of stories about leaders, leading to more bias in their stories.
• Media Bias Fact Check: Website Analysis For instance, Fact Check relies on the evidence provided by the person or organization making a claim to substantiate the accuracy of the source.
• Bias of the Lebanese Media Therefore, the main aim of the paper is to identify the elements of bias in the media coverage through an analysis of the media coverage of Al Manar and Future TV in 2008.
• Media Bias in the Middle East Crisis in America A good example of this in the United States Media coverage of the Middle East crisis comes in terms of criminalizing the Israeli forces.
• Media Bias in America and the Middle East Of course, Benjamin Franklin neglected to mention that the printing company he owned was in the running to get the job of printing the money if the plan was approved.
• Why Study the Media, Bias, Limitations, Issues of Media The media have recently have taken an identity almost undistinguishable from entertainment or pop culture and marketing where news serve as “spices” that add up flavor to the whole serving, such as the Guardian Unlimited […]
• Media Bias: The Organization of a Newsroom The media is, however, desperate for attention, and it’s not political ideology that dictates what we are offered in the guise of news on any particular day, but what will sell advertising.
• Mass Media Bias Definition The mass media is the principal source of political information that has an impact on the citizens. The concept of media bias refers to the disagreement about its impact on the citizens and objectivity of […]
• Modern Biased Media: Transparency, Independence, and Objectivity Lack The mass media is considered to be the Fourth Estate by the majority of people. The main goal of this paper is to prove that the modern media is biased because it lacks transparency, independence, […]
• How Is the Media Biased and in What Direction? The bias in this article is aimed at discrediting mainstream media’s coverage of Clinton’s campaign while praising the conservative actions of the GOP presidential candidate.
• Al Jazeera TV: A Propaganda Platform Al Jazeera is the largest media outlet in the Middle East reporting events mostly to the Arab world. The media outlet has equated revolutions in Egypt and Libya with the ejection of totalitarianism in the […]
• Media Bias in the U.S. Politics The main reason for the censure of this information by the media is because it had a connection with the working masses, and Unionists. In this case, the perceived media bias comes from the state […]
• The Impact of Media Bias Media bias is a contravention of professional standards by members of the fourth estate presenting in the form of favoritism of one section of society when it comes to the selection and reporting of events […]
• Media Bias: Media Research Center Versus Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
• Advertising Spending and Media Bias: Evidence From News Coverage of Car Safety Recalls
• Towards a More Direct Measure of Political Media Bias
• Media Bias Towards Science
• French Media Bias and the Vote on the European Constitution
• Political Accountability, Electoral Control, and Media Bias
• Media Mergers and Media Bias With Rational Consumers
• Same-Sex Marriage and Media Bias
• Media Bias and Stereotypes: A Long Way of Justify the Truth
• Political Polarization and the Electoral Effects of Media Bias
• Media Bias and Its Influence on Public Opinion on Current Events
• The Arguments Surrounding Media Bias
• Political Science: Media Bias and Presidential Candidates
• Competition and Commercial Media Bias
• Media Bias and Its Influence on News: Reporting the News Article Analysis
• Power of Media Framing – Framing Impact on Media Bias
• Media Bias and Conflicting Ideas
• Detecting Media Bias and Propaganda
• Media Bias and the Effect of Patriotism on Baseball Viewership
• Good News and Bad News: Evidence of Media Bias in Unemployment Reports
• Media Industries and Media Bias: How They Work Together
• More Ads, More Revs: A Note on Media Bias in Review Likelihood
• News Consumption and Media Bias
• Media Bias and the Persistence of the Expectation Gap: An Analysis of Press Articles on Corporate Fraud
• Public Opinion, Polling, Media Bias, and the Electoral College
• Media Bias and Electoral Competition
• Information Gatekeeping, Indirect Lobbying, and Media Bias
• Conservative and Liberal Media Bias
• Media Bias: Politics, Reputation, and Public Influence
• Law and Legal Definition of Media Bias
• Primetime Spin: Media Bias and Belief Confirming Information
• Media Bias and the Current Situation of Reporting News and Facts in America
• Framing the Right Suspects: Measuring Media Bias
• Media Bias and Its Economic Impact
• When Advertisers Have Bargaining Power – Media Bias
• Media Bias and the Lack of Reporting on Minority Missing Persons
• Critical Thinking vs. Media Bias
• Social Connectivity, Media Bias, and Correlation Neglect
• The Difference Between Media Bias and Media Corruption
• Media Bias and How It Affects Society
• Does Foreign Media Entry Discipline or Provoke Local Media Bias?
• What Are the Main Issues of Media Bias?
• How Does Media Bias Affect Campaigns?
• Does Foreign Media Entry Tempers Government Media Bias?
• What Is Media Bias in News Reporting?
• How Does Media Bias Affect the World?
• What Is the Difference Between Media Bias and Media Propaganda?
• Is Media Bias Bad for Democracy?
• How Do Issue Coverage and Media Bias Affect Voter Perceptions of Elections?
• What Are Some of the Most Prominent Examples of Media Bias in Politics?
• Does Media Bias Affect Public Opinion?
• What Are the Reasons for Which Bias in Media Is Necessary?
• Is There a Difference Between Media Bias and Fake News?
• What Are the Different Types of Media Bias?
• How Does Media Bias Affect Our Society?
• Why Is Media Bias Unavoidable in Modern Society?
• How Does Liberal Media Bias Distort the American Mind?
• What Is the Effect of the Economic Development and Market Competition on Media Bias in China?
• Is There a Relationship Between Media Bias and Reporting Inaccuracies?
• What Are the Effects of Media Bias?
• Are There Any Benefits of Media Bias?
• What Is the Best Way to Deal With Media Bias?
• How to Detect Media Bias and Propaganda?
• Does Media Bias Matter in Elections?
• How Do Media Trust and Media Bias Perception Influence Public Evaluation of the COVID-19 Pandemic in International Metropolises?
• Phobia Titles
• Social Norms Essay Ideas
• Racial Profiling Essay Topics
• Accountability Titles
• Terrorism Questions
• Broadcasting Paper Topics
• Corruption Ideas
• Media Violence Titles
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Elizabeth Morrissette, Grace McKeon, Alison Louie, Amy Luther, and Alexis Fagen

Media bias could be defined as the unjust favoritism and reporting of a certain ideas or standpoint. In the news, social media, and entertainment, such as movies or television, we see media bias through the information these forms of media choose to pay attention to or report (“How to Detect Bias in News Media”, 2012). We could use the example of the difference between FOX news and CNN because these two news broadcasters have very different audiences, they tend to be biased to what the report and how they report it due to democratic or republican viewpoints.

Bias, in general, is the prejudice or preconceived notion against a person, group or thing. Bias leads to stereotyping which we can see on the way certain things are reported in the news. As an example, during Hurricane Katrina, there were two sets of photos taken of two people wading through water with bags of food. The people, one white and one black, were reported about but the way they were reported about was different. For the black man, he was reported “looting” a grocery store, while the white person was reported “finding food for survival”.  The report showed media bias because they made the black man seem like he was doing something wrong, while the white person was just “finding things in order to survive” (Guarino, 2015).

Commercial media is affected by bias because a corporation can influence what kind of entertainment is being produced. When there is an investment involved or money at stake, companies tend to want to protect their investment by not touching on topics that could start a controversy (Pavlik, 2018). In order to be able to understand what biased news is, we must be media literate. To be media literate, we need to adopt the idea that news isn’t completely transparent in the stories they choose to report. Having the knowledge that we can’t believe everything we read or see on the news will allow us as a society to become a more educated audience (Campbell, 2005).

Bias in the News

The news, whether we like it or not, is bias. Some news is bias towards Republicans while other news outlets are biased towards Democrats. It’s important to understand this when watching or reading the news to be media literate. This can be tricky because journalists may believe that their reporting is written with “fairness and balance” but most times there is an underlying bias based around what news provider the story is being written for (Pavlik and McIntosh, 61). With events happening so rapidly, journalist write quickly and sometimes point fingers without trying to. This is called Agenda-Setting which is defined by Shirley Biagi as, how reporters neglect to tell people what to think, but do tell them what and who to talk about (Biagi, 268).

The pressure to put out articles quickly, often times, can affect the story as well. How an event is portrayed, without all the facts and viewpoints, can allow the scene to be laid out in a way that frames it differently than it may have happened (Biagi, 269). However, by simply watching or reading only one portrayal of an event people will often blindly believe it is true, without see or reading other stories that may shine a different light on the subject (Vivian, 4). Media Impact   defines this as Magic Bullet Theory or the assertion that media messages directly and measurably affect people’s behavior (Biagi, 269). The stress of tight time deadlines also affects the number of variations of a story. Journalist push to get stories out creates a lack of deeper consideration to news stories. This is called Consensus Journalism or the tendency among journalists covering the same topic to report similar articles instead of differing interpretations of the event (Biagi, 268).

To see past media bias in the news it’s important to be media literate. Looking past any possible framing, or bias viewpoints and getting all the facts to create your own interpretation of a news story. It doesn’t hurt to read both sides of the story before blindly following what someone is saying, taking into consideration who they might be biased towards.

Stereotypes in the Media

Bias is not only in the news, but other entertainment media outlets such as TV and movies. Beginning during childhood, our perception of the world starts to form. Our own opinions and views are created as we learn to think for ourselves. The process of this “thinking for ourselves” is called socialization. One key agent of socialization is the mass media. Mass media portrays ideas and images that at such a young age, are very influential. However, the influence that the media has on us is not always positive. Specifically, the entertainment media, plays a big role in spreading stereotypes so much that they become normal to us (Pavlik and McIntosh, 55).

The stereotypes in entertainment media may be either gender stereotypes or cultural stereotypes. Gender stereotypes reinforce the way people see each gender supposed to be like. For example, a female stereotype could be a teenage girl who likes to go shopping, or a stay at home mom who cleans the house and goes grocery shopping. Men and women are shown in different ways in commercials, TV and movies. Women are shown as domestic housewives, and men are shown as having high status jobs, and participating in more outdoor activities (Davis, 411). A very common gender stereotype for women is that they like to shop, and are not smart enough to have a high-status profession such as a lawyer or doctor. An example of this stereotype can be shown in the musical/movie, Legally Blonde. The main character is woman who is doubted by her male counterparts. She must prove herself to be intelligent enough to become a lawyer. Another example of a gender stereotype is that men like to use tools and drive cars. For example, in most tool and car commercials /advertisements, a man is shown using the product.  On the other hand, women are most always seen in commercials for cleaning supplies or products like soaps. This stems the common stereotype that women are stay at home moms and take on duties such as cleaning the house, doing the dishes, doing the laundry, etc.

Racial stereotyping is also quite common in the entertainment media. The mass media helps to reproduce racial stereotypes, and spread those ideologies (Abraham, 184). For example, in movies and TV, the minority characters are shown as their respective stereotypes. In one specific example, the media “manifests bias and prejudice in representations of African Americans” (Abraham, 184). African Americans in the media are portrayed in negative ways. In the news, African Americans are often portrayed to be linked to negative issues such as crime, drug use, and poverty (Abraham 184). Another example of racial stereotyping is Kevin Gnapoor in the popular movie, Mean Girls . His character is Indian, and happens to be a math enthusiast and member of the Mathletes. This example strongly proves how entertainment media uses stereotypes.

Types of Media Bias

Throughout media, we see many different types of bias being used. These is bias by omission, bias by selection of source, bias by story selection, bias by placement, and bias by labeling. All of these different types are used in different ways to prevent the consumer from getting all of the information.

• Bias by omission:  Bias by omission is when the reporter leaves out one side of the argument, restricting the information that the consumer receives. This is most prevalent when dealing with political stories (Dugger) and happens by either leaving out claims from either the liberal or conservative sides. This can be seen in either one story or a continuation of stories over time (Media Bias). There are ways to avoid this type of bias, these would include reading or viewing different sources to ensure that you are getting all of the information.
• Bias by selection of sources:  Bias by selection of sources occurs when the author includes multiple sources that only have to do with one side (Baker).  Also, this can occur when the author intentionally leaves out sources that are pertinent to the other side of the story (Dugger). This type of bias also utilizes language such as “experts believe” and “observers say” to make people believe that what they are reading is credible. Also, the use of expert opinions is seen but only from one side, creating a barrier between one side of the story and the consumers (Baker).
• Bias by story selection: The second type of bias by selection is bias by story selection. This is seen more throughout an entire corporation, rather than through few stories. This occurs when news broadcasters only choose to include stories that support the overall belief of the corporation in their broadcasts. This means ignoring all stories that would sway people to the other side (Baker).  Normally the stories that are selected will fully support either the left-wing or right-wing way of thinking.
• Bias by placement: Bias by placement is a big problem in today’s society. We are seeing this type of bias more and more because it is easy with all of the different ways media is presented now, either through social media or just online. This type of bias shows how important a particular story is to the reporter. Editors will choose to poorly place stories that they don’t think are as important, or that they don’t want to be as easily accessible. This placement is used to downplay their importance and make consumers think they aren’t as important (Baker).
• Bias by labeling: Bias by labeling is a more complicated type of bias mostly used to falsely describe politicians. Many reporters will tag politicians with extreme labels on one side of an argument while saying nothing about the other side (Media Bias). These labels that are given can either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the side they are biased towards. Some reporters will falsely label people as “experts”, giving them authority that they have not earned and in turn do not deserve (Media Bias). This type of bias can also come when a reporter fails to properly label a politician, such as not labeling a conservative as a conservative (Dugger). This can be difficult to pick out because not all labeling is biased, but when stronger labels are used it is important to check different sources to see if the information is correct.

Bias in Entertainment

Bias is an opinion in favor or against a person, group, and or thing compared to another, and are presented, in such ways to favor false results that are in line with their prejudgments and political or practical commitments (Hammersley & Gomm, 1).  Media bias in the entertainment is the bias from journalists and the news within the mass media about stories and events reported and the coverage of them.

There are biases in most entertainment today, such as, the news, movies, and television. The three most common biases formed in entertainment are political, racial, and gender biases. Political bias is when part of the entertainment throws in a political comment into a movie or TV show in hopes to change or detriment the viewers political views (Murillo, 462). Racial bias is, for example, is when African Americans are portrayed in a negative way and are shown in situations that have to do with things such as crime, drug use, and poverty (Mitchell, 621). Gender biases typically have to do with females. Gender biases have to do with roles that some people play and how others view them (Martin, 665). For example, young girls are supposed to be into the color pink and like princess and dolls. Women are usually the ones seen on cleaning commercials. Women are seen as “dainty” and “fragile.” And for men, they are usually seen on the more “masculine types of media, such as things that have to do with cars, and tools.

Bias is always present, and it can be found in all outlets of media. There are so many different types of bias that are present, whether it is found in is found in the news, entertainment industry, or in the portrayal of stereotypes bias, is all around us. To be media literate it’s important to always be aware of this, and to read more than one article, allowing yourself to come up with conclusion; thinking for yourself.

Works Cited 

Abraham, Linus, and Osei Appiah. “Framing News Stories: The Role of Visual Imagery in Priming Racial Stereotypes.”  Howard Journal of Communications , vol. 17, no. 3, 2006, pp. 183–203.

Baker, Brent H. “Media Bias.”  Student News Daily , 2017.

Biagi, Shirley. “Changing Messages.”  Media/Impact; An Introduction to Mass Media , 10th ed., Cengage Learning, 2013, pp. 268-270.

Campbell, Richard, et al.  Media & Culture: an Introduction to Mass Communication . Bedford/St Martins, 2005.

Davis, Shannon N. “Sex Stereotypes In Commercials Targeted Toward Children: A Content Analysis.”  Sociological Spectrum , vol. 23, no. 4, 2003, pp. 407–424.

Dugger, Ashley. “Media Bias and Criticism .” http://study.com/academy/lesson/media-bias-criticism-definition-types-examples.html .

Guarino, Mark. “Misleading reports of lawlessness after Katrina worsened crisis, officials say.”   The Guardian , 16 Aug. 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/16/hurricane-katrina-new-orleans-looting-violence-misleading-reports .

Hammersley, Martyn, and Roger Gomm. Bias in Social Research . Vol. 2, ser. 1, Sociological Research Online, 1997.

“How to Detect Bias in News Media.”  FAIR , 19 Nov. 2012, http://fair.org/take-action-now/media-activism-kit/how-to-detect-bias-in-news-media/ .

Levasseur, David G. “Media Bias.”  Encyclopedia of Political Communication , Lynda Lee Kaid, editor, Sage Publications, 1st edition, 2008. Credo Reference, https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sagepolcom/media_bias/0 .

Martin, Patricia Yancey, John R. Reynolds, and Shelley Keith, “Gender Bias and Feminist Consciousness among Judges and Attorneys: A Standpoint Theory Analysis,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 3 (Spring 2002): 665-701,

Mitchell, T. L., Haw, R. M., Pfeifer, J. E., & Meissner, C. A. (2005). “Racial Bias in Mock Juror Decision-Making: A Meta-Analytic Review of Defendant Treatment.” Law and Human Behavior , 29(6), 621-637.

Murillo, M. (2002). “Political Bias in Policy Convergence: Privatization Choices in Latin America.” World Politics , 54(4), 462-493.

Pavlik, John V., and Shawn McIntosh. “Media Literacy in the Digital Age .”  Converging Media: a New Introduction to Mass Communication , Oxford University Press, 2017.

Vivian, John. “Media Literacy .”  The Media of Mass Communication , 8th ed., Pearson, 2017, pp. 4–5.

Introduction to Media Studies Copyright © by Elizabeth Morrissette, Grace McKeon, Alison Louie, Amy Luther, and Alexis Fagen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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35 Media Bias Examples for Students

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Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Media bias examples include ideological bias, gotcha journalism, negativity bias, and sensationalism. Real-life situations when they occur include when ski resorts spin snow reports to make them sound better, and when cable news shows like Fox and MSNBC overtly prefer one political party over another (republican and democrat, respectively).

No one is free of all bias. No one is perfectly objective. So, every book, research paper, and article (including this one) is bound to have some form of bias.

The media is capable of employing an array of techniques to modify news stories in favor of particular interests or groups.

While bias is usually seen as a bad thing, and good media outlets try to minimize it as much as possible, at times, it can also be seen as a good thing. For example, a reporter’s bias toward scholarly consensus or a local paper’s bias toward reporting on events relevant to local people makes sense.

Media Bias Definition

Media bias refers to the inherently subjective processes involved in the selection and curation of information presented within media. It can lead to incorrect, inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, misrepresented, or otherwise skewed reporting.

Media bias cannot be fully eliminated. This is because media neutrality has practical limitations, such as the near impossibility of reporting every single available story and fact, the requirement that selected facts must form a coherent narrative, and so on (Newton, 1996).

Types of Media Bias

In a broad sense, there are two main types of media bias . 

• Ideological bias reflects a news outlet’s desire to move the opinions of readers in a particular direction.
• Spin bias reflects a news outlet’s attempt to create a memorable story (Mullainathan & Shleifer, 2002).

These two main types can be divided into many subcategories. The following list offers a more specific classification of different types of media bias:

• Advertising bias occurs when stories are selected or slanted to please advertisers (Eberl et al., 2018).
• Concision bias occurs when conciseness determines which stories are reported and which are ignored. News outlets often report views that can be summarized succinctly, thereby overshadowing views that are more unconventional, difficult to explain, and complex.
• Confirmation bias occurs when media consumers tend to believe those stories, views, and research that confirms their current views and ignore everything else (Groseclose & Milyo, 2005).
• Content bias occurs when two political parties are treated differently and news is biased towards one side (Entman, 2007).
• Coverage bias occurs when the media chooses to report only negative news about one party or ideology (Eberl et al., 2017 & D’Alessio & Allen, 2000)
• Decision-making bias occurs when the motivations, beliefs, and intentions of the journalists have an impact on what they write and how (Entman, 2007).
• Demographic bias occurs when demographic factors, such as race, gender, social status, income, and so on are allowed to influence reporting (Ribeiro et al., 2018).
• Gatekeeping bias occurs when stories are selected or dismissed on ideological grounds (D’Alessio & Allen, 2000). This is sometimes also referred to as agenda bias , selectivity bias (Hofstetter & Buss, 1978), or selection bias (Groeling, 2013). Such bias is often focused on political actors (Brandenburg, 2006).
• Layout bias occurs when an article is placed in a section that is less read so that it becomes less important, or when an article is placed first so that more people read it. This can sometimes be called burying the lead .
• Mainstream bias occurs when a news outlet only reports things that are safe to report and everyone else is reporting. By extension, the news outlet ignores stories and views that might offend the majority.
• Partisan bias occurs when a news outlet tends to report in a way that serves a specific political party (Haselmayer et al., 2017).
• Sensationalism bias occurs when the exceptional, the exciting, and the sensational are given more attention because it is rarer.
• Statement bias occurs when media coverage is slanted in favor of or against specific actors or issues (D’Alessio & Allen, 2000). It is also known as tonality bias (Eberl et al., 2017) or presentation bias (Groeling, 2013).
• Structural bias occurs when an actor or issue receives more or less favorable coverage as a result of newsworthiness instead of ideological decisions (Haselmayer et al., 2019 & van Dalen, 2012).
• Distance bias occurs when a news agency gives more coverage to events physically closer to the news agency than elsewhere. For example, national media organizations like NBC may be unconsciously biased toward New York City news because that is where they’re located.
• Negativity bias occurs because negative information tends to attract more attention and is remembered for a longer time, even if it’s disliked in the moment.
• False balance bias occurs when a news agency attempts to appear balanced by presenting a news story as if the data is 50/50 on the topic, while the data may in fact show one perspective should objectively hold more weight. Climate change is the classic example.

Media Bias Examples

• Ski resorts reporting on snowfall: Ski resorts are biased in how they spin snowfall reporting. They consistently report higher snowfall than official forecasts because they have a supply-driven interest in doing so (Raymond & Taylor, 2021).
• Moral panic in the UK: Cohen (1964) famously explored UK media’s sensationalist reporting about youth subcultural groups as “delinquents”, causing panic among the general population that wasn’t representative of the subcultural groups’ true actions or impact on society.
• Murdoch media in Australia: Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd consistently reports on media bias in the Murdoch media, highlighting for example, that Murdoch’s papers have endorsed the conservative side of politics (ironically called the Liberals) in 24 out of 24 elections.
• Fox and MSNBC: In the United States, Fox and MSNBC have niched down to report from a right- and left-wing bias, respectively.
• Fog of war: During wartime, national news outlets tend to engage in overt bias against the enemy by reporting extensively on their war crimes while failing to report on their own war crimes.
• Missing white woman syndrome: Sensationalism bias is evident in cases such as missing woman Gabby Petito . The argument of this type of bias is that media tends only to report on missing women when they are white, and neglect to make as much of a fuss about missing Indigenous women.
• First-World Bias in Reporting on Natural Disasters: Scholars have found that news outlets tend to have bias toward reporting on first-world nations that have suffered natural disasters while under-reporting on natural disasters in developing nations, where they’re seen as not newsworthy (Aritenang, 2022; Berlemann & Thomas, 2018).
• Overseas Reporting on US Politics: Sensationalism bias has an effect when non-US nations report on US politics. Unlike other nations’ politics, US politics is heavily reported worldwide. One major reason is that US politics tends to be bitterly fought and lends itself to sensational headlines.
• Click baiting: Media outlets that have moved to a predominantly online focus, such as Forbes and Vice, are biased toward news reports that can be summed up by a sensational headline to ensure they get clicked – this is called “click baiting”.
• Google rankings and mainstream research bias: Google has explicitly put in its site quality rater guidelines a preference for sites that report in ways that reflect “expert consensus”. While this may be seen as a positive way to use bias, it can also push potentially valid alternative perspectives and whistleblowers off the front page of search results.
• False Balance on climate change: Researchers at Northwestern University have highlighted the prevalence of false balance reporting on climate change. They argue that 99% of scientists agree that it is man-made, yet often, news segments have one scientist arguing one side and another arguing another, giving the reporting a perception that it’s a 50-50 split in the scientific debate. In their estimation, an unbiased report would demonstrate the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence supporting one side over the other.
• Negative Unemployment Reports: Garz found that media tend to over-report negative unemployment statistics while under-reporting when unemployment statistics are positive (Garz, 2013).
• Gotcha Journalism: Gotcha journalism involves having journalists go out and actively seek out “gotcha questions” that will lead to sensational headlines. It is a form of bias because it often leads to less reporting on substantive messaging and an over-emphasis on gaffes and disingenuous characterizations of politicians.
• Citizenship bias: When a disaster happens overseas, reporting often presents the number deceased, followed by the number from the news outlet’s company. For example, they might say: “51 dead, including 4 Americans.” This bias, of course, is to try to make the news appear more relevant to their audience, but nonetheless shows a bias toward the audience’s in-group.
• Online indie media bias: Online indie media groups that have shot up on YouTube and social media often have overt biases. Left-wing versions include The Young Turks and The David Pakman Show , while right-wing versions include The Daily Wire and Charlie Kirk .
• Western alienation: In Canada, this phenomenon refers to ostensibly national media outlets like The Globe and Mail having a bias toward news occurring in Toronto and ignoring western provinces, leading to “western alienation”.

The Government’s Role in Media Bias

Governments also play an important role in media bias due to their ability to distribute power.

The most obvious examples of pro-government media bias can be seen in totalitarian regimes, such as modern-day North Korea (Merloe, 2015). The government and the media can influence each other: the media can influence politicians and vice versa (Entman, 2007).

Nevertheless, even liberal democratic governments can affect media bias by, for example, leaking stories to their favored outlets and selectively calling upon their preferred outlets during news conferences.

In addition to the government, the market can also influence media coverage. Bias can be the function of who owns the media outlet in question, who are the media staff, what is the intended audience, what gets the most clicks or sells the most newspapers, and so on. 

Media bias refers to the bias of journalists and news outlets in reporting events, views, stories, and everything else they might cover.

The term usually denotes a widespread bias rather than something specific to one journalist or article.

There are many types of media bias. It is useful to understand the different types of biases, but also recognize that while good reporting can and does exist, it’s almost impossible to fully eliminate biases in reporting.

Aritenang, A. (2022). Understanding international agenda using media analytics: The case of disaster news coverage in Indonesia.  Cogent Arts & Humanities ,  9 (1), 2108200.

Brandenburg, H. (2006). Party Strategy and Media Bias: A Quantitative Analysis of the 2005 UK Election Campaign. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties , 16 (2), 157–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/13689880600716027

D’Alessio, D., & Allen, M. (2000). Media Bias in Presidential Elections: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Communication , 50 (4), 133–156. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02866.x

Eberl, J.-M., Boomgaarden, H. G., & Wagner, M. (2017). One Bias Fits All? Three Types of Media Bias and Their Effects on Party Preferences. Communication Research , 44 (8), 1125–1148. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650215614364

Eberl, J.-M., Wagner, M., & Boomgaarden, H. G. (2018). Party Advertising in Newspapers. Journalism Studies , 19 (6), 782–802. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1234356

Entman, R. M. (2007). Framing Bias: Media in the Distribution of Power. Journal of Communication , 57 (1), 163–173. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00336.x

Garz, M. (2014). Good news and bad news: evidence of media bias in unemployment reports.  Public Choice ,  161 (3), 499-515.

Groeling, T. (2013). Media Bias by the Numbers: Challenges and Opportunities in the Empirical Study of Partisan News. Annual Review of Political Science , 16 (1), 129–151. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-040811-115123

Groseclose, T., & Milyo, J. (2005). A measure of media bias. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 120 (4), 1191-1237.

Groseclose, T., & Milyo, J. (2005). A Measure of Media Bias. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 120 (4), 1191–1237. https://doi.org/10.1162/003355305775097542

Haselmayer, M., Meyer, T. M., & Wagner, M. (2019). Fighting for attention: Media coverage of negative campaign messages. Party Politics , 25 (3), 412–423. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068817724174

Haselmayer, M., Wagner, M., & Meyer, T. M. (2017). Partisan Bias in Message Selection: Media Gatekeeping of Party Press Releases. Political Communication , 34 (3), 367–384. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2016.1265619

Hofstetter, C. R., & Buss, T. F. (1978). Bias in television news coverage of political events: A methodological analysis. Journal of Broadcasting , 22 (4), 517–530. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838157809363907

Mackey, T. P., & Jacobson, T. E. (2019). Metaliterate Learning for the Post-Truth World . American Library Association.

Merloe, P. (2015). Authoritarianism Goes Global: Election Monitoring Vs. Disinformation. Journal of Democracy , 26 (3), 79–93. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2015.0053

Mullainathan, S., & Shleifer, A. (2002). Media Bias (No. w9295; p. w9295). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w9295

Newton, K. (1996). The mass media and modern government . Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung.

Raymond, C., & Taylor, S. (2021). “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant”: Documenting media bias. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization , 184 , 670–691. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2020.09.021

Ribeiro, F. N., Henrique, L., Benevenuto, F., Chakraborty, A., Kulshrestha, J., Babaei, M., & Gummadi, K. P. (2018, June). Media bias monitor: Quantifying biases of social media news outlets at large-scale. In Twelfth international AAAI conference on web and social media .

Sloan, W. D., & Mackay, J. B. (2007). Media Bias: Finding It, Fixing It . McFarland.

van Dalen, A. (2012). Structural Bias in Cross-National Perspective: How Political Systems and Journalism Cultures Influence Government Dominance in the News. The International Journal of Press/Politics , 17 (1), 32–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161211411087

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Media Bias — Media Bias In News Report

Media Bias in News Report

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Published: Mar 19, 2024

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Introduction, origins of media bias, manifestations of media bias, implications of media bias, addressing media bias.

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Should you trust media bias charts?

These controversial charts claim to show the political lean and credibility of news organizations. here’s what you need to know about them..

Impartial journalism is an impossible ideal. That is, at least, according to Julie Mastrine.

“Unbiased news doesn’t exist. Everyone has a bias: everyday people and journalists. And that’s OK,” Mastrine said. But it’s not OK for news organizations to hide those biases, she said.

“We can be manipulated into (a biased outlet’s) point of view and not able to evaluate it critically and objectively and understand where it’s coming from,” said Mastrine, marketing director for AllSides , a media literacy company focused on “freeing people from filter bubbles.”

That’s why she created a media bias chart.

As readers hurl claims of hidden bias towards outlets on all parts of the political spectrum, bias charts have emerged as a tool to reveal pernicious partiality.

Charts that use transparent methodologies to score political bias — particularly the AllSides chart and another from news literacy company Ad Fontes Media — are increasing in popularity and spreading across the internet. According to CrowdTangle, a social media monitoring platform, the homepages for these two sites and the pages for their charts have been shared tens of thousands of times.

But just because something is widely shared doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Are media bias charts reliable?

Why do media bias charts exist?

Traditional journalism values a focus on news reporting that is fair and impartial, guided by principles like truth, verification and accuracy. But those standards are not observed across the board in the “news” content that people consume.

Tim Groeling, a communications professor at the University of California Los Angeles, said some consumers take too much of the “news” they encounter as impartial.

When people are influenced by undisclosed political bias in the news they consume, “that’s pretty bad for democratic politics, pretty bad for our country to have people be consistently misinformed and think they’re informed,” Groeling said.

If undisclosed bias threatens to mislead some news consumers, it also pushes others away, he said.

“When you have bias that’s not acknowledged, but is present, that’s really damaging to trust,” he said.

Kelly McBride, an expert on journalism ethics and standards, NPR’s public editor and the chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at Poynter, agrees.

“If a news consumer doesn’t see their particular bias in a story accounted for — not necessarily validated, but at least accounted for in a story — they are going to assume that the reporter or the publication is biased,” McBride said.

The growing public confusion about whether or not news outlets harbor a political bias, disclosed or not, is fueling demand for resources to sort fact from otherwise — resources like these media bias charts.

Bias and social media

Mastrine said the threat of undisclosed biases grows as social media algorithms create filter bubbles to feed users ideologically consistent content.

Could rating bias help? Mastrine and Vanessa Otero, founder of the Ad Fontes media bias chart, think so.

“It’ll actually make it easier for people to identify different perspectives and make sure they’re reading across the spectrum so that they get a balanced understanding of current events,” Mastrine said.

Otero said bias ratings could also be helpful to advertisers.

“There’s this whole ecosystem of online junk news, of polarizing misinformation, these clickbaity sites that are sucking up a lot of ad revenue. And that’s not to the benefit of anybody,” Otero said. “It’s not to the benefit of the advertisers. It’s not to the benefit of society. It’s just to the benefit of some folks who want to take advantage of people’s worst inclinations online.”

Reliable media bias ratings could allow advertisers to disinvest in fringe sites.

Groeling, the UCLA professor, said he could see major social media and search platforms using bias ratings to alter the algorithms that determine what content users see. Changes could elevate neutral content or foster broader news consumption.

But he fears the platforms’ sweeping power, especially after Facebook and Twitter censored a New York Post article purporting to show data from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of President-elect Joe Biden. Groeling said social media platforms failed to clearly communicate how and why they stopped and slowed the spread of the article.

“(Social media platforms are) searching for some sort of arbiter of truth and news … but it’s actually really difficult to do that and not be a frightening totalitarian,” he said.

Is less more?

The Ad Fontes chart and the AllSides chart are each easy to understand: progressive publishers on one side, conservative ones on the other.

“It’s just more visible, more shareable. We think more people can see the ratings this way and kind of begin to understand them and really start to think, ‘Oh, you know, journalism is supposed to be objective and balanced,’” Mastrine said. AllSides has rated media bias since 2012. Mastrine first put them into chart form in early 2019.

Otero recognizes that accessibility comes at a price.

“Some nuance has to go away when it’s a graphic,” she said. “If you always keep it to, ‘people can only understand if they have a very deep conversation,’ then some people are just never going to get there. So it is a tool to help people have a shortcut.”

But perceiving the chart as distilled truth could give consumers an undue trust in outlets, McBride said.

“Overreliance on a chart like this is going to probably give some consumers a false level of faith,” she said. “I can think of a massive journalistic failure for just about every organization on this chart. And they didn’t all come clean about it.”

The necessity of getting people to look at the chart poses another challenge. Groeling thinks disinterest among consumers could hurt the charts’ usefulness.

“Asking people to go to this chart, asking them to take effort to understand and do that comparison, I worry would not actually be something people would do. Because most people don’t care enough about news,” he said. He would rather see a plugin that detects bias in users’ overall news consumption and offers them differing viewpoints.

McBride questioned whether bias should be the focus of the charts at all. Other factors — accountability, reliability and resources — would offer better insight into what sources of news are best, she said.

“Bias is only one thing that you need to pay attention to when you consume news. What you also want to pay attention to is the quality of the actual reporting and writing and the editing,” she said. It wouldn’t make sense to rate local news sources for bias, she added, because they are responsive to individual communities with different political ideologies.

The charts are only as good as their methodologies. Both McBride and Groeling shared praise for the stated methods for rating bias of AllSides and Ad Fontes , which can be found on their websites. Neither Ad Fontes nor AllSides explicitly rates editorial standards.

The AllSides Chart

(Courtesy: AllSides)

The AllSides chart focuses solely on political bias. It places sources in one of five boxes — “Left,” “Lean Left,” “Center,” “Lean Right” and “Right.” Mastrine said that while the boxes allow the chart to be easily understood, they also don’t allow sources to be rated on a gradient.

“Our five-point scale is inherently limited in the sense that we have to put somebody in a category when, in reality, it’s kind of a spectrum. They might fall in between two of the ratings,” Mastrine said.

That also makes the chart particularly easy to understand, she said.

AllSides has rated more than 800 sources in eight years, focusing on online content only. Ratings are derived from a mix of review methods.

In the blind bias survey, which Mastrine called “one of (AllSides’) most robust bias rating methodologies,” readers from the public rate articles for political bias. Two AllSides staffers with different political biases pull articles from the news sites that are being reviewed. AllSides locates these unpaid readers through its newsletter, website, social media account and other marketing tools. The readers, who self-report their political bias after they use a bias rating test provided by the company, only see the article’s text and are not told which outlet published the piece. The data is then normalized to more closely reflect the composure of America across political groupings.

AllSides also uses “editorial reviews,” where staff members look directly at a source to contribute to ratings.

“That allows us to actually look at the homepage with the branding, with the photos and all that and kind of get a feel for what the bias is, taking all that into account,” Mastrine said.

She added that an equal number of staffers who lean left, right and center conduct each review together. The personal biases of AllSides’ staffers appear on their bio pages . Mastrine leans right.

She clarified that among the 20-person staff, many are part time, 14% are people of color, 38% are lean left or left, 29% are center, and 18% are lean right or right. Half of the staffers are male, half are female.

When a news outlet receives a blind bias survey and an editorial review, both are taken into account. Mastrine said the two methods aren’t weighted together “in any mathematical way,” but said they typically hold roughly equal weight. Sometimes, she added, the editorial review carries more weight.

AllSides also uses “independent research,” which Mastrine described as the “lowest level of bias verification.” She said it consists of staffers reviewing and reporting on a source to make a preliminary bias assessment. Sometimes third-party analyses — including academic research and surveys — are incorporated into ratings, too.

AllSides highlights the specific methodologies used to judge each source on its website and states its confidence in the ratings based on the methods used. In a separate white paper , the company details the process used for its August 2020 blind bias survey.

AllSides sometimes gives separate ratings to different sections of the same source. For example, it rates The New York Times’ opinion section “Left” and its news section “Lean Left.” AllSides also incorporates reader feedback into its system. People can mark that they agree or disagree with AllSides’ rating of a source. When a significant number of people disagree, AllSides often revisits a source to vet it once again, Mastrine said.

The AllSides chart generally gets good reviews, she said, and most people mark that they agree with the ratings. Still, she sees one misconception among the people that encounter it: They think center means better. Mastrine disagrees.

“The center outlets might be omitting certain stories that are important to people. They might not even be accurate,” she said. “We tell people to read across the spectrum.”

To make that easier, AllSides offers a curated “ balanced news feed ,” featuring articles from across the political spectrum, on its website.

AllSides makes money through paid memberships, one-time donations, media literacy training and online advertisements. It plans to become a public benefit corporation by the end of the year, she added, meaning it will operate both for profit and for a stated public mission.

The Ad Fontes chart

(Courtesy: Ad Fontes)

The Ad Fontes chart rates both reliability and political bias. It scores news sources — around 270 now, and an expected 300 in December — using bias and reliability as coordinates on its chart.

The outlets appear on a spectrum, with seven markers showing a range from “Most Extreme Left” to “Most Extreme Right” along the bias axis, and eight markers showing a range from “Original Fact Reporting” to “Contains Inaccurate/Fabricated Info” along the reliability axis.

The chart is a departure from its first version, back when founder Vanessa Otero , a patent attorney, said she put together a chart by herself as a hobby after seeing Facebook friends fight over the legitimacy of sources during the 2016 election. Otero said that when she saw how popular her chart was, she decided to make bias ratings her full-time job and founded Ad Fontes — Latin for “to the source” — in 2018.

“There were so many thousands of people reaching out to me on the internet about this,” she said. “Teachers were using it in their classrooms as a tool for teaching media literacy. Publishers wanted to publish it in textbooks.”

About 30 paid analysts rate articles for Ad Fontes. Listed on the company’s website , they represent a range of experience — current and former journalists, educators, librarians and similar professionals. The company recruits analysts through its email list and references and vets them through a traditional application process. Hired analysts are then trained by Otero and other Ad Fontes staff.

To start review sessions, a group of coordinators composed of senior analysts and the company’s nine staffers pulls articles from the sites being reviewed. They look for articles listed as most popular or displayed most prominently.

Part of the Ad Fontes analyst political bias test. The test asks analysts to rank their political bias on 18 different policy issues.

Ad Fontes administers an internal political bias test to analysts, asking them to rank their left-to-right position on about 20 policy positions. That information allows the company to attempt to create ideological balance by including one centrist, one left-leaning and one right-leaning analyst on each review panel. The panels review at least three articles for each source, but they may review as many as 30 for particularly prominent outlets, like The Washington Post, Otero said. More on their methodology, including how they choose which articles to review to create a bias rating, can be found here on the Ad Fontes website.

When they review the articles, the analysts see them as they appear online, “because that’s how people encounter all content. No one encounters content blind,” Otero said. The review process recently changed so that paired analysts discuss their ratings over video chat, where they are pushed to be more specific as they form ratings, Otero said.

Individual scores for an article’s accuracy, the use of fact or opinion, and the appropriateness of its headline and image combine to create a reliability score. The bias score is determined by the article’s degree of advocacy for a left-to-right political position, topic selection and omission, and use of language.

To create an overall bias and reliability score for an outlet, the individual scores for each reviewed article are averaged, with added importance given to more popular articles. That average determines where sources show up on the chart.

Ad Fontes details its ratings process in a white paper from August 2019.

While the company mostly reviews prominent legacy news sources and other popular news sites, Otero hopes to add more podcasts and video content to the chart in coming iterations. The chart already rates video news channel “ The Young Turks ” (which claims to be the most popular online news show with 250 million views per month and 5 million subscribers on YouTube ), and Otero mentioned she next wants to examine videos from Prager University (which claims 4 billion lifetime views for its content, has 2.84 million subscribers on YouTube and 1.4 million followers on Instagram ). Ad Fontes is working with ad agency Oxford Road and dental care company Quip to create ratings for the top 50 news and politics podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Otero said.

“It’s not strictly traditional news sources, because so much of the information that people use to make decisions in their lives is not exactly news,” Otero said.

She was shocked when academic textbook publishers first wanted to use her chart. Now she wants it to become a household tool.

“As we add more news sources on to it, as we add more data, I envision this becoming a standard framework for evaluating news on at least these two dimensions of reliability and bias,” she said.

She sees complaints about it from both ends of the political spectrum as proof that it works.

“A lot of people love it and a lot of people hate it,” Otero said. “A lot of people on the left will call us neoliberal shills, and then a bunch of people that are on the right are like, ‘Oh, you guys are a bunch of leftists yourselves.’”

The project has grown to include tools for teaching media literacy to school kids and an interactive version of the chart that displays each rated article. Otero’s company operates as a public benefit corporation with a stated public benefit mission: “to make news consumers smarter and news media better.” She didn’t want Ad Fontes to rely on donations.

“If we want to grow with a problem, we have to be a sustainable business. Otherwise, we’re just going to make a small difference in a corner of the problem,” she said.

Ad Fontes makes money by responding to specific research requests from advertisers, academics and other parties that want certain outlets to be reviewed. The company also receives non-deductible donations and operates on WeFunder , a grassroots crowdfunding investment site, to bring in investors. So far, Ad Fontes has raised $163,940 with 276 investors through the site.

Should you use the charts?

Media bias charts with transparent, rigorous methodologies can offer insight into sources’ biases. That insight can help you understand what perspectives sources bring as they share the news. That insight also might help you understand what perspectives you might be missing as a news consumer.

But use them with caution. Political bias isn’t the only thing news consumers should look out for. Reliability is critical, too, and the accuracy and editorial standards of organizations play an important role in sharing informative, useful news.

Media bias charts are a media literacy tool. They offer well-researched appraisals on the bias of certain sources. But to best inform yourself, you need a full toolbox. Check out Poynter’s MediaWise project for more media literacy tools.

This article was originally published on Dec. 14, 2020. 

More about media bias charts

• A media bias chart update puts The New York Times in a peculiar position
• Letter to the editor: What Poynter’s critique misses about the Media Bias Chart

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Comments are closed.

We are too obsessed with alleged bias and objectivity, which so often is in the biased eye of the beholder. The main standard of good journalism should be verifiable factual accuracy.

Hoping to see a follow-up article about whether we can trust fact checker report card charts created by collecting a fact checker’s subjective ratings.

As a writer for Wonkette, I won’t claim to be objective, but we do like to point out that our rating at Ad Fontes – both farthest to the left and the least reliable, is absurd. Apparently we can’t be trusted at all because we do satirical commentary instead of straight news.

When we’ve attempted to point out to Ms. Otero that we adhere to high standards when it comes to factuality, but we also make jokes, she has replied that satire is inherently untrustworthy and biased, particularly since we sometimes use dirty words.

That seems to us a remarkably biased definition of bias.

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Media Stances and Media Bias: Home

Media bias: one chart gets all.

This Media Bias Chart comes from AllSlides .

For additional resources about media bias, try consulting some of the sites below:

Left, Right, or Neutral? Useful Resources

• Media Bias/Fact Check " Don’t be fooled by Fake News sources ...... "
• Type of Media Bias and How to Spot Them " Journalism is tied to a set of ethical standards and values, including truth and accuracy, fairness and impartiality, and accountability. However, journalism today often strays from objective fact; the result is biased news ...... "
• How to Rate Media Bias " Bias is normal. If you've got a pulse, you've got a bias. But hidden bias misleads and divides us ...... "
• Discover Your Own Bias " Bias starts with you. Learn about your own bias and how it compares with others...... "
• Blue Feed or Red Feed? See Liberal Facebook and Conservative Facebook, Side by Side
• Left vs. Right (US) " This graphic shows left & right, liberal vs conservative, blue vs red, from a US perspective ...... "
• Pew Research Center: Political Polarization " Political polarization – the vast and growing gap between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats – is a defining feature of American politics today, and one the Pew Research Center has documented for many years ...... "
• Media Bias in Strategic Word Choice "Word choice is a key tool reporters use to subtly convey bias. Media consumers must be aware of this in order to protect themselves from bias quietly injected in the news ......"

Media Bias: Books in the Library

Asst Prof/Head of Cataloging & Serials

CUNY LibGuides

• Fake News: Thinking Critically about Information Sources (College of Staten Island)  
• Fake News, Trolling, and Clickbait Resources (Bronx of Community College)  
• Fact Checking, Verification & Fake News: Be Skeptical, It's Your Job (The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism)
• Last Updated: Nov 17, 2021 2:35 PM
• URL: https://libguides.york.cuny.edu/mediastances

.cls-1{fill:#ffffff;stroke-width:0px;} Media Bias Detector

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David's Personal Highlights of the Media Bias Detector!

Don’t Judge a News Story by its Headline

Joe Biden’s (but not Donald Trump’s) age: A case study in the New York Times’ inconsistent narrative selection and framing

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Biased Media is a Real Threat to Indian Democracy

• 29 Mar 2024
• 10 min read

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind

― Jim Morrison

Media plays a crucial role in any democratic society by providing information, shaping public opinion, and holding those in power accountable. However, the rise of biased media poses a significant threat to the democratic fabric of India. In recent years, Indian media has come under scrutiny for its biased reporting, sensationalism, and lack of objectivity. 

Media serves as the fourth pillar of democracy, alongside the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches. Its primary function is to inform citizens, facilitate debate, and act as a watchdog over the government and other powerful institutions. In India, a diverse and vibrant media landscape has emerged since independence, comprising print, broadcast, and digital platforms. However, the proliferation of biased media outlets has blurred the lines between news and propaganda, posing a grave danger to democracy.

Biased media outlets in India often prioritize sensationalism over substance, resorting to inflammatory rhetoric and divisive narratives to attract viewership or readership. This sensationalism contributes to the spread of misinformation and the polarization of society along religious, ethnic, and political lines. Moreover, biased reporting can sway public opinion, influence electoral outcomes, and undermine the credibility of democratic institutions.

The phenomenon of biased media in India is exacerbated by various challenges to press freedom , including political pressure, corporate influence, and legal threats.  The concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few conglomerates limits the diversity of viewpoints and fosters self-censorship among journalists. These challenges impede the media's ability to fulfill its democratic mandate and hold power to account.

Political pressure on media outlets is a common phenomenon in India, where governments often seek to control the narrative and suppress dissenting voices. Media outlets are made manipulated by giving them ads by the political parties for suppressing the truth and spreading rumours and fake news.

Corporate interests often wield significant influence over media organizations through ownership or advertising revenue. A prime example is the Reliance Group , one of India's largest conglomerates with interests in various sectors, including media. Reliance's ownership of a certain media platform, which controls several news channels and digital media platforms, has raised concerns about editorial independence and bias. Critics argue that Reliance's business interests may influence media coverage to favor its corporate agenda, thereby compromising journalistic integrity.

The consequences of biased media on Indian democracy are far-reaching and multifaceted. It erodes public trust in the media as an impartial source of information, leading to widespread cynicism and apathy towards democratic institutions. It undermines the pluralistic fabric of Indian society by fostering intolerance and bigotry towards marginalized communities. It compromises the integrity of electoral processes by manipulating public opinion and influencing voter behavior. Overall, biased media contributes to the erosion of democratic norms and values, posing a serious threat to the future of Indian democracy.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, misleading stories about the death toll and government responses deepened the crisis. Twitter censorship of critical tweets and pro-government channels blaming farmers’ protests for oxygen shortages distorted the truth and undermined trust in the media. This jeopardizes their ability to report objectively and hold those in power accountable. Attacks on journalists who expose corruption or criticize political leaders endanger press freedom and democratic functioning.

Sonam Wangchuk, the renowned climate activist and educationalist , recently concluded his 21-day climate fast in Leh, Ladakh. During this period, he sustained himself solely on water and salt, drawing attention to critical issues affecting the region.

Wangchuk’s fast was a powerful statement, emphasizing the need to protect Ladakh’s fragile ecology and indigenous culture . He emphasized the importance of character and foresight in addressing Ladakh’s concerns. Wangchuk’s fast garnered support from various socio-political bodies in Ladakh, including the Kargil Democratic Alliance . Members of the KDA also joined him in hunger strikes, amplifying their collective voice but big news channels and media houses ignored incident and did not provided proper coverage.

Moreover, the Sushant Singh Rajput case became a media frenzy, with sensationalism overshadowing more critical matters. The media’s obsession with Sushant Singh Rajput’s death transformed a tragic suicide into a relentless investigation, streamed live day after day.

Instead of focusing on the actual tragedy, the spotlight shifted to an actress portrayed as the evil intriguer and the perfect cinematic vamp.

The arrest of actress, after relentless pursuit, was celebrated by those addicted to this media spectacle. The media’s gossipy edge often carries deep shades of misogyny. The private-public separation blurred. While the media chased actresses and sensationalized the Rajput case, other crucial issues in the country were sidelined. The Bombay High Court recognized the harm caused by trial by media, obstructing fair criminal case investigations. The media’s role should be to inform, not to manipulate public sentiment.

The practice of accepting money from political parties to publish favorable stories or suppress negative ones, often referred to as "paid news," undermines the integrity of journalism and erodes public trust in the media. This phenomenon is particularly prevalent during election campaigns when political parties seek to manipulate public opinion and gain an unfair advantage. One notable example of paid news occurred during the run-up to the 2014 general elections in India. 

Media showed one sided news about CAA-NRC and misled minorities that led to widespread protest in country. The media played a significant role in shaping public perception of the CAA. Some channels sensationalized the issue, focusing on specific narratives while ignoring broader implications. The trial by media approach led to polarization and misinformation . Social media also played a role, with fact-checkers attempting to correct misinformation. 

Addressing the issue of biased media requires concerted efforts from multiple stakeholders, including policymakers, media professionals, civil society organizations, and the general public. There is a need for stringent regulations and mechanisms to hold media outlets accountable for ethical breaches and misinformation. Media literacy programs should be implemented to educate citizens about the importance of critical thinking and discerning reliable sources of information. Independent media watchdogs and ombudsmen should be empowered to monitor media content and address complaints from the public. Additionally, promoting diversity and plurality in the media industry through initiatives such as community media and public broadcasting can help counteract the influence of biased media conglomerates.

Biased media poses a grave threat to Indian democracy by undermining the principles of transparency , accountability, and pluralism. Its sensationalism, misinformation, and propaganda have the potential to subvert democratic processes and foster social division. Therefore, it is imperative to address the root causes of biased media and implement reforms to safeguard press freedom and media integrity. Only by upholding the highest standards of journalistic ethics and promoting media pluralism can India realize its democratic aspirations and uphold the rights of its citizens.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth. 

—Mahatma Gandhi

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June 25, 2024

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Mapping media bias: How AI powers a new media bias detector

by Ian Scheffler, University of Pennsylvania

Every day, American news outlets collectively publish thousands of articles. In 2016, according to The Atlantic , The Washington Post published 500 pieces of content per day; The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal more than 200.

"We're all consumers of the media," says Duncan Watts, Stevens University Professor in Computer and Information Science. "We're all influenced by what we consume there, and by what we do not consume there.

Today, the University of Pennsylvania's Computational Social Science Lab (CSSLab), which Watts founded and leads, has launched the Media Bias Detector , providing media consumers an unprecedented level of detail in understanding how news outlets from across the ideological spectrum stack up against one another on topics as varied as the presidential race, social media and climate change .

By selecting topics and publication names from simple drop-downs, visitors to the Media Bias Detector can see exactly how different publishers covered particular topics during specific time periods—easily learning, say, how many stories The New York Times has published in the last six weeks about Joe Biden's age, as opposed to Donald Trump's, or how often Fox News covered climate change during last week's heat wave compared to CNN.

"Our goal is not to adjudicate what is true or even who is more biased," says Watts, who also holds appointments in the Wharton School and the Annenberg School for Communication. "Our goal is to quantify how different topics and events are covered by different publishers and what that reveals about their priorities.

In Watts' view, media bias isn't just the manner in which a publication covers a topic—the language used, the figures quoted—but also the topics that publications choose to cover in the first place, and how frequently.

"The media makes a lot of choices about what goes public," says Watts, "and that dictates the political environment." Unfortunately, that data has been extremely hard to keep track of, due to the volume of daily news stories, and the time and expense associated with reading and classifying those articles.

Until now, unearthing media bias in this level of detail has been impossible to achieve at scale, but the CSSLab realized that artificial intelligence (AI) could augment the efforts of human researchers.

"We're able to classify text at very granular levels," says Watts. "We can measure all kinds of interesting things at a scale that would have been impossible just a year or two ago; it is very much a story about how AI has transformed research in this area.

On a daily basis, says Amir Tohidi, a postdoctoral researcher in the CSSLab, the Media Bias Detector accesses the top publicly available articles from some of the country's most popular online news publications, and then feeds them into GPT-4, the large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI that underlies ChatGPT, the company's signature chatbot.

Using a series of carefully designed prompts, which the researchers rigorously tested, GPT-4 then classifies the articles by topic, before analyzing each article's tone, down to the level of individual sentences.

"For every sentence," says Tohidi, "we are asking, 'What's the tone of this sentence? Is it positive, negative, neutral?'" In addition to those sentence-level measurements, the researchers also use AI to classify the article's overall political leaning on a Democrat/Republican spectrum.

In other words, the Media Bias Detector essentially maps America's fast-changing media landscape in close to real time

"We are giving people a bird's-eye view," says Tohidi. "Everyone can read only so many articles from these publishers every day. So they have local views, based on where they stand. These AI tools elevate us so we can see the entire landscape."

In order to ensure the Media Bias Detector's accuracy, researchers have incorporated human feedback into the system.

"The beauty of it is that we incorporate a human in the loop," says Jenny S. Wang, a predoctoral researcher at Microsoft and member of the CSSLab. "Because LLMs are so new, we have a verification process where research assistants are able to review an LLM's summary of an article and make adjustments."

To validate the use of AI, the researchers also compared the system's outputs to those of expert human evaluators—doctoral students with backgrounds in media and politics.

"The correlation was really high," says Yuxuan Zhang, a data scientist at the CSSLab. On some tasks, Zhang adds, GPT-4 even outperformed its human counterparts, giving the CSSLab confidence that AI could be incorporated into the process to achieve scale without significantly losing accuracy.

Zhang, a recent Penn Engineering master's graduate in Biotechnology and Data Science, draws regularly on what he learned in the natural-language processing course taught by Chris Callison-Burch, Associate Professor in CIS, who is a consultant for the Bias Detector.

"I worked as a head teaching assistant in that course," says Zhang, "which is really an important tool for our lab, because everything in computational social science is related to natural-language processing.

Building on Penn Engineering's expertise in AI—the School recently announced the Ivy League's first undergraduate and online master's degrees in engineering in AI—the Media Bias Detector will provide an unprecedented opportunity for anyone to understand the subtle ways that bias manifests itself in the media.

"Everyone has their own sense of what leaning these different publishers have," says Wang. "But no one has just looked at all the data. Powering these analytics at scale has never been done before.

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What Supreme Court rulings mean for Trump and conservative America's war on Big Tech

For years Republicans hammered the message that powerful technology companies  are biased against conservatives. 

That grievance intensified in 2021 when major social media platforms suspended former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Florida and Texas responded by passing laws meant to limit how tech companies moderate content on their platforms.

"There is a dangerous movement by some social media companies to silence conservative ideas and values," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said when he signed his state's law in 2021. "This is wrong and we will not allow it in Texas."

Anti-tech sentiment did not gin up as much partisan fervor as abortion or immigration, but it rallied a GOP base devoted to the former president. Then the popular conservative campaign hit a major snag: The nation’s high court.

Monday, the Supreme Court returned legal challenges to the Florida and Texas laws to the lower courts, saying the laws require further analysis to determine if they are constitutional. Though parts of the laws could be upheld, Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, signaled key elements were unlikely to withstand scrutiny, dealing a blow to conservatives.

“In sum, there is much work to do below on both these cases,” Justice Kagan said, adding, “that work must be done consistent with the First Amendment, which does not go on leave when social media are involved.”

Political commentator Dan Schnur said the decision will enrage conservatives who believe their views are being suppressed by "wealthy technology executives."

"Since the courts won’t save them anytime soon, this will become an issue for GOP congressional candidates in the fall. But nothing will happen in Congress either, so the anger from the right will continue to grow," said Schnur, who teaches at the University of California – Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications.

Supreme Court social media rulings anger Republicans

The high hopes conservatives had when the censorship debate landed on the Supreme Court docket seem to be fading.

“Even with ‘conservative’ judges like Amy Coney Barrett, we can’t expect any help from the Courts,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a Trump ally, tweeted last week after the Supreme Court rebuffed a lawsuit brought by the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and a small number of social media users who accused the Biden administration of crossing the line when it leaned on social media platforms to suppress content about COVID-19 and election fraud.

Legal experts said Monday’s ruling could also affect how state lawmakers attempt to regulate online speech and platforms in the future.

“While the decision today doesn’t definitively resolve the future of the Florida and Texas laws, a majority bloc of justices – led by Justice Kagan – articulated some important principles that represent a major victory for the First Amendment freedoms of social media services,” Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman said. 

Florida and Texas stuck to their ideological guns.

“Big Tech censorship is one of the biggest threats to free public discourse and election integrity,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement on X . “I will keep fighting for our law that protects Texans’ voices.”

Trump and GOP campaign against social media losing momentum

Allegations that social media platforms violate the First Amendment rights of conservatives soared in recent years, becoming a key flashpoint in the nation’s culture wars.

The GOP says social media companies have been too quick to throttle conservative viewpoints and disclose too little about how they decide what content to remove. Social media companies say they don't target conservatives, only harmful speech that violates their rules. 

Republican activists are still pressing the point in states around the country. States have introduced similar legislation to address the censorship allegations, but no new laws have been signed, said Computer & Communications Industry Association’s State Director Khara Boender.

"Today's Supreme Court decision underscores the level of scrutiny such similar laws would face with regard to protections provided under the First Amendment,” Boender told USA TODAY.

Florida and Texas social media 'censorship' laws remain blocked

Had Florida and Texas prevailed in the Supreme Court, the laws would have led to sweeping changes in what content Americans see in their social media feeds during a hotly contested presidential election .

Florida's law would require large social media platforms to "host some speech that they might otherwise prefer not to host" by prohibiting the censorship or banning of a political candidate or "journalistic enterprise."

The Texas law would prohibit social media companies with at least 50 million monthly active users from censoring users based on "viewpoint," and would allow either users or the Texas attorney general to sue.

The laws were challenged by tech industry trade groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Facebook parent Meta, Google’s YouTube and TikTok, and were blocked before they could take effect. One federal appeal struck down Florida’s statute, while another upheld the Texas law. 

Without the ability to downgrade or block content, social media companies warned that users would be flooded by hate speech, spam, disinformation and other toxic content.

"Normal people do not want to go on websites and just see a ton of lawful but awful content," Chris Marchese, who oversees litigation for tech industry trade group NetChoice, previously told USA TODAY.

Both laws remain blocked.

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Supreme Court Declines to Rule on Tech Platforms’ Free Speech Rights

The justices unanimously returned two cases, which concerned state laws that supporters said were aimed at “Silicon Valley censorship,” to lower courts. Critics had said the laws violated the sites’ First Amendment rights.

• Share full article

By Abbie VanSickle ,  David McCabe and Adam Liptak

Reporting from Washington

The Supreme Court sidestepped a definitive resolution on Monday in a pair of cases challenging state laws aimed at curbing the power of social media companies to moderate content. The ruling left in limbo an effort by Republicans who had promoted the legislation as a remedy to what they say is a bias against conservatives.

It was the most recent instance of the Supreme Court considering — and then dodging — a major decision on the parameters of speech on social media platforms.

The state laws differ in their details. Florida’s prevents the platforms from permanently barring candidates for political office in the state, while Texas’ prohibits the platforms from removing any content based on a user’s viewpoint.

The justices unanimously agreed to return the cases to lower courts for analysis. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, noted that neither lower appeals courts had properly analyzed the First Amendment challenges to the Florida and Texas laws.

“In sum, there is much work to do below on both these cases,” Justice Kagan wrote, adding, “But that work must be done consistent with the First Amendment, which does not go on leave when social media are involved.”

Under the narrow ruling, the state laws remain intact, but lower court injunctions also remain in place, meaning both laws continue to be paused.

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• AllSides for Schools
• Lesson Plans
• Professional Development

Lesson Plan

How to Spot Media Bias

This lesson is aimed at improving news literacy skills through the identification of media bias in context. In this lesson, students will learn about 16 common types of media bias with examples of news articles from across the political spectrum. At the end of the lesson(s), students will understand what media bias is, how it affects our society, and how to spot common types of bias in context.

• Define and describe common types of media bias
• Analyze media bias in context 

What is media bias?

Is all media bias bad?

How and why do journalists write with bias?

• AllSides Guide to Types of Media Bias
• AllSides Topics & Issues
• AllSides Balanced Newsfeed
• AllSides Media Bias Ratings™

Step-by-Step Guide

Introduction.

Everyone is biased — and that's okay. There's no such thing as unbiased news. Hidden media bias misleads, manipulates and divides us, so everyone should learn how to spot media bias.

• polarization
• Opinion Statements Presented as Fact
• Sensationalism
• Bias by Omission
• Bias by Placement 
• Story Choice
• Subjective Qualifying Adjectives
• Word Choice
• Break students into small groups to research articles using the AllSides Topics & Issues resource or the AllSides Balanced Newsfeed . Students should spend 15 minutes doing a close reading of an article, looking for instances of bias. 
• At the end of the close readings, students can share their findings with the class. 

Homework/Formative Assessment

• Have students choose a news story of interest using the AllSides Topics & Issues resource or the AllSides Balanced Newsfeed .
• What is the title of your article and what news outlet published it?
• Why did you choose to read this article?
• What type(s) of media bias are present in this article?
• Would you rate this article as very biased, somewhat biased, or mostly unbiased? Why?

Summative Assessment

Summative Assessment Recommendations

Have students match types of bias to their definition

• Provide students with an article that displays bias. Have students annotate the article for types of bias. The assessment can include a “types of bias” word bank for younger learners.

Alternative Assessment

This alternative assessment is designed for AP Lang students and has the students apply the same skills that they will use on the rhetorical analysis essay.

Individual students select a topic from the AllSides Balanced Newsfeed to analyze and demonstrate their analysis in a presentation and discussion. 

Background information

• Topic from AllSides Balanced Newsfeed
• News source(s)
• AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ of news source(s)
• Claim – Include the rhetorical choice/type of media bias.
• Evidence – Summarize, paraphrase, or quote; be specific.
• Commentary – Explain how the evidence demonstrates media bias and the overall effect it has on the article. 

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‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ Review: Alien Invasion Prequel Arrives Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

Instead of providing answers or much in the way of suspense, director Michael Sarnoski’s contribution stars Lupita Nyong'o as a terminally ill cat owner tiptoeing through a mostly off-screen apocalypse.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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As it happens, director John Krasinski’s excellent 2020 sequel flashed back to Day One, revealing the pandemonium the aliens’ arrival caused for unsuspecting humans, before jumping forward more than a year in the “Quiet Place” chronology. In theory, what “Day One” promises — but doesn’t actually deliver — is a more expansive look at the mayhem. Most of the action occurs off-screen, and no one (not even the authorities) so much as attempts to fight back.

What about cats? Is Frodo ever really at risk? For the curious, Sarnoski includes a tough-to-decipher scene where a trio of aliens feed on what looks like a feathered version of the ovomorphs from “Alien.” Perhaps this explains why the Death Angels are so aggro: They didn’t pack enough snacks for their intergalactic mission, and Earth doesn’t have what they need. But what do they want?

Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, “Day One” is served up as a disaster movie, à la Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day,” with money shots of the Brooklyn Bridge collapsing into the East River and deserted streets that suggest “I Am Legend” by way of 9/11. Where did everybody go? “Day One” makes it look like just a few hundred people call Manhattan home. Surely New York would be crawling with residents, pouring out of the skyscrapers and into the streets, or else retreating into their apartments. It’s Day One of the invasion, and the city is a ghost town.

It’s kind of a fluke that Samira agreed to come along for a field trip to a Manhattan marionette theater, led by a nurse (Alex Wolff) who should have worn quieter clothes. When the aliens land, they immediately start picking off the noisiest humans. Scream, and you’re toast. Call out for your missing partner or child, and a Death Angel is guaranteed to spring from off-screen and rip you in half. While the characters try their best to keep silent, the film’s sound designers do the opposite, using low tones to make the whole theater rumble (Imax and 4DX viewers can literally feel the attack unfolding off-screen).

In the two previous films, the thrill came from watching how characters reacted to these sinewy, double-jointed monsters, whose rattling, Venom-looking heads fold open in a series of flaps as they stop to listen. The terrifying creatures can’t see, but their sense of hearing is hyper-acute, which is why our world went quiet . For some reason, all that stuff it took humans 474 days to learn in the other movies is already known by the characters in this one (like using running water to confound the aliens).

As Samira hides out in the marionette theater with a crowd of strangers (including Djimon Hounsou, the film’s lone connection to the previous installment), military choppers fly overhead, broadcasting instructions: Keep silent. Stay off the bridges. Carefully make your way to the South Street Seaport, where ships are standing by to evacuate people. As an inexplicably small crowd of survivors move south, Samira and Frodo walk in the opposite direction. She wants that pizza.

Through it all, she remains more committed to protecting her cat — which is ironic, since the animal seems all but guaranteed to attract the wrong kind of attention. It is Frodo who finds Eric and leads him to Samira. Their instant bond feels contrived, though a more charitable viewer might be moved by this nothing-to-lose connection between two lonely souls — what writer-director Lorene Scafaria called “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.”

To his credit, Sarnoski orchestrates a few high-tension set-pieces. But there aren’t nearly enough of these for a movie set in the “Quiet Place” world, as Sarnoski (who put Nicolas Cage through all kinds of nonsensical behavior in “Pig”) winds up putting sentimentality ahead of suspense.

Just compare these movies to the century’s best zombie franchise: “A Quiet Place” ranks up there with “28 Days Later” in its immersive, world-turned-upside-down intrigue. “Part II” was bigger and scarier, à la “28 Weeks Later.” “Day One” ought to have been the mind-blowing origin story, and instead it’s a Hallmark movie, where everyone seems to have nine lives — not just that darn cat.

Reviewed at AMC The Grove, Los Angeles, June 26, 2024. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time:

• Production: A Paramount Pictures release and presentation, in association with Michael Bay, of a Platinum Dunes, Sunday Night production. Producers: Michael Bay, Andrew Form, Brad Fuller, John Krasinski. Executive producers: Allyson Seeger, Vicki Dee Rock.
• Crew: Director: Michael Sarnoski. Screenplay: Michael Sarnoski; story: John Krasinski, Michael Sarnoski, based on characters created by Bryan Woods & Scott Beck. Camera: Pat Scola. Editors: Andrew Mondshein, Gregory Plotkin. Music: Alexis Grapsas.
• With: Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff, Djimon Hounsou.

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