Welcome to this video discussion on media bias from the ECC library.
This video will teach you how to start thinking about and spotting media bias and sources. The first step to understanding
anything is to define it so we will define bias. We will also briefly discuss the political orientations that can often lead to,
intentionally and unintentionally, bias.
We're going to look at several examples of sources to identify
where minimal or balanced bias is occurring and where if you know what to look for
significant bias is occurring. As we look at bias
we're also going to look at the quality of reporting the news. When is a source delivering the facts or giving opinions?
when is a source giving inaccurate or fabricated information? Let's get started.
A our world grows more digital, the news is everywhere. It's constant, especially with 24/7 news services and social media.
Especially with social media. Everyone has the potential to become a reporter of sorts.
We keep hearing these words thrown around: bias,
fake news, objectivity, the right, the left, and these others here.
As more people feel more and more strongly about these topics,
It's feeling like the clouds are gathering and a fierce storm is coming.
How can we step back from the storm and more confidently and more realistically evaluate the news we are seeing?
Attorney Vanessa Otero hopes to get us to slow down the storm by giving us an idea of where common new sources fall in two categories:
partisan bias (or political bias) and overall quality
which has to do with how accurate and comprehensive and news source is.
Otero explains how she evaluated these news sources at her website,
but ultimately she emphasizes that it is her informed opinion based on her
classifications. That she encourages chart users to explore if and how they agree with her chart is a strength.
You won't always have every news source on the chart to evaluate when you need it,
and you also won't even always have access to this chart. So it's important that we talk about the how of evaluation.
We're going to talk political orientation on the x-axis and
then we will talk about the accuracy of reporting on the y-axis separately.
Eventually, we will see how Otero
classifies with both of these categories together to place sources in zones of use
the Green Zone
Yellow
Orange and at the bottom Red. Green is higher quality and more
reliable sources with minimal or absent bias. And as you travel down to the Red Zone
sources become more biased, more partisan, and have the greater likelihood to be misleading and inaccurate
if not completely false. Let's first discuss bias.
Often political orientation does affect our bias. It's important to keep in mind
everyone has bias as we are all human. Everyone from all over the world comes from all walks of life.
Everyone has experiences that have moved them.
Everyone has learned things that affect how they think and see things, and everyone has been
influenced by at least one other person.
Within one of our databases, we have the Chamber's dictionary and it defines bias as a one sided
inclination or a special influence that affects our thinking,
or it can even be presented as an imbalance in how we think.
We can be biased about trivial things, such as where do you go if you want the best Chicago-style hot dog in the area, or
we can be biased about serious
topics such as immigration,
abortion, and any other
topic that you can think of.
Now, let's discuss political orientation. What do we generally mean when we say liberal or conservative?
Often, but not always, they tie in with being a Democrat or a Republican.
Even that, though, can be very fluid and even change with the times.
Studying political orientation would be its own deep study that you could go off on but for the purposes of this video,
we're going to paint with a broad brush.
From Auburn University: The main idea of conservatism is keeping things as they are
as what has been is
generally the best system that is possible.
Alternatively, the main framework for liberalism (again from Auburn University) is acceptance for all people and
giving government the
responsibility and the mission to uplift marginalized groups.
Again, these are very broad, very general, and very overarching ideas.
If you want to study more about political orientation the ECC library has many resources for that.
Here are some suggestions for finding more information on political orientation.
As we think of sources and their objectivity, we want to take them in steps
literally!
For the most neutral and objective viewpoint,
It's best to stay higher, and the further
toward the bottom a source falls on the stairs, the less and less you want to go down to it.
IF you even go at all.
At the top is fact reporting: think of news wires and the main news services. These sources get the facts out as soon as
possible after a story breaks. They don't make a point to judge, evaluate, or interpret the story.
We'll talk about several characteristics
soon for evaluating bias or interpretation, but one big indicator of
neutral or balanced bias is in interviews. In fact reporting, both sides will be featured for an interview.
The next step down on the chart is stories that go into deeper analysis and more
complexity of the stories beyond the main facts. They also, at this step, can start to lean into
interpretation of events, and that interpretation
often comes from partisan bias.
Down at the next step is grander scale interpretation.
The story is incomplete and is one-sided. For instance, when it comes to interviews
These sources will often only interview one side of an issue or a story.
Chances are the story as it's presented misleads in this case.
At the bottom of the stairs is the worst of the worst. Stories are inaccurate, if not totally made-up.
Otero calls these
"damaging to the public discourse".
For more information on media bias and journalistic objectivity,
please see these suggested source suggestions and search terms.
Now that we've talked about political bias and the quality of journalistic reporting,
let's look at Otero's chart again putting what we've learned together.
If we were to look at PBS, which is here,
we can see it's classified with minimal or balanced bias on the x-axis
so it's essentially neutral, and if we look over here at the journalism quality,
it is classified with fact reporting
and this high quality along with being neutral keeps PBS here in the Green Zone
Now let's look down at the Huffington Post
This skews liberal
so it hangs out here in the hyper partisan liberal side. Then because of the journalistic quality of the Huffington Post,
which can be unfair persuasion,
incomplete or selective story,
Otero classifies it
Here in the orange zone. And again, these sources in the orange and the red zones,
we don't do ourselves a favor hanging out a lot in these areas of the chart where you have high partisan bias and
then you also have lower journalistic qualities.
Let's go into some specific story examples so you can start to look for and
evaluate bias and journalistic quality as you go along in your life for both academic and non-academic
reasons.
Okay. Now let's do some specific examples.
This first one from PBS is from Otero's Green Zone.
She classifies PBS under neutral and fact reporting.
We have a few screenshots of some of the story that'a available here. If you want to see and read the full story,
there's the link at the bottom, and if we look at the tone of this, it is
informational. It's presenting information
by the journalists. We don't know the journalist's opinion on sanctuary cities. We don't see any language,
if we read here, that indicates value or judgment that the journalist is placing on the information.
The other thing if we go through this is that we see this is a story about
Trump trying to prevent sanctuary cities from happening. We see both sides
interviewed and
Represented. We see all sides
featured so we have
information from the judge who blocked Trump trying to block sanctuary cities,
and we see a quotation
from the San Francisco City Attorney who
presents his opinion as being for sanctuary cities and then below that we get into
language from the Department of Justice and later a quote from a Department of Justice attorney
About sanctuary cities. Of course,
the Department of Justice would be arguing for the executive branch, the Trump administration, on why sanctuary
cities as an order is not something that could be done.
We do see opinion in here, and we do see people quoted, but we see both sides presented
of the issue. Then, most importantly, we don't see the journalists opinion.
We just see the journalist presenting information and
and where there's opinion, there's both sides of opinion for it and
here
For this PBS story of why it gets classified in the green zone
and if you're trying to consider
It's another source good for you to look at here are some of the factors again it presents information
It's factual. You don't see
value-laden language or judgment attached to the information and then
multiple perspectives our interviewed in the story
This next example is from the Federalist. It is a conservative website
Otero puts it in the orange zone and we're going to talk about how it gets there
These are a few screenshots from the article. If you want the full article,
you can go to this URL here. The biggest thing about
this piece is it goes beyond fact reporting into
interpretation of facts, and it really only presents one side in its interpretation.
If we look the most egregious thing we can start to determine from this as we read it is
it's an opinion masked as a news story and where the subtle opinion is
Is where the word "should" is. Any time you see the word should that is a value judgment, that is a call to action,
"You should DO this," "You should THINK this" ,and
That is an indicator that some opinion or value is going on. The other thing
we see are the quotation marks in sanctuary cities and the title here and then
referred to as sanctuary in quotation marks here, and
quotation marks can be
snippets from interviews where people are being quoted. In this case, though. it's generally indicating sarcasm or disagreement
so those are present in there.
There's some subtle
opinion here with "conservatives
dedicated to the rule of law reject this approach". Basically, the implication there is saying if you are a true
conservative, this is how you will think.
So that's in there, too.
And because this article,
especially if you read the full thing, is laden with opinion,
we really should see
Somewhere on the story, and we don't, a word like "This is an opinion",
"This is a commentary" - any of those words that can be used to indicate at somebody's opinion.
We don't see that for this story. So ...
If we see where this got this, the Orange Zone, and when you're looking for other sources, and
you see these types of things, you are probably in an Orange Zone for a story. So it goes
beyond facts into presenting deep interpretation
It won't necessarily present the other side at all. It's very one-sided.
You'll see as you start to read through the language of the story, an opinion,
but the story itself won't necessarily be tagged as being a
commentary or being somebody's opinion. We saw the
quotation marks again. Those can be used to indicate sarcasm or
disagreement. Then really with best practice
if you have an opinion
It's going to be labeled as such. You should be able to have that honored and acknowledge that this is somebody's opinion.
The last example we're going to look at is from Otero's Red Zone.
This specific example is from the Palmer Report, and she classifies it as extremely biased and
misleading and inaccurate.
If we take a look at some of the characteristics here from the snippet. If you were trying to determine if something
was
credible and good for seeking information on a story. We see here an
unflattering picture. You might see that cartoon or images unflattering to a person. That can be an indication
This here is just a tiny snippet of the story.
If you want to go and read the full story, you can go to this URL.
If we're looking in this text we see
NBC News mentioned but we don't see an actual link, which you will often times see in a legitimate story, see a link to another story.
This is very subtle here,
saying things
"like this".
That implies that it's an inference, or it's a guess, but it's not an official quote.
We don't have a verified quote,
We don't have a verified source,
and if you read through this whole thing, it's making a lot of inferences and assumptions
without backing those up or
without being to in an informational tone. This is very interpretive.
So if you were looking for a good informational source, but you saw a lot of inference in a story
Unverified quotes, it's probably not a story that you want to look at and use.
So to recap something in the Red Zone will use words with a negative connotation.
Part of the title of that article have the word obsession in it, which people generally use in a negative sense. It goes
deep into
interpretation and speculation when you're looking at a Red Zone story.
You will encounter
sometimes unflattering images.
We have unverified quotes that were in there saying things using the word like so again, not an official
verified quote, and
we don't see links for more information.
And just a lot of assuming throughout
stories when you might be looking at a Red Zone story.
Just because you are in the ECC library database does not mean that you can rest easy and skip evaluating your sources
for bias
Here is the publication Mother Jones. This is a liberally leaning
magazine that Otero classifies in her Yellow Zone, and it's available three different ways:
You can find its stories out on Google,
You can find its stories in our databases,
and then we also have the Mother Jones magazine in print at the library.
So in any of these locations,
you're going to see the same slant and the same bias potentially occurring,
so it's critical to evaluate your sources on an article by article basis
no matter where you find it, and it's important to look at how the information is presented,
the language used to present that information, and how that information is packaged and put together
with supporting things like other sources cited or images.
The main message to take away is
based on an acronym of bias
Be Inquisitive of All Sources
Take the time to really evaluate the content of your sources for bias and journalistic quality.
This includes the traditional media: television, radio, magazines,
newspapers, and it extends to
into social media. You will be glad that you did this.
You will be able to complete your assignments more easily, and you will also be a more informed citizen of society.
As you have questions about evaluating media sources or anything else related to research,
please get in touch with us.
You can contact the Library Reference Desk in person in building C,
by phone, or email or even through text message with our chatting service.
Happy Searching!
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