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Regardless of any biases, the national media outlets in the US do not generally misstate facts. If the facts are demonstrably incorrect, a correction usually follows. European papers tend to follow this example.
The Daily Mirror made a terrible mistake when it published what turned out to be faked photographs purporting to show abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British troops. Regardless of how anxious the Daily Mirror is to find evidence to discredit Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to join a Coalition in Iraq, the Mirror editors were probably too credulous in believing what they now claim was a "calculated and malicious hoax." Perhaps the Mirror made its anti-government bias a little too conspicuous when it suggested that the government was deliberately calling into question the legitimacy of the photographs because it "likes to produce a scapegoat to distract attention when it is in a crisis." In the end the Mirror did the right thing: it apologized for publishing the photographs and dismissed Piers Morgan, the editor responsible. The really unique situation is that Morgan remained stubbornly unrepentant and disturbingly unconcerned about the veracity of the photographs. He dismissed the fact that the photographs were faked by noting that they nonetheless "accurately illustrated the reality about the appalling conduct of some British troops." The journalistic ethos, at least in the United States, fortunately still has residual respect for facts. Media biases are typically not evident in deliberately false statements. Rather, it creeps in indirectly and mostly unintentionally via a bias by agenda. Editors have a finite amount of space and resources to devote to coverage. They, therefore, have to make judgments about what stories are more important, more deserving, or just plain more interesting. It is in deciding between priorities in coverage that even editors and journalists who genuinely seek to be fair can unconsciously allow their own perspectives to color reporting. This difference in agenda was clearer than usual in the coverage this week of the discovery of an unmarked Iraqi artillery shell containing deadly sarin nerve gas. On the day that the information was released, there was some coverage of the finding, but certainly not the saturation coverage granted the prisoner abuse scandal. The next day, Fox News had found military sources confirming that the tests for sarin gas in the field had been confirmed by further tests. The story was a headline all day at Fox News. CNN did not mention this on its home page and neither did the Washington Post. The NY Times had a small link at the bottom of its page to the story. Apparently the fact that New York was still in the running for the 2012 Olympics and that the actor Tony Randall died were all, in the collective judgments of the NY Times, CNN, and the Washington Post, significantly more important than the first confirmation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after more than a year. The only way to guard against such differences in agenda is to maintain a truly diverse editorial staff, real intellectual and political diversity.
The copyright of the article Personal Biases in News Consumption in Conservative Politics is owned by Frank Monaldo. Permission to republish Personal Biases in News Consumption in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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