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Media Bias and Effect on Society: Article 2

Wessel, Lindzi. “Making Sense of Media Bias.” Knowable Magazine | Annual Reviews, Annual Reviews, www.knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2017/making-sense-media-bias.

This article sheds light on why the public society is awash today and the largest contributors of this decay is the media. The article features an interview with an American economist David Stromberg from Stockholm University. He has conducted several research on the media including media influences on politics and policies. The role of the media is providing information to the people. It may be quite difficult for the people to access information on what the politicians may be doing by themselves. Media is a channel that provides big actors with resources a platform to find resources and stories that interest the people and then report it. Damaging media bias is characterized by the misrepresentation of facts, lying or suppressing certain facts.

According to Stromberg, although it is true that media bias may exist, at times the effect of this media bias may not be as huge as we think. Media bias in the United States can be pointed back to the 1800s where most papers had party affiliations and their content was thus slanted. However, by 1890s the newspapers that had party affiliations dropped. This was because most media houses realized it was profitable to write news that interested the general population. The article gives a few instances of media bias for example during the Iraq War most media houses were in support of the war on the basis that Iraq was making weapons, however, Network times had to later come out and apologize for the misrepresentation of facts. Stromberg recommends that the best way of dealing with media bias is changing to a better channel or newspaper. The United States having so many media outlets gives one a privilege of deciding what content one can consume. The disadvantage to this is more often than not we try looking for media houses whose thoughts align to our bias.

Article 3

Ardèvol-Abreu, Alberto, and Homero Gil De Zúñiga. “Effects of editorial media bias perception and media trust on the use of traditional, citizen, and social media news.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 94.3 (2017): 703-724.

Over the year’s people no longer seem to trust the media houses and the kind of content they report. Most Americans believe that the media bias has contributed to the decline in democracies and there has also been an increase in the reporting of fake news. One such instance is the Cal Poly news that was reported by Fox news. The headline for the news was “CAL POLY PLOTS TO REDUCE WHITE ENROLLMENT”. This headline itself was misleading and untrue as it claimed that Cal Poly was using race-based admission process. This was a violation of Proposition 209 passed by Californian voters and thus when people saw that headline it caused lot of anger and people misdirected their anger to Cal Poly only later for fox to retract their statements and offer apologies. There are a few other cases of misreporting and bias by the media that have been reported over the years.

This article will be important in my research paper as it will indicate how the negative observations tends to influence the use of social media, citizen as well as traditional methods for news. Most people nowadays do not rely on traditional methods to get news as most now use social media which is fast as news may be posted or streamed in real time. However, on all forms of media channel, social media seems to be the most biased yet it is the most far reaching. This article will serve as a key referencing point in looking at how various form of media outlets have biased by comparing which is the most affected to which is the least affected.

References

Ardèvol-Abreu, Alberto, and Homero Gil De Zúñiga. “Effects of editorial media bias perception and media trust on the use of traditional, citizen, and social media news.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 94.3 (2017): 703-724.

Wessel, Lindzi. “Making Sense of Media Bias.” Knowable Magazine | Annual Reviews, Annual Reviews, www.knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2017/making-sense-media-bias.