POLS 104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Santa Barbara City College, Media Bias
Document Summary
Where do we get the news: for the media, formal, official channels, whistleblowers/leaks. Has taken a downturn since the 1990s, but has made a comeback of sorts. Time magazine reinvented itself from generic news piece into investigative journal (still somewhat biased: for the public: Increasingly comes from tv and internet: to the uninformed citizen, a new piece of information on a complex topic makes no sense and is likely to be ignored. (p. 134) Modern news consumer, 2016: but nearly the same portion say news media are biased. Inherent conflict: politicians want to claim credit for good things and avoid blame for bad things - helps get reelection, in general, the media prefers to report on bad things. Dictionary definition: a particular tendency or inclination, especially one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice. Stevenson (1973): we decided to conceptualize bias as imbalance or inequality of coverage rather than as a departure from truth.
