Does the Media Have a Conservative Or Liberal Bias?

It's a simple fact of life that all people and all human endeavors (including news coverage) are biased. conservatives (often identified with Republicans in the United States, although they are not strictly the same) like to accuse the mainstream media of exhibiting "liberal bias", and at the same time, liberals (again, in the U.S., often identified with the Democratic party) accuse the media of conservative bias. Because bias is widespread in virtually all news sources, it's very easy for conservatives to come up with examples of egregious liberal bias in the media...just as liberals find it easy to point to examples of blatant conservative bias. But these examples, picked and chosen to support one particular viewpoint, do not do anything to establish whether or not there's an overall trend or pattern of bias in one direction or another.

It's Not As Simple As Liberal vs. Conservative:

Compounding the problem of assessing what type of bias exists in the media are viewpoints that don't fit strictly into the liberal-conservative box. Certain news outlets exhibit a libertarian slant, taking socially liberal stances (such as pro-legalization and pro-gay-rights) while allying with conservatives in supporting the free market and smaller government. Some publications may have an environmentally alarmist bias, or a particular regional or cultural bias to them. Foreign sources exhibit bias associated with a particular country's viewpoint, perspective, or vested interests, and these foreign news sources can rarely be projected cleanly onto the American political spectrum defined by Democrats and Republicans.

So what is the bias? Liberal or Conservative?

My answer, which is not what many people want to hear, is that the question of whether the media collectively exhibits liberal bias or conservative bias is not a useful question, because it has no meaningful answer. Bias is widespread, but it is also complex and cannot be accurately described with labels like liberal or conservative.

So if we can't identify the bias of the media as a whole, what can we do?

While it's impossible to generalize about the bias of the media as a whole, often, a lot can be said about the biases of one particular media outlet. These biases are thoroughly discussed in print editorials and opinion pieces, and of course on blogs and internet discussion sites. By reading news with a critical eye, you can begin to identify the bias inherent in one particular news source's perspective. I find that bias is able to more easily sort out in print sources than on television or radio broadcasts, where bias is often hidden by the charisma and speaking abilities of a news anchor or talk show host.

When reading newspapers and print sources, one useful technique for this purpose is to read the same story in several different sources, and compare the conclusions drawn. It is especially valuable to seek out perspectives from other countries and cultures, as these viewpoints can sometimes offer valuable insights that are rarely found in domestic sources.

Alex Zorach writes for a variety of different websites; his opinion website is http://cazort.net/

On this site, you can find discussion of unbiased news sources, which includes a listing a number of high-quality online news sources, and discussion of what sorts of bias each of these sources exhibits, enabling you to approach a more objective, less biased viewpoint by exposing yourself to different perspectives.

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