Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion in Fishtown (Sunday Edition)
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- NOTE: I've switched our usual meeting time of Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon to work around a scheduling conflict. This isn't a permanent change, so we'll be back to meeting on Saturday in 2 weeks.
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Our standard discussion venue is the Front Street Cafe in Fishtown on the corner of Front & Girard Streets. SEPTA's Girard Station is just a block south, and there's also usually spaces available for street parking in the surrounding neighborhood. If you can't find a spot on the street, there's a paid parking lot called "Park America" a half-block north at 1320 N.Front Street.
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This meetup will be dedicated to the recent debate over media bias and allegations that we've recently entered the era of fake news & "post-truth politics".
Wikipedia defines a "bias" as "an inclination or outlook to present or hold a partial perspective, often accompanied by a refusal to consider the possible merits of alternative points of view". Wikiepdia defines "media bias" as "the bias or perceived bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed." The Wikipedia entries for "media bias" and "media bias in the United States" provide a fairly decent summary of research on the topic, especially for those who don't have time to read all of the articles below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias_in_the_United_States
Our discussion will be based around the following 8 articles. I certainly understand that most people don't have time to read all of them, so I've summarized their major points:
MEASURING MEDIA BIAS:
- Freakonomics, "How Biased Is Your Media?"
Even if you can't listen to the whole podcast, check out the introductory remarks on the page and then listen to the first 20 minutes that gives descriptions of the Tim Groseclose & Jeff Milyo study on media bias using think tank citation and Matt Gentzkow & Jesse Shapiro study on media bias using keyword analysis.
Groseclose used Congressional roll call votes to calculate political quotients, or PQs, for each representative, with 100 representing a hardcore liberal and zero a hardcore conservative. To make the connection between the politicians’ leanings and the leanings of media outlets, he needed to take an intermediate step - take 150 think tanks and interest groups and assign each of them a PQ based on how often liberal or conservative reps cite them. Then he counted how many times the name of each think tank & interest group was cited in the 20 major media outlets he was studying, and then assigned them a PQ. 18 of the 20 media outlets he studied leaned left - the exceptions were Fox News and the Washington Times. Groseclose combined his own findings and existing research to calculate that the average American voter has a “natural” PQ of around 25-30, which is firmly in the conservative range. But, as Groseclose sees it, the left-leaning media pulls some of those naturally conservative voters into the center. Which is why we generally vote about 50-50. Without media bias, Groseclose says, we’d be a much different country.
Gentzkow's paper did not calculate bias for the entire US news media but rather looked at individual newspapers. He compared the frequency of certain keywords data mined from the Congressional record and associated with conservative & liberal reps to the frequency with which those same keywords were found in various newspapers. Gentzkow found that papers with more Republican readers tend to provide more conservative stories and language; papers in more liberal areas lean left in their coverage and story selection. Due to market incentives, newspapers give their readers the stories and slant they want to maximize readership and profits. It may be that journalists & editors would like to push their own political views more, but if they did and it conflicted too much with their readership it would be costly. Gentzkow's conclusion is the opposite of Groseclose's in terms of causality - he finds that the readership determines the bias in media coverage, not vice-versa.
Podcast: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-biased-is-your-media/
Transcript: http://freakonomics.com/2012/02/16/how-biased-is-your-media-full-transcript/
- Brendan Nyhan, "The problems with the Groseclose/Milyo Study"
Nyhan points out two problems with the assumptions that Groseclose & Milyo made in their study:
(1) Technocratic centrist to liberal organizations like Brookings and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tend to have more credentialed experts with peer-reviewed publications than their conservative counterparts. This may result in a greater number of citations by the press, which seeks out expert perspectives on the news, but not more citations by members of Congress, who generally seek out views that reinforce their own.
(2) The Groseclose/Milyo methodology doesn't allow for differential rates of productivity in producing work of interest to the media or Congress between organizations. To the extent that a think tank is better at marketing itself to the press than Congress (or vice versa), it could skew the results.
(3) Groseclose/Milyo classified the Wall Street Journal news pages as "liberal" and the RAND Corporation as "more liberal" than the ACLU, both of which seem highly dubious.
(4) According to their data, the NAACP is the third most-quoted group on the list. But stories about race relations that include a quote from an NAACP representative are unlikely to be "balanced" with quotes from another group on their list. Their quotes will often be balanced by quotes from an individual, depending on the nature of the story. However, because there are no pro-racism groups of any legitimacy (or on Groseclose and Milyo's list), such stories will be coded as having a "liberal bias."
(5) Groseclose and Milyo's discussion of the idea of bias assumes that if a reporter quotes a source, then the opinion expressed by that source is an accurate measure of the reporter's beliefs. However, a reporter may also quote a source in order to argue against them.
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/12/the_problems_wi.html
MEDIA BIAS IN FRAMING & OMISSION OF STORIES:
- Scott Alexander, "Book review: [Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s] Manufacturing Consent"
Note that only sections I & V of Scott's review deal with Chomsky& Herman's take on media bias, so you can skip the intervening sections. Like many activists & intellectuals on the radical left, C&H deny the supposed "liberal bias" of the media and claim the liberal-conservative debates are just "controlled opposition" to mask a pro-corporate & nationalist agenda set by those who control the elite institutions of the US media outlets. Chapter 1 of the book proposes 5 mechanisms of media bias: (1) The mass media is mostly owned by large corporations, (2) The mass media is dependent on advertising, (3) Journalists are dependent on sources which are mostly part of large government agencies, (4) Corporations fund “flak machines”, lobbying groups whose job it is to use the media to attack anything seen as detrimental to their interests, (5) The mass media implicitly accepts the prevailing ideology of the establishment. When the book was published in 1988, C&H saw this ideology as anti-communism, but today he thinks it's been replaced by the "War on Terror" as a way to generate fear, leading the public to accept authority.
The central chapters of C&H's book is devoted mostly to US foreign policy during the Cold War, pointing out how the US propped up friendly dictators and sponsored coups to overthrow popular socialist governments. Throughout all of this, the US media could always be counted on to condemn the victims, excuse the aggressors, and totally fail to mention our role in anything. This was rarely done by direct lies, but rather by a campaign of highlighting certain things, downplaying others, and creating false controversies to cover up the real ones. C&H compare news coverage of the “worthy victims” killed by America’s enemies to that of the “unworthy victims” killed by America’s allies. C&H also compare news coverage over Third World elections. If the election is in a US ally, even an election with clear signs of ballot stuffing or voter intimidation will be covered as a “step towards suffrage in this fledgling democracy”, but if the election is in a US enemy, it will be covered as “a sham” that people are only voting in “for fear of retribution”.
In Section V of his review, Scott points out how the 5 mechanisms C&H proposed in the book's introduction don't explain many trends we see in media coverage, especially the coverage of the evils of US foreign policy that they focus on. However, Scott notes that in their conclusions section C&H switch to a different theory - the media is a profit-seeking free market dependent on advertising & readership, and the best way to appeal to readers is to tell them they are good, their country is good, and don’t challenge or dismay them very much.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/11/book-review-manufacturing-consent/
- Conor Friedersdorf, "Why Does The American Media Get Big Stories Wrong?"
This is a response to Ron Unz's article "American Pravda" which took the US media to task for providing scant or misinformed coverage of quite a few major events, such as Soviet spies that infiltrated the U.S. government during the Cold War, the bankruptcy of Enron, the anthrax attacks of 2001, the run-up to the Iraq War, and the Vioxx scandal. Friedersdorf has several theories for these media failures:
(1) Journalists & editors of major news organizations often live and socialize in the same elite, center-left & center-right circles as the government officials they cover and thus are inclined to defer to them, especially in the realms of national security, law enforcement, and public safety. This also makes them distrust critics of the establishment elites, whether that's Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, Wikileaks, libertarians, anti-war protestors, etc.
(2) Because of business imperatives and dubious professional norms, lots of relatively well-paid journalists flock to cover the same handful of high-profile events, like White House press corps briefings, rather than going out to investigate more stories with civic value.
(3) Lots of Americans get their news from TV, and the cost of producing quality broadcast journalism, as opposed to inane interview and debate segments, the obsession with ratings, and the practice of hiring on-air "talent" for their appearance and charisma more than for their intellect all inevitably result in a poor product.
(4) American newspapers used to be one of the primary watchdog on local government, but readers aren't interested enough in watchdog journalism, especially at the state & local levels, so most papers can no longer afford to employ reporters to do this work.
(5) Business journalists have a hard time unmasking business fraud like Bernie Madoff because they have less access to private enterprises than public officials, and they have much more incentive to cheer for "ho" companies rather than question their apparent success which leads to push-back and less access.
(6) Journalistic outlets might respond more to media criticism if it was less ideological, rather than pushed by a conservative movement that is also heavily biased and often gets the facts wrong.
(7) Since the decision over which news to cover is decentralized, important stories are bound to be undercovered or missed occasionally.
DOES MEDIA BIAS FEED INTO ECHO CHAMBERS, FAKE NEWS & POST-TRUTH POLITICS?
- Art Swift, "Americans' Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low"
In Sept. 2016, Gallup polls reported that Americans' trust in the mass media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" had dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with only 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. This is down 8% from last year. Gallup began asking this question in 1972, and Americans' trust in media hit its highest point in 1976, at 72%, in the wake of widely lauded examples of investigative journalism regarding Vietnam and Watergate. After staying in the low to mid-50s through the late 1990s and into the early years of the 21st century, Americans' trust in the media has fallen slowly and steadily. It has consistently been below 50% since 2007.
Gallup found that it's mostly Republicans fueling the drop in media trust. Democrats' and independents' trust in the media has declined only marginally, with 51% of Democrats and 30% of independents expressing trust. Over the past 20 years, Democrats have generally expressed more trust than Republicans in the media, although in 2000, the two parties were most closely aligned, with 53% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans professing trust. Republicans who say they have trust in the media has plummeted to 14% from 32% a year ago. This is easily the lowest confidence among Republicans in 20 years.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx
- Amy Mitchell et al., "The Modern News Consumer - Trust and Accuracy"
Pew Research Center polls show that 18-22% of Americans have "a lot of confidence" in the information they get from professional outlets and about 14% have "a lot of confidence" in information they get from friends & family, but large majorities (77-82%) have at least "some trust" in both. Social media gets substantially lower trust scores, with only 4% saying they have "a lot of confidence" in it and 30% saying they have "some trust" in it.
Adults see the news media as performing its watchdog function, with 75% saying the media keeps politicians in check – but 74% still say that news organizations are biased. Political differences emerge here with a large majority (83%) of conservative Republicans most likely to think that news organizations are biased, but 77% of moderate Republicans & 73% of progressive Democrats also thought the media was biased. Moderate Democrats were the most confident in the news media, although 57% still saw it as biased.
Americans are more evenly divided on whether online news they get from friends and family is biased – 35% of online news consumers say the news they get from their friends and family online is one-sided; 31% say that it represents more than one side. Most, 69%, of those who say that the news from friends and family online is one-sided would prefer that they post or send things that represent a greater mix of views. 30% are OK with the one-sidedness. Conservative Republicans that say the news they get from friends and family is fairly one-sided are much more likely than others to say that this is OK (51%, compared with about a third or less of other political groups).
http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/trust-and-accuracy/
- Mehrdad Amanpour, "Who Gave Us Post-Truth, Conspiracy Culture, and the Alt-Right?"
Writing from a center-right British perspective and as a Muslim reformer, Amanpour singles out "political correctness" on the left as a reason the news media suppressed the Rotherdam sex trafficking scandal. He argues this bias also led the media to paint the migrant crisis in Europe as helpless Syrian refugees, mostly widows & orphans, rather than acknowledging it was largely young Muslim men arriving as economic migrants.
Amanpour argues that when the liberal media biases & lies are discovered it drives people who don't share their left-wing political ideology to seek out alternative sources of information on the internet. This makes many people susceptible to fake news & conspiracy theories which spread online, and the mix of anger & fear these sources spread tends to radicalize people and cause greater political polarization, leading to the rise of the Alt-Right.
http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-conspiracy-culture-and-the-alt-right/
- Nathan J. Robinson, a libertarian socialist, made a very similar argument as Amanpour in an essay entitled "The Necessity of Credibility", pointing out biased stories & mistakes that have dangerously undermined the credibility of America's mainstream media.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/12/the-necessity-of-credibility
- Katrik Hosanagar, "Blame the Echo Chamber on Facebook, But Blame Yourself, Too"
In 2015, researchers at Facebook tested how political news gets shared on their site. On a social network like Facebook, three factors influence the extent to which we see cross-cutting news. First, who our friends are and what news stories they share; second, among all the news stories shared by friends, which ones are displayed by the newsfeed algorithm; and third, which of the displayed news stories we actually click on. If the second factor is the primary driver of the echo chamber, then Facebook deserves all blame. In contrary, if the first or third factor is responsible for the echo chamber, then we have created our own echo chambers. The Facebook researchers concluded that the primary driver of the digital echo chamber is the actions of users—who we connect with online and which stories we click on— rather than the choices the newsfeed algorithm makes on our behalf.
Hosanagar notes that the study is well-designed, but disagrees with the key conclusion. He notes that while it's true that our friendship circles are often not diverse enough, Facebook could easily recommend cross-cutting articles from elsewhere in its network. That the news being shown on our feeds is from our friends is ultimately a constraint that Facebook enforces. However, he notes that even when the newsfeed algorithm shows cross-cutting content, users often do not click on it. Facebook is also trying to please its customers and keep them engaged which drives ad revenue, so they don't want to drive users away by forcing them to view content they don't want to see.
Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion in Fishtown (Sunday Edition)