How reporters are biased

“In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.”

–Oscar Wilde

Social psychologists have confirmed that cognition is an important ingredient in how information is perceived. They have found that perceptions can be swayed relatively easily by racial stereotypes, body language, facial expressions, previous bias (1), and self deceptions (2).

While the peer-reviewed process of research – in which other researchers evaluate, critique and edit manuscripts before results are officially published – can guard against perceptual biases, perception by journalists and the public is not as easily safeguarded.

The tiers of accountability for what constitutes news are comparatively sloppy, inconsistently applied and may not even be reviewed by editors or producers prior to airing or publication.

What compounds the situation is the mindset of the journalist before he or she ever gets a story on record. The book Medical Journalism: Exposing Fact, Fiction, Fraud (3) identifies particular cognitive biases that affect a journalist’s perceptions and how he or she interprets news events. They are:

1. The eyewitness fallacy. (Eyewitnesses are notoriously inaccurate and unreliable and yet are a staple of news writing and reporting.)
2. Underutilization of statistics. (Reporters tend to rely on anecdotes, which can have a greater emotional impact than drier, less enticing statistical information.)
3. Confirmation bias. (This is the tendency to seek, select and recall data according to preexisting expectations or theories.)
4. Misperception of risk. (Dramatic events or risks are often overestimated or given more attention. Consider the example of coverage of airplane crashes, which are infrequent, versus car crashes, which are so common and statistically more deadly but are given far less prominence in the news.)
5. Misinterpretation of regression. (If one extreme has been observed in a population, people may falsely predict another, a trait that tends to guide news coverage.)
6. Illusory correlation. (The frequency with which two things are related is overestimated.)
7. Fundamental attribution error. (People are more prone to attribute a person’s behavior to his or her disposition rather than to situational factors.) (pp. 90-91)

If reporters can be easily swayed by perceptual biases, of which they might not be aware, how well equipped is the public to interpret media-filtered information?

Media effects researchers (4) have established that media do not necessarily cause changes in behavior or in setting public agendas, but instead, media can have significant influence on shaping the importance of topics and on public perception (5).

The aforementioned psychological biases explain how information can become skewed. In addition, a book by the Glasgow Media Group (6) describes three factors that determine how audiences perceive media messages:

1. Direct experience. Somebody who experiences an event firsthand will tend to discount media accounts of the event.
2. Use of logic. Independent of personal political beliefs, audience members detect differences in media accounts of the same story and may come to opposite conclusions from the media.
3. A sequence of processes that include cultural ties and values. Someone with a vested interest in a media portrayal may either be interested or reject that portrayal based on their personal beliefs (p. 285).

Perhaps more cynically, researchers Vestal and Briars summarize the situation like this:

If a person has limited knowledge and experience about a topic, then he or see cannot accurately perceive it (p. 141).

In other words, media events can be misinterpreted by audiences because of self-deception, which is a concern because an individual’s perceptual biases can hold more weight in one’s mind than otherwise verifiable information, such as scientific evidence.

Indeed, people will tend to skew new information toward their own frames of reference and will gravitate toward believing negative or familiar information over new and potentially challenging information if the new information goes against ingrained beliefs.

This is important to understand in the news reporting process because if reporters are frequently guided by cognitive and reporting practices that can enhance misinformation, it follows that there is a dubious level of understanding by audiences who consume the news.

Still, reporters are quick to assert and defend their role in society despite so much evidence that the news reporting process is inherently flawed.

* * *

This series of posts, called “And they call US spin doctors?” examines how business-as-usual journalism is fraught with potentials for misinformation, leading to the conclusion that information shapers of all stripes — in particular, reporters and their editors — are unwittingly, or not, significant players in the process of misleading the public. The series is extensively researched and uses real-life, current examples of news outlets deliberately misconstruing news to be more salacious. The series runs for six weeks.

Part 4 will outline the consequences of reporter bias. Read part 1 and part 2.

Sources

1. Vallone, R. P. Ross, L. & Lepper, M. R. (1985). Believing is seeing: Partisan perceptions of media bias. In Abelson, R. P., Frey, K. P., & Gregg, A. P. (Eds.) (2004). Experiments with people: Revelations from social psychology (pp. 41-51).
2. See Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Penguin Group.
3. The information from Medical Journalism is taken directly from the book as well as my interpretation of the author’s list of psychological biases. See the original source for the exact information: Levi, R. (2001). Medical journalism: Exposing fact, fiction, fraud. Ames, IA: Iowa University Press.
4. Bryant, J. & Zillman, D. (Eds.) (1994). Media effects: Advances in theory and research. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
5. Vestal, T. A. & Briers, G. A. (2000). Exploring knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of newspaper journalists in metropolitan markets in the United States regarding food biotechnology [Electronic version]. Journal of Agricultural Education 41(4), 134-144.
6. Philo, G. (1999). Conclusions on media audiences and message reception. In Philo G. (Ed.), Message received: Glasgow Media Group research. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.
7. Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. (2003, May 22). When media, science and public policy collide: The case of food and biotechnology, November 21, 2002. Retrieved November 24, 2003, from http://pewagbiotech.org/events/1121/
8. Federoff, N.V. & Brown, N.M. (2004) Mendel in the Kitchen: A scientist’s view of genetically modified foods. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press.
9. Vestal, T. A. & Briers, G. A. (2000). Exploring knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of newspaper journalists in metropolitan markets in the United States regarding food biotechnology [Electronic version]. Journal of Agricultural Education 41(4), 134-144.

See also:

Cialdini, R. B. (2001) Influence: Science and practice (4^th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

First Amendment Center (1997). Worlds apart: How the distance between science and journalism threatens America’s future. Retrieved November 24, 2003, from http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/about.aspx?id=6270

Hayes, D. J., Fox, J. A. & Shogren, J. F. (2002). Experts and activists: How information affects the demand for food irradiation [Electronic version]. Food Policy, 27, 185-193.

Miller, J.D., Annous, M. & Wailes, E. J. (2003). Communicating Biotechnology: Relationships between tone, issues, and terminology in U.S. print media coverage. Journal of Applied Communications, 87(3), 29-40.

Voss, M. (2003). Why reporters and editors get health coverage wrong: Health journalists need and want special training [Electronic version]. Nieman Reports: The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, 57(1), 46-48.

Whaley, S. R. & Tucker, M. (2004). The Influence of Perceived Food Risk and Source Trust on Media System Dependency. Journal of Applied Communications, 88(1), 9-27.

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