Questions like "Are the media liberal?" do not spring from the vacuum, nor do they return there once answered. When people answer this question, the conclusion they come to affects and is affected by the rest of their ideology. Oftentimes, people who are liberal see the media as conservative, because whatever points of agreement lie between them go unnoticed. Just as often, conservatives see the media as liberal, for the same mechanism. For most people, their particular political inclinations are strengthened by their answer, for the natural reaction to believing that the media are biased in a particular direction is to be on your guard against that bias. We become defensive in the face of what we perceive to be an opposition that surrounds us with its messages. We "protect" ourselves by seeking media that are in closer agreement to our own beliefs- be it The Nation or The National Review.
We seek the answer to this question not only for its own truth, but to become better truth-seekers. But, like so many feedback mechanisms, the initial conditions are important to the equilibrium we eventually reach. These initial conditions are formed, not only by the sum total of our individual political positions, but also by our assumptions of what the characteristics of the political spectrum and the media itself are.
I make no statement as to how common these assumptions are or whether they are true or not. I mean only to call attention to them, so that you may ask yourself whether you believe them or not.
- We call a political position "political" because there is disagreement on the subject between liberals and conservatives. Anything that liberals and conservatives agree on is true and no longer in the sphere of debate.
- All of the various media are similar enough that we can use one word, "media", to refer to them all, and discuss their collective bias.
- The real bias in the media comes from the college-educated journalists, who through their word choices put an emotive slant on the story.
- The real bias in the media comes from the money-driven corporations that control them, who through their choices of what stories to cover can frame the debate.
- The bias is intentional and politically motivated.
- Journalists get their information from work in the field. They are there as the story happens. They double-check their sources.
- The free market system acts as a corrective measure against both omission and commission.
There are more assumptions out there- too many to possibly state here. The reader is invited to look for them and understand them before continuing. This node is long enough that you need not post them here.
Regardless of the conclusion we come to, there are ways that we as individuals can protect ourselves from the problem of biased sources.
First, we must recognise that hiding within the protective blanket of media that share our biases can introduce a systematic error into our judgements just as pernicious as any of the general media at large. We should take a page from the book of the scientist- or, at least, the statistician- and seek a large sample of data with which to judge. To avoid selection bias, we should get information from sources as diverse as possible. The Nation and The National Review, however different they are, are both magazines published in America by large organizations. There are other outlets that do not share these similarities, and we would do well to expand our data set by including these- from low-tech zines to web sites from nonprofit organizations based in other countries.