Whence comes media bias?

Jeffrey Friedman keys off of Daniel Okrent's media bias series (Okrent is the ombudsman for the NY Times) to discuss where modern media bias comes from. (Many may not be aware that American media were much more partisan and biased in the 1800's.) The problem with modern bias, Friedman says, is that it's much more insidious than ancient bias.

At the end of the 19th century, growing government power placed more and more complicated questions, such as those raised by economic regulation, onto the political agenda. This required the electorate to master more and more information in order to vote intelligently. Not coincidentally, at the same time the overtly partisan newspapers of the 19th century were replaced by media that, following the lead of the New York Times, prided themselves on being fair to all "legitimate" points of view. The new, nonpartisan media assured conscientious voters that they could understand the complexities of modern politics by trusting journalists to present, as part of "all the news that's fit to print," both (1) a balanced account of various partisan arguments, and (2) an objective account of "the facts," which would allow voters to decide which partisan claims are correct.

Did you spot the problem?

The media, following the Times' lead, appointed themselves the gatekeepers of information. No longer would the reader have to plow through the blatantly partisan opinions of "old" journalism. The Times would now decide what news was "legitimate" and what was not. Perhaps the founders of modern journalism really were idealists and believed that "objective" journalism was not only desirable but possible. (If so, they fooled not only their readers but themselves.)

In the new model of journalism, reporters need to put their views into the mouths of experts so they can appear to be taking adequate account of the world's complexity. But the unspoken assumption behind the media's complacent invocation of expertise is, in reality, that the facts of the political world, when not immediately plain to the reporter, are at least clear to people who make a career of studying them: people who are "experts." These specialists need only relay their "findings" to the journalist-who, in turn, needs only report them to the public-for the public to gain a clear understanding of the world.

Where do these experts come from? Many come from academe, which, as Friedman points out, is not exactly unbiased.

There is every reason to think that experts aren't capable of such inhuman objectivity. Consider the unmentioned elephant in Okrent's room: the legions of pedigreed academic experts quoted ad nauseam in the media, but who work for no interest group. Daniel Klein of UC Santa Clara has shown that Democrats outnumber Republicans in the humanities and social sciences by roughly seven to one, so it shouldn't be surprising that the faculties of Harvard and the University of California were the biggest group donors to the Kerry campaign. But measures of Democratic partisanship just scratch the surface, since a professor doesn't have to advocate voting Democratic in order to inculcate ideas that lead to such a vote as a matter of logic.

It gets worse. Modern reporters almost all have college degrees. This means that they tend to have gotten their interpretive lenses from the very type of professor they end up quoting once they become journalists. This is a point that conservative media-bias critics are reluctant to acknowledge, for it implies that the left-wing views professors teach aren't so contrary to common sense that their students are immune to being influenced by them. But that's the way it is, especially when what the professors teach is assumptions rather than conclusions. Biased professors don't have to deliberately teach a lopsided view of the world for their students to absorb a lopsided bias. All the professors have to do is teach the world as they honestly see it — colored by their own, often-unrecognized ideological lenses.

It's easier for me to recognize this bias because my lens is different from theirs. No less biased, mind you, and my readers should always keep that in mind. By pointing out the bias I see, I help the reader sort through the information and determine what, in their judgment makes the most sense. As Friedman concludes, however, it isn't blatant bias we should be concerned about.

It's not lying experts who should worry us, any more than we should fear a vast left-wing conspiracy of journalists deliberately scheming to spread liberal propaganda. The more insidious problem is experts who tell us how they think the world "undeniably" is -- and the journalists who credulously quote experts' opinions as anything more than that.

A great man I once knew taught me an axiom that has guided me ever since - sincerity is no guarantee of truth.