The Academical Village All Things Political of Dr. David Garrison 


Photo  Media Influence & Bias
"I think no one knows my politics." --ABC News left anchor Diane Sawyer

Critical questions for detecting bias

  1. What is the author's / speaker's socio-political position? With what social, political, or professional groups is the speaker identified?
  2. Does the speaker have anything to gain personally from delivering the message?
  3. Who is paying for the message? Where does the message appear? What is the bias of the medium? Who stands to gain?
  4. What sources does the speaker use, and how credible are they? Does the speaker cite statistics? If so, how were the data gathered, who gathered the data, and are the data being presented fully?
  5. How does the speaker present arguments? Is the message one-sided, or does it include alternative points of view? Does the speaker fairly present alternative arguments? Does the speaker ignore obviously conflicting arguments?
  6. If the message includes alternative points of view, how are those views characterized? Does the speaker use positive words and images to describe his/her point of view and negative words and images to describe other points of view? Does the speaker ascribe positive motivations to his/her point of view and negative motivations to alternative points of view?

Frida Ghitis, "War, the Small Screen, and the Big Picture," Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2006.
 Shankar Vedantam, "Two Views of the Same News Find Opposite Biases," Washington Post, July 24, 2006, A02.
Shankar Vedantam, "How the Brain Helps Partisans Admit No Gray," Washington Post, July 31, 2006, A02.
Editorial Board, "This Editorial Is Biased, "Austin American-Statesman, August 2, 2006
 The New York Times & Los Angeles Times Editors Op-Ed, Dean Baquet & Bill Keller, "When Do We Publish A Secret," New York Times, July 1, 2006 

When Moore means less Oct 6th 2009 From Economist.com
Michael Moore's new film about capitalism scores some points, yet misses the point

Capitalism never seems to get a balanced treatment in the movies, whether documentary or fiction. A previous documentary that focused on it, “The Corporation”, argued that capitalism’s demand for profit turned companies into psychopaths. In the 1980s the villainous protagonist of “Wall Street”, Gordon Gekko, argued that “greed is good”; nobody expects the forthcoming sequel to be any more nuanced. And although there is apparently a movie in the works of Ayn Rand’s pro-capitalist novel “Atlas Shrugged”, that is unlikely to provide the sort of balanced analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism, and of how it might be improved, that is now so badly needed.

 
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