Hostile Media Bias

Words: 1606
Pages: 7

Due to the spread of globalization and the advancement of technology, mass communications is growing like never before. News coverage surrounding events all over the world is available instantaneously to anyone with internet connection. When observing the power that media actors in the U.S. have, it is necessary to consider if this power is used to create a political bias. Although there are many evaluations of specific news outlets that display political bias in the media, accounts of hostile media phenomenon as seen in multiple research studies and my own interviews, third person perceptions, and the intergroup phenomenon indicate that the main source of political bias lies in partisans’ perception of the media. Before going into …show more content…
Seeing as Blau identifies as a liberal, it was expected when he stated that “Fox News was bias in the conservative direction” (personal communication, October 18, 2015). The fact that Blau admitted that he got a majority of his media from CNN and Google News, a news site that draws from many mainstream headlines, such as The Washington Post, USA Today, and The New York Times, was also anticipated. Furthermore, Blau declared that “A lot of what I go through is unbiased news -- it’s more just facts of what happened versus someone’s take-away from it” (October 18, …show more content…
Multiple studies show that partisans who view neutral news coverage see that coverage as bias, particularly, bias against their own views (Gunther & Liebhart, 2006). A basic component of journalism professionalism is to have accurate facts and credible sources, whether those sources and facts contribute to one political party being more correct than the other or not. But as consumers, it is important to keep in mind that neutrality and telling a story the way it is isn’t always the same thing. The truth might not always lie in the center; rather, it may lean towards the left or the