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Media Bias

From Encyclopedia of Political Communication
By definition, the word bias refers to showing an unjustified favoritism toward something or someone. Thus, on a very simplistic level, media bias refers to the media exhibiting an unjustifiable favoritism as they cover the news. When the media transmit biased news reports, those reports present viewers with an inaccurate, unbalanced, and/or unfair view of the world around them. Political communication scholars have identified and examined two main types of bias in media reporting. The first type, commonly referred to as “partisan bias,” involves media reports that are slanted in favor of a particular political party. The second type of media bias is known as “structural bias.” This type of bias stems from certain “structures” (customs, reporting routines, commercial pressures, etc.) that operate within the news industry. As a result of the highly commercial and purportedly nonpartisan nature of the mainstream U.S. media, the issue of media bias surfaces in a unique way in American…
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Full text Article Media Bias

From Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
The claim of bias in the American media is a common refrain in the rhetoric of the culture wars. The expectation that news reporting should be neutral and objective developed in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The question of whether the media should be, or even…
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Full text Article Media Bias: Primary Documents

From Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
Both the left and the right complain that the media are biased against their point of view, though the criticism each side offers is somewhat different. From liberal watchdog groups, such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the criticism is typically aimed at the media's acceptance of government…
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Noam Chomsky, author of Manufacturing Consent,...
Published in 1988, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media argues that American media coverage tends to reflect and cater to the dominant political and economic interests in the country—that it is, in effect, a system of propaganda. The book…
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Full text Article Democracy and the Media

From Encyclopedia of International Media and Communications Full text Article Contents by Subject Area
I. Introduction: The Importance of Information in Democracy II. Media Use and Consequences III. Emerging Issues GLOSSARY agenda setting The power of the mass media to affect the public's beliefs about what constitutes an important problem or issue. civic journalism Reform movement seeking to…
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Full text Article Political Bias in the Media

From Encyclopedia of International Media and Communications Full text Article Contents by Subject Area
I. Political Bias and Media Influence II. In Search of Political Bias III. Political Bias in the Media and the Consequences for Political Change: The European Example IV. Conclusions GLOSSARY media system The range of information and entertainment broadcasting, print, and electronic outlets that are…
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Full text Article Spotty data and media bias delay justice for missing and murdered Indigenous people (Nov. 2021)

From The Conversation: An Independent Source of Analysis from Academic Researchers
No one knows just how many Indigenous girls or women go missing each year. There are estimates. In 2019, 8,162 Indigenous youth and 2,285 Indigenous adults were reported missing to the National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, out of a total of 609,275 cases. But crimes against Native individuals…
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Full text Article Filter Bubble

From AllSides Red Blue Dictionary
Filter bubble, a term coined by Internet activist Eli Pariser, is the intellectual isolation that can occur when technology companies use algorithms to feed users information and content that they will like, based on their interests, location, past searches, click history, and more. Companies such…
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Full text Article World

From Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
World magazine, established in 1986, is a national weekly news magazine that serves as a conservative Christian counterpart to Time and Newsweek . Its editor, Marvin Olasky, popularized the phrase “compassionate conservatism,” served as an adviser to Texas gubernatorial candidate George W. Bush in…
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Full text Article Quayle, Dan (1947–)

From Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
Vice President Dan Quayle delivers an attack on...
As the forty-fourth vice president of the United States (1989–1993), former U.S. representative and senator Dan Quayle (R-IN) personified the young conservatives of the New Right. Critics viewed him as a political lightweight; supporters argued that he was a victim of liberal media bias. The son of…
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Full text Article Silent Majority

From Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
The term “Silent Majority” was a rhetorical device first used by President Richard Nixon in a televised speech on November 3, 1969, to cast the protesters of the Vietnam War as not representative of average Americans. The context was his attempt to restore public support for his policy to seek…
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