News With a Side of Bias

In chapter twelve of "Mass Media and American Politics" by Doris A. Graber and Johanna Dunaway there is an in depth examination of biases in news media. The authors put forth that there are three main types of bias present in news media today. These three types of bias are partisan bias, informational bias, and affective bias. While partisan bias is the form of media bias that most Americans think of when discussing this subject, research shows that affective bias and informational bias have a greater negative effect on the public and the democratic process. Most audiences can perceive partisan bias in the news; they even expect it to a certain extent making it far less effective in terms of altering the public opinion.

Informational bias is mainly a byproduct of the news media's desire to present material that they know will boost rating rather than material that will better serve the public interest. When a news organization chooses to publish muckraking political news rather than a more informative variety of political news, this is an example of informational bias. While it seems counterintuitive that the news media would actively choose to be informational bias, to operate on this framework make news easy and cheap to present and also attracts larger audiences. It becomes in the best interest of the news organization to be informational biased. Until the public shows the news media that this framework is unacceptable, they will continue to operate this way. Unfortunately, it is hardwired into the human condition that negative information is more appealing than positive information; it is a winning formula that the news media will continue to embrace.

Affective bias is perhaps more damaging to the democratic process than either of the other two major types of bias. Affective bias in represented in the content presented as well as the emotional tone in which it is presented in political news today. Affective bias can included incivility, negativity, or cynicism on the part of the presenting media. The damaging aspect of affective bias on the democratic process is it causes the public to harbor disdain for politicians and leaders. Left unchecked affective bias can add to distrust in government and the political process in general leading to low political engagement by the public. Our political leaders do not need any help to add to the public disdain, they do the job well enough on their own.