Lecture outline, Week Five. In the ideal social problems process after Step

Lecture outline, Week Five.

In the ideal social problems process after Step 1: Activists or experts draw attention to the problem, comes Step 2: The media makes the larger public aware of the problem.

Questions: Is the news objective or biased? Does it just report the news or also advance a particular political viewpoint? Potential sources of bias:

Reporters’ personal biases.

Conventions or norms of reporting.

The organization of the media.

Source of bias? Reporters’ personal biases.

Reporters in mainstream news outlets, also called the professional media or the legacy media, tend to have similar political opinions to those of college-educated, urban Americans, so they are somewhat more liberal than Americans overall. But, reporters are deeply committed to their profession, which requires that they follow rules designed to maximize objective reporting:

reporting both sides of the issue

relying on official sources

seeking confirmation for every statement

using a byline

disclosing their personal connection to the issue

2. Source of bias? Other conventions or norms of reporting in the mainstream media. If the norms of objective reporting lead reporters to report news with little bias, are there other conventions or norms that do lead to bias? Joel Best talks about two dynamics.

a) Reporters are eager for trends, epidemics, waves: one or two isolated events can easily be interpreted as a larger pattern.

b) Reporters turn incidents into instances: they explain events in terms of larger social problems.

3. Source of bias? The organization of the news as an industry

The industry of news production has developed in a way that has built bias into the system. Exaggeration is profitable.

While reporting the facts should lead us to agree across political divisions, today, news deepens political divisions. Why?

Trend 1: The blurring line between political news and political commentary

The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 removed the requirement that political opinions on radio and television be balanced.

Cable stations could make a profit by appealing to small audiences and emphasizing political controversy.

Radio and television “outrage” commentary is partisan, extreme, angry, often exaggerated, and inflammatory

Commentators are more interested in promoting a point of view than in reporting the news.

Trend 2: To stay in business, all news media have shifted from an emphasis on informing audiences to an emphasis on engaging them. This is especially true of social media.

Most Americans get their news from tablets, laptops, or other digital devices. 42 percent of young people get their news from social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Facebook’s news feed algorithm works like an editor. It provides news items that are similar to the items you have liked in the past.

“Headline packaging.” For many users, the headline itself becomes the story, even if it doesn’t resemble the original factual event.

Rose-Stockwell: “People prefer to click, comment, and share the things that make them feel good — and stories that confirm your beliefs (rather than challenge your beliefs) feel good.”

4. Digital media and fake news

News that is intentionally false, often spread by way of digital media. There has always been fake news. But there is more of it, there are more sources for it, and it is more difficult to distinguish from real news.

A 2018 study of 126,00 Twitter cascades found that a story flagged as false by fact-checking sites typically reaches 1,500 people six times more quickly than a true story does. False news is 70% more likely to be retweeted than true news.

Why do people believe fake news?

One, because it is novel and emotion-inspiring. Responses to false stories used words of surprise and disgust. Responses to true stories used words of sadness and trust.

Two, because it is often spread on social media by people readers trust.

5. As a consequence of these trends:

We may not be getting the news we need.

We may be getting news that is wrong.

6. What news should you trust? Tips on reading news critically

Trust news stories more that: a)have a byline; b)provide evidence to support the writer’s claims; c)present more than one viewpoint.

Trust news sources more that a)formally correct mistakes; b)are transparent about their funding sources; c)have reporters.

Use fact-checking sites, such as FactCheck.org; Snopes.com; politifact.org.

7. Another problem, though: Many Americans do not trust fact-checkers.

8. Lessons from the operation of the media for understanding social problems:

Media bias results less from reporters’ personal beliefs than it does from standard conventions of reporting and from the organization of the media industry.

The media’s tendency to treat incidents as instances leads to a perception of social problems as more serious and widespread than they are.

Changes in the organization of the media led to a) politically partisan, extreme, “outrage” commentary, b) news that engages more than it informs.

The result is that Americans distrust the news and read stories to confirm their beliefs not to arrive at them.

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