Talk:Media bias in the United States/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Potentially useful sources regarding social media censorship

Given that they seem to have been removed due to a (too) lengthy and subjective response that I wrote in conjunction earlier, here they are again. I hope that they can be useful:

David A (talk) 22:50, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Please familiarise yourself with WP:RSP. Several of these sources are extremely unreliable. Guy (help!) 09:04, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Liberal bias in journalism section

The Liberal bias in journalism doesn't mention liberal bias. It should be removed. The first sentence refers to a study of how individuals identify. That is another topic unrelated to media bias. Then this section has a sentence about bias in general and the growth of independent fact-checkers. Again nothing to do with liberal bias. I suggest the first sentence be removed and the Liberal bias in journalism heading be removed so the other two sentences are in the introductory paragraph for the Political bias section. - Shiftchange (talk) 09:53, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Standards of professional journalism

The talk page is not a forum for general discussion. Nblund talk 20:22, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Where are this so called standards of professional journalism? Is it a goest, a phantom, just fiction or does this theory realy exist in reality? And when it exists, who is controling that everybody is working proper and not just playing as if in the mood of a youngster? Where is the evidence¿? --178.197.230.175 (talk) 17:23, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

RS

This seems like a useful source and should be used appropriately. I did delete per previous editor(s) correct claim that the scholarly study of media bias was not mentioned in the article. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:02, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

References

US media versus news media in the United States

@David Tornheim: I changed the wikilink in first sentence from US media to news media in the United States since this article focuses on news media, whereas the article on US media uses a broader definition of media (as does, e.g., Media ethics); you changed the wikilink back with the edit summary "This article is not limited to news media". As far as I can see, this article is predominantly about news media, so news media in the United States is the more appropriate link. Can you provide further evidence why this is not true? I just can't see how you are correct. Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 23:00, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Media_bias_in_the_United_States#Bias_in_entertainment_media --David Tornheim (talk) 23:03, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Also, please note that I did not disagree with ALL of the edits you made in the single edit I reverted. But since you combined them all into one it makes it much harder to restore the material you had deleted. I know you also wiki-linked some articles, which is fine. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:07, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

I changed the first sentence to reflect the section you pointed out. It's a small proportion of the article, but the lead should reflect the whole article. Biogeographist (talk) 23:15, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

@Biogeographist: This edit is better. I will leave it for now and see what others say. I will need to review the entire article to see if this a more appropriate summary than the original sentence you had changed. Please see my comment immediately above about the revert. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:15, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Lead: "Many news outlets make no pretense of being unbiased"

This is vague gibberish sourced primarily to op-eds. Furthermore, this leaves readers with the unclear imprecision if this in reference to Breitbart News or the Washington Post. It does not in any way belong in the lead. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 13:33, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

The rise of the biased news source, of which, yes, Breitbart is a prime example, has been well documented, and carries biased news to a new level, so, yes, it certainly belongs in the lead. If the citations given are insufficient, then the answer is more citations, not deleting the information. We should, of course, use reliable academic sources from major publishers. Also, it should be covered in the article on media bias, not just in this article, because it is not only the US that faces this problem. Brazil, Poland, China, and many other countries are echoing the "fake news" meme, which says that anything critical of the ruling party is "fake news", and provides only "approved" new sources to its citizens. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:32, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Looking around for sources, I found that the top books on amazon.com are the books that say all media bias is due to liberals who hate Donald Trump, the only human being in the world brave enough to always tell the truth. The first book I found that came even close to being objective was this one: "Skewed: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Media Bias" by Larry Atkins. Further down, but probably even better, based on the awards it has won, is "A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking with Statistics and the Scientific Method" by Daniel J. Levitin. I bought a copy. The important thing to remember is that Wikipedia should just report the facts. We aren't going to change anybody's mind. All we can do is offer information to those people who like information. Rick Norwood (talk) 15:43, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

And, double checking the sources already referenced, it turns out that the deleted sentence has six references. Clearly more references will not satisfy those who want the sentence deleted. I plan to restore it. Then it will be up to Wikipedians to decide whether The Economist, The Age, The Times of India, politics.co.uk, and New Scientist are "primarily op-eds". If anything, the deleted sentence is too moderate to describe what is going on in the world. Rick Norwood (talk) 16:09, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

The publisher of an opinion piece doesn't stop it from being an opinion piece; eg. New York Times is an excellent source, but its opinion page is still just WP:RSOPINION and cannot be used for statements of fact. When a WP:RS labels a piece as opinion, they're saying that it represents only the opinions of the author and not their reporting (ie. it does not have the level of fact-checking that the rest of their publication gets), which requires the caveats that WP:RSOPINION applies - in-line citations, or at least a summary indicating that this is these people's opinions rather than undisputed fact. Skipping over the sources labeled as opinions, can you pull out the quotes you feel the cited text summarizes? --Aquillion (talk) 05:19, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

The only media bias in 2016 was against Trump (sourced to conservative crackpot org)?

All of the content in the '2016 election' subsection is about purported media bias against Trump, citing a "study" by one crackpot conservative organization. This should be removed immediately. Complete failure of NPOV, which calls on editors to neutrally summarize the topic. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 13:35, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Agreed that highlighting the Media Research Center's entirely predictable claims of media bias in this way fails WP:UNDUE. Also, including the quoted percentage here seems to be based on the fallacy that it must be a case of media bias if a politician's coverage is not exactly 50.0% positive and 50.0% negative. Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:51, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Well, I strongly disagree with the widespread tendency in Wikipedia to censor any information whatsoever from any organisations and news outlets that happen to be conservative, while giving even outright communist (meaning enormously more extreme) ones an automatic free pass, so I think that the information should stay. This is supposed to be an unbiased encyclopaedia, not a one-sided propaganda machine. David A (talk) 08:00, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

David A, it's not censorship, we rely on reliable independent sources and that isn't one. Criticism of Trump is not the same as bias: a dispassionate observer will definitely not conclude that Trump is anything other than deeply flawed. Guy (help!) 08:18, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

A dispassionate observer would notice that Trump is a mixed bag of good and bad points like most other people. On the one hand he is a sexist, a loudmouth, a former ruthless entrepeneur, gives tax cuts to the super-rich, and writes a lot of dumb tweets. On the other, he has caused the US economy to flourish and joblessness (including for African-Americans) is on a 75-year low, he has drastically improved the negative trade balance with (the tyrannical, imperialist, and genuine concentration camp-using) China, is trying to legalise homosexuality in all countries with death penalties for this, and is also trying to do something about the drug epidemic that is killing around a 100,000 U.S. citizens every year due to Chinese fentanyl and other hard drugs shipped over the Mexican border. He is also trying to do something about the black market economy that has resulted from many millions of illegal immigrants, but interpretation of that part is up to subjective nationalist or globalist preferences.

Anyway, my point wasn't about this, it is that Wikipedia is far more likely to disallow comparatively reliable conservative news sources such as The Daily Wire than cultural Marxist ones such as Buzzfeed and Salon, which creates a very one-sided display of reality. David A (talk) 19:28, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

David A, Trump is unique in American political history, at least since the earliest days. He is exactly the kind of person the Federalist papers describe the Electoral College as being designed to stop. We already knew, when he was "elected", that he is a liar, a cheat, a fraudster, and connected to organized crime, including the Russian mob. Under these circumstances any responsible news outlet would necessarily appear to be "biased" against him, because the facts are really bad. As to the reliability of right wing sources, read the archives at WP:RSN. I was the one who got Occupy Democrats deprecated. The unreliability of right wing media is an effect of their feedback loop. They lose share if they speak truth that contradicts conservative narrative, whereas mainstream outlets lose share if they promote agenda-based falsehood. See Network Propaganda. Guy (help!) 10:13, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Whether an individual sees something as biased to the left or the right depends on where that individual stands. Read the definition of Media Bias in the lead, and you will see it is not about what individuals think, but what reliable sources say, and about professional standards. If someone thinks that two times three is five, then they will consider every source that says that two times three is six biased. Wikipedia relies on reliable academic and professional sources. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:27, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

"Cultural Marxism"? Seriously? I suggest that we all read Cultural Marxism': a uniting theory for rightwingers who love to play the victim. And The Alt-Right’s Favorite Meme Is 100 Years Old. Doug Weller talk 07:56, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Sigh. I am not even right-wing, just not an open borders progressive globalist either. The way I had (possibly mis)understood the term it roughly means communism mixed with intersectionalism and gender studies. That is all. David A (talk) 19:01, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

So it's "enormously more extreme"? Which is how you defined communism up there. Anyway, this isn't getting anywhere, it just shows that we need to rely on sources. Doug Weller talk 19:06, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Communism has a history of genocide camps/gulags against everybody who disagree with it, so I am not a fan, no. I much prefer the type of leftism that favours high taxes that finance high quality public education and welfare that takes care of the sickly, poor, disabled, elderly, etcetera, and allows personal freedoms, including speech. I don't want all of humanity to turn into slaves. In a sane world this would not be a controversial sentiment. Anyway, we should stop now, yes. David A (talk) 19:11, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

RFC: "Many news outlets make no pretense of being unbiased"

The consensus is to remove the sentence because it is too vague.

Cunard (talk) 10:29, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Should the lead contain the following sentence?:

• Many news outlets make no pretense of being unbiased and give their readers or listeners the news they want, leading to what has been called post-truth politics.

Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:53, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

References

Survey

• No. The line is imprecise to the point of uselessness. It's also so imprecise with its "many news outlets" that it gives readers the impression that the likes of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and NY Times are the same as Breitbart News, Think Progress and the World Socialist Web Site. It also gives the impression that the whole media landscape is part of "post-truth politics". Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:58, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
• No. The lead is supposed to summarize what is in the article, with the exception of very simple introductory/contextual information. The connection between post-truth politics and the article subject is not well explained by this sentence (see, e.g., the points already mentioned by Snooganssnoogans above), it is not simple contextual information, and it is not discussed elsewhere in the article. Biogeographist (talk) 22:26, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
• No -- Rewrite / Remove citation farm -- "Many news outlets make no pretense of being unbiased" is certainly a true statement, but we should be using an academic source for this, not WP:OR. It also needs to be in the WP:BODY. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:44, 22 December 2019 (UTC) [revised 14:19, 3 January 2020 (UTC)]

As for "and give their readers or listeners the news they want". I'm not sure what that means exactly. What exactly do the readers want that the news supposedly provides? Stories about fires? Stories that support wars? Coverage that is nationalist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, etc.? Yellow journalism? Muck-raking? Stock-market updates? Weather? 24/7 "news"? Endless repetition of talking points? Disturbing images of disasters? Crimes in progress or that were solved? Whatever Trump just tweeted? Some more archival footage of how the U.S. "won" WWII? American "experts" beliefs about what is going on abroad rather than people in the country who my not tow the line on American neoliberal foreign policy? It seems to me this is so vague it has little to do with the issue of bias. Again, we need an academic source.

As for the "post-truth" part, that seems like a fad, unlikely to be accepted in academic circles--I'm not certain on that. The media has always been used as a propaganda outlet, often to justify entering into wars on flimsy reasons, e.g. Remember the Maine, Propaganda of the Spanish–American War, justification for the Mexican American War, etc. This site has a great quote:

We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy’s side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace. --Walter Lippmann

Without question propaganda has been used to get people into war long before Bush and Cheney claiming we would all be blown up in a mushroom cloud if the "evil terrorists" with WMD's were not invaded, conquered and replaced with a regime friendly to U.S. interests.

The issue of reporting some objective "truth" has been thorny since before Plato and the Allegory of the cave. I believe the vast majority of scholars of media studies (and certainly Philosophy and Epistemology) will tell you that the media has never reported "the truth", because the truth is always subjective. As for outright lying in the media, I have a feeling that was pretty common before 1990 too, e.g. above.

So, this business of "post-truth" should probably be omitted unless really solid sources--not the ones proposed above--can be found. Or it should be more like a quote of the fad jargon, just like "fake news". --David Tornheim (talk) 14:40, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• No because there's no absolute correlation between media bias and post-truth politics, therefore, adding the sentence to the lead section would incorrectly conflate the two. It might be more appropriate to place the sentence under the causes of perceptions of bias section, and then examples of these many news outlets could be given so that there's no confusion on which ones adapt the post-truth politics ideology. KyleJoan^talk 12:12, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
• No, way too broad. For one thing, some of these are opinion pieces, so it would have to be described as opinion rather than fact if we relied on them (and might be WP:UNDUE.) If we strip those out, the remaining ones are about specific issues rather than general sweeping changes. Additionally, many of the sources are not about the United States, and some of the others pieces aren't really about media bias. (They're talking about lies by leaders, rather than by the media.) --Aquillion (talk) 05:15, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
• No While the modern heavily biased news media is almost certainly related to the current political, cause or effect is not clear. This subject is too volatile to be condensed into a single sentence. Nightenbelle (talk) 22:38, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
• No. Maybe true today, but the sentence is too vague. Kacper IV (talk) 08:20, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
• I think this is an oversimplification: the real issue is the blurring of news and entertainment. Guy (help!) 11:30, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
• Yes, but... This page is about media bias. Hence the Post-truth politics must be mentioned in the lead. However, this could be rephrased. Word "some" sounds too uncertain, and the statement seems too strong. My very best wishes (talk) 16:16, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

@My very best wishes: I'm not following the inferential leap indicated by the "hence" between This page is about media bias and Post-truth politics must be mentioned in the lead. Why "must" Post-truth politics be mentioned if the lead if this page is about media bias? On the contrary: Media bias can refer to, e.g., only addressing some issues and ignoring other issues or overemphasizing some issues and underemphasizing other issues, which does not necessarily imply the appeal to emotion and complete indifference to factual rebuttal described in the lead of Post-truth politics, so there is no prima facie obligation to mention "post-truth politics" in the lead. Biogeographist (talk) 17:08, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes Post-truth politics is a consequence of the widespread perception of media bias. If we still had someone like Walter Cronkite, post-truth politics would not be a major topic of discussion. Arguments could be settled by quoting what Walter Cronkite said. There were crazies then, always have been, but the majority of Americans trusted Walter Cronkite. The reason there is nobody today that the majority of Americans trust is the widespread perception of media bias. To not mention "post-truth politics" in the lead of "Media bias in the United States" would be like not mentioning rain in the article about clouds, and claiming there was no clear connection between clouds and rain. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:07, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Note that Rick Norwood, who provided the only unqualified "yes" above, is the author of the sentence in question. His comment provides his rationale for adding the sentence, but the content of the Post-truth politics article suggests that his rationale is oversimplified. Much more could be said about this than I can say in a brief comment, but let's start with the first sentence of Rick's comment above: Post-truth politics is a consequence of the widespread perception of media bias. Causes and consequences are likely more complicated than the simple story of causality in this sentence and in the sentence in question in the article, and Rick's clouds-and-rain analogy is inappropriate for the same reason. Post-truth politics § Drivers, for example, provides a much more complicated account of causality of the phenomena labeled "post-truth politics". Regarding Walter Cronkite, perhaps I am reading too much into what Rick said, but settling arguments by quoting what Walter Cronkite said is no solution to media bias; it is merely appeal to authority. (Journalism studies scholar Matt Carlson has written some interesting things about journalistic authority and Walter Cronkite: see, e.g., his 2012 articles "Rethinking journalistic authority: Walter Cronkite and ritual in television news" and "Twilight of the television idols: collective memory, network news and the death of Walter Cronkite" (with Dan Berkowitz), and his 2017 book Journalistic Authority: Legitimating News in the Digital Era: "The authoritative air of former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite derived not merely from his reporting skills but largely from an on-air demeanor summed up in the familial nickname 'Uncle Walter.'") Rick's comment also doesn't address any of the objections in the preceding comments. Biogeographist (talk) 15:40, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out that I wrote the line in question. I had forgotten that. Rick Norwood (talk) 00:43, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

• No in addition to the reasoning given by other editors, the idea that the media should be neutral or that it has a responsibility to be neutral is a belief that only gained prominence in the US in the 20th century (see History_of_American_journalism#Political_partisanship for various sources). The proposed phrasing suggests that media partisanship is exclusively a recent phenomenon, which is inaccurate. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:03, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
• No: too vague to be useful. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:38, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
• No the current wording is too vague. I thought it meant post truth politics as a counter-movement when it's talking about an effect of the media bias. There are many effects one can point to and many of them have received more coverage in reliable sources, so why single out only this one in the lead? Dartslilly (talk) 19:03, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
• Comment: @Snooganssnoogans: It appears that it may be time to close this RfC? I see a consensus to remove the sentence from the lead. Biogeographist (talk) 13:16, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Bibliography

Ardèvol-Abreu, A., & de Zúñiga, H. G. (2017). Effects of Editorial Media Bias Perception and Media Trust on the Use of Traditional, Citizen, and Social Media News. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 94(3), 703–724.

Bicak, P. (2018). Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States. Communication Research Trends, 37(2), 36–37.

Kohut, A. (2002). Listen Up, Bias Mongers! The Audience Doesn’t Agree. Columbia Journalism Review, 40(6), 68

News Media Literacy and Perceptions of Personal and News Bias. (2018). Conference Papers -- International Communication Association, 1–29. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amhumphr (talk • contribs) 22:56, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Standard of sourcing in this article

This is a WP:BRD discussion.

I saw this WP:BOLD edit reverted here with an edit summary saying The standard for sourcing in this article is higher than MRC (MRC being an acronym for Media Research Center). I checked WP:RSP and found info there saying, There is no consensus on the reliability of Media Research Center publications, including NewsBusters. As a biased or opinionated source, their statements should be attributed. The reverted edit actually cited Politico as a source, but did mention that the cited report by Politico concerned a report by the MRC. That, it seems to me, ought to satisfy the need for attribution. I'm wondering what the standard for sourcing in this article is and where it is described. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:15, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

It's inane to have the only text in a section about the 2016 election be a "report" by a group of far-right crackpots. The same group that would consider it "media bias" if the media reports the scientific consensus on climate change. It's the lowest of low-quality content and it would be an embarrassment to Wikipedia to include it. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:25, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

WP:DUE supports this to the extent of saying "Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views.", but WP:RSP doesn't seem to support your view of MRC as "a group of far-right crackpots". I admit to not knowing much about MRC -- not even knowing whether or not they are or represent the views of a tiny minority -- I'm just going by the characterization at RSP which I quoted above. Unless MRC is considered by WP to be an unreliable source or their views are considered by WP to be insignifigant, it seems to me that the advice in DUE saying, "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." should be followed. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 21:38, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

• The idea that coverage of Trump being overwhelmingly negative amounts to "bias" is tendentious: you had two candidates, one of whom is qualified and the other is proudly and aggressively unqualified (and that's before you get into his history of sexual abuse, bankruptcies, fraud and untruths). Under those circumstances it would be astounding of the coverage were any other way. We need a reliable source that calls this "media bias" rather than properly balanced reporting based on the relative merits of the candidates. Guy (help!) 21:42, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm... A little googling turned up this other Politico report which describes a study by the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy which also analysed coverage of the 2016 general election. According to that, "both candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump 'received coverage that was overwhelmingly negative in tone and extremely light on policy.'", with Trump having been covered slightly more negatively than Clinton over the general election and Clinton more negatively than Trump over the entire campaign (that linked Politico article has figures on that). According to DUE (part of WP:NPOV), as I read it, both of these should be covered here with equal prominence since the source being cited here (Politico) would be the same for both. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:48, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Wtmitchell, or, in fact, neither, since there's no actual evidence of bias there. It is the job of the media to critique candidates. Guy (help!) 15:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I think that the above comments make the state of NPOV re this area in this article as a practical matter pretty clear. It looks to me similar to the what the state of NPOV seems to have been on the 7th floor of the FBI building c. 2016. I'm not a regular editor of this article and I'm not up for beating my head against the wall here regarding this. Other editors are invited to continue this discussion; or not. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 09:18, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

(added) A comment above says, "We need a reliable source that calls this 'media bias'". I idly googled 'trump bias' today and came up with "Trump may have cause to complain about media bias, but it won't help him in the end". Globe and Mail. April 14, 2020. That's a story by Lawrence Martin (journalist), and mentions "blatantly biased CNN and CNBC". That doesn't look like a rabidly pro-Trump source to me, but I'm no expert. The google results there also included "In the age of Trump, media bias comes into the spotlight". The Hill. May 6, 2020. That's a story by Bernard Goldberg, the author of the book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. According to his WP article, Goldberg describes himself as "a life-long liberal modeled after the 1960s ideals of the U.S. Democratic Party." The google results also included "Media shows bias as outlets pull plug on Trump's coronavirus updates". Boston Herald. March 29, 2020. That's by Adriana Cohen; there's no WP article on her, the name isn't familiar to me, and I don't know which way that newspaper is thought to lean. Since those results seemed to satisfy the observation about what was needed, I thought I would mention them. More results with various viewpoints are probably available it needed to satisfy WP:DUE. I don't want to start a firestorm with this, so I'm mentioning this here instead of in the article. I just happened to see the edit I commented on to start this discussion and I don't really have any burning desire to shape the content of this article. Other editors can pick up on these sources they might judge appropriate -- or not. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:23, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Here are some of the sources that I found and cited a while ago. I removed the ones that I remember were deemed too controversial: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] David A (talk) 14:22, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

What does "natural hierarchy" mean in these usages?

In the section called "Claims of conservative bias", it says: "While The Wall Street Journal always leaned toward conservative views supporting a natural hierarchy of wealth..." and "...Breitbart News, NewsMax, and WorldNetDaily have instead a core mission to promote a conservative or right-wing agenda, often...supporting a natural hierarchy based on race, religion, nationality, or gender." I don't know what this means and after googling around on "natural hierarchy" still couldn't figure out what is meant here, FWIW. Novellasyes (talk) 18:29, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

The idea of a natural hierarchy of wealth is the idea that the rich are rich because they are deserving of their wealth, and the poor are poor because of faults in their birth or character. For example, during the "great recession", the government bailed out Wall Street bankers, because they were naturally deserving, despite having made large numbers of bad loans, while at the same time allowing banks to foreclose on millions of homes, on the grounds that if people accepted a bad loan they deserved to suffer the consequences. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Pew Research Edit

I just wanted to say that I made an edit that greatly seems to contradict what the rest of this article says. I added a poll from The Pew Research Center. Let me know if what I did was wrong. Thank you. Scorpions13256 (talk) 01:36, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Luizpuodzius, Diogo sfreitas, RodsTR, MikutoH, and Anhaabaete:

Precisamos de um artigo desses na wiki pt 2804:14C:5BB3:A319:B46F:D67E:E2BF:F5A5 (talk) 23:30, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia is grotesquely liberal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Here's a representative extract from this article:

'In 2018, Trump "described what he called the 'fake news' of the American press as 'The Enemy of the American people'",[148][149] a phrase similar to one used by Stalin[150] and other totalitarian leaders[151] that also was reminiscent of Richard Nixon's inclusion of journalists on his "enemies list".'

The fact that this comes from an article about bias in the US media (your conclusion, naturally, is that no liberal bias exists) is beyond parody.

Wikipedia, you are absurd. Danhager (talk) 12:13, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The mess in the "Censorship of conservative content" section

This edit caught my eye today (January 29, 2021). Looking back a few edits, I see that it is apparently the latest edit in an editorial melee involving two anons and two registered editors over an assertion saying (as of this point ten days ago):

Tech companies and social media sites have been accused of censorship by some conservative groups, although there is little or no evidence to support these claims

-- giving no indication of the relevant timeframe despite MOS:DATED and citing two supporting sources (one undated but said to have been accessed on August 8, 2019 and the other dated 2012). The undated source cited in support includes the statement, "Trump has repeatedly made the case that Twitter is somehow throttling his reach, despite the fact that he has more than 60 million followers.". As I write this, President Tr4ump's term has ended, President Biden is in office, and Trump is, last I heard, banned for life on Twitter and Facebook. The editorial melee seems to be about whether the clause following the comma is supported sufficiently by the sources cited.

What a WP:POV mess. How abut trying to sort this out on the talk page instead of in an WP:edit war? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:33, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

(added) Apparently, this came into the article as

Big tech companies and social media sites have been criticized for disproportionate censorship of conservative users and their posts. In November 2013, Nathan Allen, a Ph.D. chemist and moderator on Reddit’s science forum, came under fire for banning climate change skeptics from contributing to its discussion board

in this July 31, 2019 edit. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:22, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Wtmitchell, it's weird how reluctant people are to understand that if you ban bigotry, and all the people banned for bigotry are members of the same party, the problem is with the party, not with banning bigotry. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:02, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Or maybe it stems from differing understandings of what constitutes bigotry between members of the party doing the banning and members of the party being banned and banning where such understandings by those being banned differs from the understandings by those doing the banning Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:51, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Unlikely, given the amount of racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and especially transphobic, bullshit that's still permitted. You have to try really hard to get banned by Twitter or Facebook. My personal favourite recently is Josh Hawley saying "Big Tech" was trying to silence his book, with a screen grab of the book on Amazon, posted from an iPhone, on Twitter. Guy (help! - typo?) 14:04, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

"Democrats today outnumber Republicans today by four to one"

"In 1971, Republicans made up 25.7% of all journalists. Democrats were 35.5%, and independents were 32.5%. Some 6.3% of responses were "other."

By 2014, the year of the last survey, the share of journalists identifying as Republican had shrunk to 7.1%, an 18.6 percentage point drop. From having near-parity with the journalist Republicans in the 1970s, Democrats today outnumber Republicans today by four to one."

-The American Journalist in the Digital Age: A Half-Century Perspective

This is an academic via a reputable publisher. (this is not a forum, I don't understand why certain editors with years and years of experience continue to treat the project and talk pages as forums with complete and total impunity.)2601:46:C801:B1F0:DCB9:7D2F:45A6:B333 (talk) 23:26, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

"liberal bias" section lacks evidence

The section on liberal bias is quite odd. The main two arguments are

1. The media (whom Donald Trump attacked) were negative about Donald Trump (just as the media in the rest of the world), and that Obama was approved of more than Trump (because he was cleaning up the GFC, instead of giving himself tax cuts).
2. Trump supporters believe the media is biased more than Trump detractors (because he told them that it is).

The other argument for bias is the fact that there are more registered Democrats among journalists than Republicans (because a journalist's job is to look for cause-and-effect, and the effects of Republican party policies are bad for the country).

The claims are not factually incorrect and so I haven't removed them, but the insinuation of bias is completely incorrect. Does Wikipedia have a policy on misleading articles? LachlanA (talk) 03:48, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

That news were, on average, more critical of Trump than Obama doesn't equate to "liberal bias" and I'd be curious to see high quality/academic sources which make that leap. This article should be about bias of the media in general, not specific instances when the media was biased. There's so much written about media bias in the United States that the selection of these particular examples is indeed odd.

And yes, regardless of who's being polled, what voters say about the media being biased -- especially in the context of politics -- should be clearly separated from any material that actually studies media bias. I could even see beliefs about media bias being its own article (not that I would attempt such a thing, which would be even more of a lightning rod than this one). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:23, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Note in original npr article: “While some may be tempted to read this as evidence of media bias, the leader of Pew's Journalism Project said that isn't a conclusion one can draw from the study.”

Comparison to International media

Surely there should be a section on American media when compared to the rest of the world's media landscape, as most American media is distinctively more conservative than the international centre. For example CNN would probably be centre right/right in the rest of the developed world and Fox News would certainly be far right. Overall, what Americans consider the centre is much more conservative and right wing than what is considered the centre in the rest of the world, and this should probably be identified in the article. Timothythedog (talk) 02:51, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Well, speaking as a Swedish likely somewhat conservative leftist social-democrat, I disagree with labelling CNN as centre right, and Fox News as far right by our standards, if one actually bothers to watch them rather than going by what other people (usually propagandists) say. In addition, I also much prefer to keep cultural (progressive and conservative) values separate from economic (socialism versus capitalism) areas. I would personally label CNN as very culturally progressive and economic centrist, for example. David A (talk) 06:54, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm a Swede too and I share that experience. CNN is very culturally progressive. Although I do find Fox News to be fairly centrist most of the time, they do have some hosts on the right of center like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity but that's about it. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 19:29, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@Timothythedog: what sources meeting WP:RS would you like to use? We can't make the comparison ourselves. Doug Weller talk 14:32, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

I can only speak for myself but I think there needs to be a broader discussion with international participants about allowing Fox News as a more or less reliable source for politics again. They are the most prominent source that isn't also (relative to Swedish media) on the left. As far as I can tell, there are little to no prominent American news sources on the right to balance things out, besides the occasional right-biased reporting from Fox News. For all their flaws they still seem to share the opinions of a decent chunk of the international audience. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 19:29, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Deceptive characterization of research in "Politics" section?

Under "Politics" -> "Liberal" it says "A 2020 study in Science Advances found no evidence of a liberal media bias in which stories journalists chose to cover in their reporting.", sourced from article reference #92. I believe this mischaracterizes the content of the paper, wherein it states "In short, journalists are overwhelmingly liberal/Democrats, and many journalists appear to be far to the left of the average American. However, being liberal and expressing liberal gatekeeping bias in the choice of news to cover are clearly two different things.". So the answer to the specific question of "Is there liberal media bias in which news stories political journalists choose to cover?" is no.

But the first question posed in the abstract is "Is the media biased against conservatives?" and further down in the paper under "Results" they state "In short, journalists are overwhelmingly liberal/Democrats, and many journalists appear to be far to the left of the average American. However, being liberal and expressing liberal gatekeeping bias in the choice of news to cover are clearly two different things. After all, journalists state that they strongly value objectivity in reporting the news (26). Does the strong ideological skew that we observe actually influence the potential news that journalists choose to cover?". To me the good-faith interpretation of that paragraph is that there is an overwhelming bias in their political alignment, but the aim of the study is just to answer whether it has a statistically significant effect on which topics to cover.

So, while the study finds the final conclusion to be "There is no liberal media bias in which news stories political journalists choose to cover", the intermediate results are very relevant to the article. I believe those should be included in the article to give a fair representation of the full results of the study, instead of just quoting the title of the paper. It's a decent amount of research and to summarize it in a single sentence isn't fair to the work put into it by Hassell et al.

My suggestion is to at least insert the quote "In short, journalists are overwhelmingly liberal/Democrats, and many journalists appear to be far to the left of the average American. However, being liberal and expressing liberal gatekeeping bias in the choice of news to cover are clearly two different things.", but ideally there should be a complete rework of the existing statement which is reasonably assumed to be supported by the paper. It cannot be adequately summarized in an objective manner by a single sentence. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 11:53, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

SinglePorpoiseAccount assumes that if a person is liberal, it must be because they are biased. If a person believes the earth is round, is that bias? As conservatives become increasingly anti-intellectual, all educated people become increasingly liberal, not just journalists. According to Pew Research 44% of college graduates are liberal, while only 29% are conservative. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/ From this data, conservatives conclude that college education is bad. Another way of looking at the same data is that conservatism is increasingly hard for intellectuals to swallow, especially the anti-vax, global warming is a hoax, pro-Trump faction. In any case, whichever side you are on, as a general rule holding a particular belief is not proof of bias. It may just be that the belief you hold is correct. Example: I am not biased when I say that 2 + 2 = 4.

The subject of this Wikipedia article is bias. SinglePorpoiseAccount argues that if reporters are liberal, it must be due to bias. But it may only be due to the fact that most reporters are college educated. Wikipedia favors college education. "Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Introduction_to_referencing_with_Wiki_Markup/4 So, if education is bad, then Wikipedia is bad, and you should go to Conservapedia for the information you want.Rick Norwood (talk) 18:31, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

What are you talking about? None of what you just said appears to have any relation to what I said. Also, why are you talking about me over my head in third person and why are you not signing your comments? Please refer to WP:TPNO SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 16:17, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I apologize for forgetting to sign my comment.Rick Norwood (talk) 18:32, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

You said, "To me the good-faith interpretation of that paragraph is that there is an overwhelming bias in their political alignment"

I said, "SinglePorpoiseAccount assumes that if a person is liberal, it must be because they are biased" This seems to me a direct response to what you said. You claim it has no relation to what you said.Rick Norwood (talk) 18:35, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

That's at least not what I meant, I meant that my interpretation is that there is an overwhelming bias in which party they align with. The result of that on the reporting itself is beyond the scope of the paper, so to make that claim it would have to be sourced from elsewhere. The takeaway is simply that liberal biased perspectives make up a majority of the reporters examined for the paper. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 22:56, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Much effort is spent investigating the politics of individual journalists (or of journalists as a whole) in order to cast doubt on the neutrality/accuracy of their reporting, operating under the assumption that someone with X bias cannot present information in an unbiased way. To the extent this article covers both the politics of those involved (journalists, owners, etc.) it should be very clearly separated from conclusions about bias in the content. It seems like this proposal is trying to weaken the actual conclusions about media bias (the content) by reaching back into the paper for other conclusions. I don't think there's anything wrong with both claims, but disagree with combining them so that one begs the question of the other. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:04, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

As far as I can tell the paper makes no distinction of the quality or bias of the way the news articles are written as a result of their personal bias. They used a fairly rigorous method of determining their bias though, which is an intermediate result that might be of use to others. It's an interesting read and I imagine most people would skim over that part since it's mentioned early under the "Results" heading. Basically, it's an intermediate result which by itself is well supported and it's of significance to the article it's referenced from. SinglePorpoiseAccount (talk) 22:56, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

This still assumes that the only reason a person can be liberal is because they are biased. The paper shows that newsmen are liberal. It does not show whether those liberal views are held because of reason and evidence or because of unreason and bias. Rick Norwood (talk) 11:22, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Sources on conservative bias.

Since an IP has repeatedly objected to the following sources from this edit, let's go over them one by one. Two of them (which are, alone, sufficient to cite everything in the contested section) are clearly WP:RSes that support what they're used to cite:

• This is a book by multiple academic experts, published by Harvard university press. Note that this source alone is sufficient to cite the entire disputed section. This is the most heavily-used source in the disputed section (as it should be, since it is of the highest quality); I don't see any particular reason to remove it. It's clearly better than most of the other sources in the article, since it's a well-regarded scholarly work by multiple academic experts.

• Columbia Journalism Review, a highly-respected source (and this was already cited elsewhere in the article; for some reason the IP only removed it here.)

There are two more that pass WP:RS but which, when I inspected them more closely, are probably not ideal sources for what they were actually used to cite; I've replaced them with academic sources that support the sentence in question, though the main source is still Benkler, above:

• The Nashville Post (name / link was wrong in the article.) I'm not seeing any reason to doubt it as a source, nor is there any indication that it is "partisan press". However, it's also very specifically about just one incident, so I'm not sure how useful it is for the broad statement it was citing.

• The Irish Independent. The IP called out this source but I am not understanding why. (Again, name was wrong in the citation for some reason, but that's not a reason to reject it as a source.) It's a bit broader than the previous one but still not really at the level that's ideal for a statement of this nature, so I replaced it.

There are three sources that are plainly not usable and which I dropped, but since they were used to cite something that was already overcited and the remaining sources support the text, it's not sufficient to justify removing the entire section:

• The Fox Effect. Reputable publisher, but it's written by non-experts working for an advocacy group. We could possibly use it for opinion but since we have better sources I don't see why we need to. Dropped.

• A Forbes contributor piece. This one is legitimately not usable as a source in this way per WP:FORBESCON.

• Self-published, not usable.

Those cover just about everything. I'll fix the errors I noted, and restore the text without the problematic sources - by my reading the IP just saw one of the last three sources, objected to those, and tossed the baby out with the bathwater. --Aquillion (talk) 09:32, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

References

The section on the WSJ favouring a "natural hierarchy of wealth", is editorialising with none of the sources provided, stating such a misinterpretation of conclusion. Additionally, the source that covers WSJ's editorial right-ward bias, is research on post-Murdoch WSJ, and doesn't justify it being framed as having always being a conservative journal, nor does it discuss it's mainstream news reporting. This is misleading, as the section is framing WSJ reporting as conservative, when the source only deals with its editorial page. I'm happy with the quality of sources used to replace the original sources, and have just removed the sections on the WSJ. -- 110.145.81.134

natural hierarchy

The idea that conservatives believe in a natural hierarchy was removed with a comment that there is no such thing as a natural hierarchy. Actually, there is a natural hierarchy of predator and prey. But I don't object to the edit, since the conservative hierarchy is not "natural" in that sense. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:05, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lorenzogut.

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 January 2020 and 10 March 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dhocine. Peer reviewers: Invokerishard.

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