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Structural Biases in Journalism

Commercial Bias -- A lot of news media outlets are free to the public. It is a thing of the past to go to a stand and buy a newspaper or wait for the paper boy to bring you the morning paper. The internet has made reading the news much easier — websites for magazine and journals, live news being streamed, and constant updates on all kinds of news. Because news has become so much more accessible and we are no longer paying to receive our news, for the most part, the news outlets still need to find a way to make a profit. New outlets make their money by selling their readers, or viewers, to advertisers. In order to get more money from advertisers and get better advertisements, these outlets need to put out interesting stories that draw in a lot of readers. This requires the outlets to write about all the things going wrong in the world because, much like in the bad news bias and the narrative bias, peace and happiness is boring.

Temporal Bias -- The temporal bias in journalism relates to being new and fresh. While there is often little major news to be covered in a particular area, journalists will sometimes try to come up with stories which give off the impression of being novel in an effort to avoid repeating what has already been said. As such, journalists find themselves competing with one another in order to be the first one who reports on a certain topic before it has been talked about too much within the news world. This has the potential to lead to news being reported on which does not necessarily impact the lives of the audience of the piece of news.

Visual Bias -- Visual Bias falls under medias such as television, as well as newspaper formats. This bias comes from use of visuals to depict news. More often than not, pairing news with visuals create the attention that the story might need, or more commonly, the drama. This can shift the attention away from stories that do not have a visual representation. It has been explained that visual biases dominate when compared to other platforms as described in the journal, Biases in Visual, Auditory, and Audiovisual Perception of Space, by Brian Odegaard, David R. Wozny, Ladan Shams. It is easy to see how a visual representation of a news story, or most comparable platforms, would be more appealing, therefore being more persuasive and the dominant when it comes to media. People would rather see images and watch a news story unfold rather than reading or listening to it on other platforms such as radio and articles.

Bad News Bias -- In this bias, bad news, is good news. Through Bad News Bias, the highlight of news in a more negative form, creates more attention. This also brings in attention to these stories as building a more negative and even a more dangerous representation of reality, that may or may not even be properly presented in media. The relation to a ‘train wreck’ people can’t stop watching. The negative influences of a bad news story can be incorrect framing of a story along with more dramatic aspect that draws people into the story. Additionally, the effects of creating fear surrounding the bad news biased stories, shifts the population's view on something based off of the media's wants and needs for the population's support. As told by Hara Estroff Marano in her article The Bad News Bias, spoke on an Ohio State University psychologist John T. Cacioppo who showed people positive, negative, and neutral images, and the brain responded stronger to the negative images. This can link to political figures, political views, specific races/groups, and big issues pertaining to a particular population. The more negative the media is, the more likely it is to be talked about.

Narrative Bias -- The narrative bias has to do with the desire to be a storyteller as a journalist and an attempt to create a cause-effect relationship with a clear beginning, middle and end. The way this bias works is similar to that of the plotline of a novel. Stories are told usually with a clear beginning, middle and end, a cause-effect relationship and some drama thrown in the mix. However, there are many events happening in society which do not always have a clear beginning, middle and end. There are many stories still developing without a clear resolution. However, many journalists feel the need to give readers, viewers or listeners something that will either draw in attention and/or give some sort of clear story. There is also a chance that drama will be included in a story just to have an entertainment factor within it to retain a captive audience. Often, drama is shown in a story through the inclusion of some sort of controversial topic. However, this does have the potential to lead the audience into gaining the incorrect perception of an event, issue or person.

Status Quo Bias -- The thought behind this bias is that the United States’ government can do no wrong; therefore, why write about the government’s wrongdoings? In the 1910s, a lot of controversy surrounded the women’s suffrage movement. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns began picketing outside the White House to push the President, Woodrow Wilson, and Democratic senators to vote in favor of this amendment. Most people had no issue with the pickets when these women first started. However, when the women continued to picket after the President had joined World War 1, many people became very angry with these women. People were enraged that these women were picketing a wartime President and only after this did these women start getting arrested for their peaceful protests. Not once did the press say that there was something wrong with the way these women were being treated, because these women were attacking the American government. The idea that our government is the best causes points of views that challenge that idea to be ignored.

Fairness Bias -- Fairness bias creates opportunities to see both sides. As media strives to provide all the information possible to the consumers, it only makes sense to provide opposing or alternative information to the same story. This is seen strongly in politics, sports, or any other interactions that may have an opposing side. Showing side A, without considering side B creates an unfair advantage to side A, and a disadvantage to side B. This also raises the idea that we are playing too far into the idea of “fairness” and not focusing enough on factual evidence. In most stories when it is opinion based, fairness bias has its place, but on factual topics that may have a side to stand on, fairness bias doesn’t play much into effect.

Expediency Bias -- Due to the changes journalism such as 24-hour news and quick deadlines, one of the biases found in this profession is the expediency bias. One of the causes of this bias is the demand for quick news due to technological advances such as social media and the internet, the expediency bias discusses how many journalists turn to sources who are readily and easily available to be interviewed and included for stories. Essentially, the expediency has to do with convenience of sources. An expectation of journalists is that there is an inclusion of outside sources who have dealt with the subject matter of the report firsthand. When a journalist feels overwhelmed with approaching deadlines of news articles, they may find that they are speaking with sources who are easy to reach at a moment’s notice rather than finding new sources who are less well-known.

Glory Bias -- This bias is observed much more with journalists in television. Often times news reporters will put themselves into the stories they are covering as a way to receive more recognition. When the reporters do this, they create a veil that causes readers or viewers to see them as knowledgeable. However, when reporters do this, it makes them look like they are just chasing after the stories that create the biggest controversy or the biggest following because, if they do that, they receive the most recognition. When covering these stories they often become a big spectacle with intense music and video montages to introduce a segment on a specific news story that may be warranting a lot of attention. When reporters create these specials, where they’ve spent up to an hour picking apart a particular news story, they show us all the interviews they’ve done, given us all the information they’ve received, and then they tells us their verdict on this specific story. When this happens it makes it seem like this reporter has solved this story and it is thanks to them that we have all this information. It gives them glory and recognition for surfacing this information for the public, which causes reporters to stay away from the smaller stories and lean more towards covering stories with a lot of controversy or coverage.

References

1915-1917: Formation of the National Women's Party and Picketing the White House. (n.d.). [timeline]. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/women-protest/history3.html.

Media/Political Bias. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://rhetorica.net/bias.htm.

Odegaard, B., Wozny, D. R., & Shams, L. (December 08, 2015). Biases in Visual, Auditory, and Audiovisual Perception of Space. Plos Computational Biology, 11, 12.) Meganschuessler (talk) 17:24, 6 December 2017 (UTC)