Blindspot Report, part of Ground News.Com, provides a very valuable service, one that illustrates an idea I have been pushing for decades: If you get all your information from a single news source, there is a ton you are missing.
Calling itself a detector of media bias — although blindness might be a better term — Blindspot Report selects a bunch of controversial stories, and researches the amount of play they got from outlets that are Left, Right, and Center.
“Our vision is positive coexistence where cooperative, civil debate is the norm, media is accountable, and critical thought is the baseline of our information consumption,” it says of its mission.
In reality, in big newsrooms that report on news, each story published probably passes the test of objectivity, and answers the basic journalistic questions of Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. (People who write opinion, such as columnists, are not expected to be objective, nor complete. They are paid to be subjective.)
The medium’s slant comes from how editors view the news value of any story. (In some newsrooms, racial impact is included, but that is another story.) The discussions sometimes are on journalistic merit, nothing else. Other times editors’ personal tastes and values are rolled out. For non journalists, here’s a column I did on news values that might help you understand.
If editors feel the news values are consistent with their ideas and philosophy, it gets used. If they feel it is not consistent with their values, it is discarded.
Example: The Left was all over the Russian hoax story (because they hated Donald J. Trump) while the Right either ignored it, or denied it, because they loved him.
The sides reversed positions with the Hunter Biden lap top story, which the Right exploited ferociously, while the MSM largely ignored it, because it came from the conservative New York Post and potentially put Joe Biden in a bad light.
In these cases, each side was wrong. They let politics into their news judgment. The Golden Rule should apply — treat other stories as yours would be treated.
What Blindspot indicates is how deep is the divide between Right and Left and why news consumers have so much trouble figuring out who is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
A recent edition of Blindspot, please take a look:
It starts with pieces of the Jan. 6 hearing, abortion, Ilhan Omar, then presents earlier controversies, along with polling. I was frankly shocked by some of the results. It’s one thing to intuitively know there is bias, it’s quite another to be staring the beast in its red eye, with legitimate stories being ignored. And the bias is on both sides.
It sadly illustrated the terrible effect of being locked in ideological silos — not just for the readers and viewers of news, but for the executives who make the calls.
This dichotomy helps secure the low levels of trust Americans have in news reporting, down to 36%, according to Gallup. 34% report having no trust at all, and there are differences between Democrats and Republicans. No surprises there.
As long as editors make their choices through a partisan prism, things are not likely to change.
I think each newsroom could use a court jester, like the ones some wise kings employed to scoff at the ”wisdom” of the Royal Court and to present an alternative view. A contrarian, in other words. It might make each newspaper or broadcast more balanced and more meaningful to the largest group of citizens.
More balance, less bias.
Best thing since more taste, less filling.
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