I found Monday's reading, New Content: Messages for the Masses, intriguing and informative. I have always had a vague idea of bias in news media, but have never been able to point out specific biases or political leanings in newspapers or news broadcasts. The Daily Show has pointed out some of these political leanings, but I am also aware that even a satirical news broadcast has its own biases and leanings. I don’t think that biases in the media are necessarily bad, because I know that any content generated by humans will be prone to biases no matter how hard a person tries to remain neutral. This reading reminds me of a class I’m taking right now called Native Americans in Illinois. Much of what I study in this class relates to the biases held by historians and archeologists when it comes to the study of Native Americans. Although many try their best to avoid their personal ideologies when it comes to the formation of a thesis or argument, it’s inevitable that some form of bias will exist in their work. It’s common that the bias doesn’t show itself until years later, when certain ideologies of eras come to light. Much like forming a historical argument, news media cannot avoid bias. Because I acknowledge that bias is unavoidable, I think news media has to make up for this lack of neutrality with respectability, awareness, and validity.
I think it’s interesting that people are quick to blame others for being biases but are reluctant or even incapable of pointing out biases in their own thoughts or actions. The reading pointed out this blame game: “In general, opinion research shows that perceptions of media bias correspond to one's own political bias: People in the middle see the media as generally neutral, while those on the left complain that the news is too conservative, and those on the right think the news has a left-leaning bias”. I know that I experience this phenomena often. For example, I am quick to point out levels of procrastination of my friends when they complain about bad grades, but when I receive a bad grade, I forget about my procrastination and instead blame the difficulty of a certain test or assignment. This blame game enters all aspects of human relations, and it’s up to us to take a step back from what we are inspecting and try to remain as rational and neutral as possible.
Mary,
ReplyDeleteYour posts have been a pleasure to read. I am excited that you were able to make links to your other classes. I think you are absolutely correct that we should not be afraid of bias, but rather acknowledge it and do our best to live with the consequences. This does not mean that we should just throw our hands up in the air and say, "it happens," but rather that we ought to perhaps be a bit more humble in our engagement with the world and open to the possibility that we could be wrong (at best) or at worst, that we might harm someone--and thus willing to live with those consequences. I guess, in other words, as our various authors argue, obsession with bias can function as a veil protecting us from embracing the the full responsibility of our actions; cause as you say, if being bias-free is only the illusion of our historical and geographical location, then in reality we are outsourcing our ethics to a frail consensus rather then careful deliberation, and willingness to explore the consequence of our actions, whether we are biased or not.