Media bias can be defined as the partiality, unfairness or favoritism of the news producers and the journalists within the mass media, with regards to the selected stories and events which are reported and the manner in which they are covered. This term is a widespread or pervasive bias which breaches the standards of journalism, instead of providing the perspective of an independent unbiased journalist. During the US Presidential elections of 2016, Donald Trump stated that the media poisons the mind of the American voter (Reilly, 2016). The media is indeed biased against some of the politicians, and this is not just true for Trump. And such behavior of media houses breach the media ethics of being unbiased and presenting true reporting. In the following parts, the issue of political bias has been highlighted, with a reference to different politicians.
A computer algorithm was used to analyze this media bias by The Washington Post, as this is a common thing being used in the social scientists work, where there is a huge set of data texts. The algorithm for each article was identified with each adjective and then on a scale of most negative to most positive, i.e., ranging from between -1.0 to +1.0 was used. The initial thing which came forward in this analysis was the number of times in which Trump’s name was flashed in the headlines. In comparison to Clinton, Trump saw double the number of times headline mentions. Even though during the course of elections this data increased, but the mention of Trump always increased greater, in comparison to that of Clinton (Sides, 2016).
When an attempt was made to analyze if one of the candidates was getting a worse coverage in comparison to the other, it was revealed that the answer differed with time. For instance, when Trump mocked a disabled New York Times reporter or when he suggested that was a requirement for the national database of the Muslim citizens, his coverage took a hit. Similarly, Clinton’s coverage suffered in early July 2016, when the scandal related to her private emails came to light. Even though Clinton’s coverage went up positively, Trump’s coverage continued to show a negative trend (Sides, 2016).
There was also a difference in the media outlets covering each candidate. So, the ones who were considered generally as liberal media, supported Clinton in a more favorable manner; and the conservative media houses fenced Trump. Media houses like Weekly Standard and Fox News were favorable towards Trump and Politico, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Slate were favorable towards Clinton (Sides, 2016).
This was not the only analysis done towards the biasness of the media houses. A poll was also conducted by Politico Magazine, in order to highlight the biasness towards the conservatives and Trump by the media houses (Politico, 2017). In a survey conducted with sixty three members of the press corps of the White House, different percentages of the republicans (5%), democrats (16%), independents (37%) and the ones not registered to vote (37%) were analyzed. They viewed that 45% of the media coverage was biased towards Trump and only 2% believed that the bias favored Trump (Investors, 2017).
Even after Trump became a President, this biasness continued. President Trump also communicated his sadness over the republicans who did not do anything to protect their president (The Week, 2017). Not only Donald Trump, but his children also had to face the wrath of media houses. Ivanka Trump, along with his wife Melania Trump had been constantly insulted by the media people, even when they do not deserve it. This is the reason why Trump criticizes the media and Trump repeatedly stated that they were guilty. Trump has stated that the skewed media treats him in a negated manner (Lewis, 2016). Trump has also stated that he had been a target of record setting bad treatment since the time the presidential campaign was started (Nelson, 2016). Trump has also been put in a negated image by media houses when he decided to pull out of the Paris climate agreement. Without going through the reasons for it, or looking behind the rationale for pulling out of this agreement, he was bashed by the media as being insensitive towards the changing climate. This was also covered being good news for China, even without highlighting that this would save the environment movement itself (Aleem, 2017). This was due to the Paris deal being an unenforceable and amorphous climate deal (Novak, 2017).
Donald Trump is not the only politician who has faced the wrath of media bias. In one of the reports published in The Guardian, it was stated by the BBC Broadcaster, David Dimbleby, that the media had been biased towards Jeremy Corbyn, which was being treated in an unfair manner by the press. He stated that the election was becoming odd owing to the biasness of media as the conservative story was depicting Theresa May as being the brand leader, which led to the supporters being interested in this brand, instead of the main person who brought the message across, i.e., Corbyn (Weaver, 2017). As per the researchers, Corbyn was vilified through ridicule of personality, delegitimisation of his politics and through character assassination. In a number of articles, his ideas, history, policies and even Corbyn’s looks were mocked. He was depicted as being a clown-like figure, which led to the downfall of his political stronghold (Greenslade, 2016). It had also been stated that Corbyn was more likely to be attacked by the media houses, in comparison to Theresa May (Griffin, 2017).
The media bias not only puts a politician in a negative image, but also has the power of putting a politician in a positive image, which might be far from true, like being a mirage. And the prime example of this is the current Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. In particularly, he has been favored by the Sun News, where he has been constantly branded as the leader. A mere example of this was the use of decibel instead of using the correct term, decimal (McCullough, 2013). The media only shows all the rights things said and repeated by Trudeau over and over again. Yet, there is very less truth of negated things talked about him in the media. Even though he talks tough on climate issues, the work done by Trudeau in pushing the news pipelines from US to Canada to carry more oil from the tar sands of Alberta is amongst the biggest climate disasters on this planet. And yet, the media covers his commitment towards climate, when he is not doing what he is preaching (McKibben, 2017).
In short, media bias is true and is omnipresent. Media bias has the power of portraying a person, in particular, the politicians, in a bad image, which results in them being cursed by the world. And it also has the power of showing a politician in good image, where the duality of the politician is hidden through overtly positive coverage. This is evidenced from the example of Trump and Trudeau; when Trump is bashed by the media for pulling out of Paris climate agreement, the media stays silent on the duality of Trudeau. Another example of this bias is Corbyn, where not only his policies, but his looks were mocked as well. This shows the real power of media and its ability to promote bias towards a particular person. The media bias hence has the capacity of creating the biasness towards particular politicians.
References
Aleem, Z. (2017) Trump pulling out of the Paris climate agreement is great news … for China. [Online] Vox. Available from: https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/3/15729424/trump-paris-climate-china [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
Greenslade, R. (2016) Yes, Jeremy Corbyn has suffered a bad press, but where’s the harm?. [Online] The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/jul/19/yes-jeremy-corbyn-has-suffered-a-bad-press-but-wheres-the-harm?CMP=share_btn_tw [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
Griffin, A. (2017) Jeremy Corbyn far more likely to be attacked by media than Theresa May, election reporting audit reveals. [Online] Independent. Available from: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-theresa-may-reporting-bias-general-election-2017-labour-conservative-a7745401.html [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
Investors. (2017) Poll Confirms Media’s Bias: Is ‘Fake News’ The New Norm?. [Online] Investors. Available from: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/new-poll-confirms-medias-bias-what-else-is-new/ [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
Lewis, H. (2016) Donald Trump on ‘GMA’: “Media Poisons the Mind of the American Voter”. [Online] Hollywood Reporter. Available from: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/donald-trump-gma-poison-media-assault-twitter-grabyourwallet-941659 [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
McCullough, J.J. (2013) Media Bites: the Trudeau Media Bias Is Not What it Seems. [Online] Huffington Post. Available from: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/jj-mccullough/trudeau-media-bias_b_3058982.html [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
McKibben, B. (2017) Stop swooning over Justin Trudeau. The man is a disaster for the planet. [Online] The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/17/stop-swooning-justin-trudeau-man-disaster-planet [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
Nelson, L. (2016) Trump slams the media: ‘It’s the greatest pile-on in American history’. [Online] Politico. Available from: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-criticize-media-bias-230379 [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
Novak, J. (2017) Trump’s Paris accord exit will save the environmental movement from itself. [Online] CNBC. Available from: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/trump-paris-accord-exit-is-good-for-the-environment-commentary.html [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
Politico. (2017) What It’s Really Like to Cover Trump. [Online] Politico. Available from: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/28/poll-trump-white-house-press-corps-journalists-215051 [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
Reilly, K. (2016) Donald Trump Claims Assault Accusations Are an Effort to ‘Poison the Minds’ of Voters. [Online] Fortune. Available from: https://fortune.com/2016/10/15/donald-trump-conspiracy-claim-hillary-clinton-media/ [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
Sides, J. (2016) Is the media biased toward Clinton or Trump? Here is some actual hard data. [Online] The Washington Post. Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/09/20/is-the-media-biased-toward-clinton-or-trump-heres-some-actual-hard-data/?utm_term=.673ff5895df6 [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
The Week. (2017) Trump rebukes Republicans who do ‘very little to protect their President’. [Online] The Week. Available from: https://theweek.com/speedreads/713883/trump-rebukes-republicans-who-little-protect-president [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
Weaver, M. (2017) Jeremy Corbyn treated unfairly by press, says David Dimbleby. [Online] The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/30/jeremy-corbyn-david-dimbleby-rightwing-bias-british-newspapers [Accessed on: 24/07/17]
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