MEDIA BIAS IN ELECTIONS

Media bias is an important part of our lives, and recognizing it helps people deal with it and prevent it from influencing their decisions to too great of a degree. It is important to examine cases where bias occurs so people can develop an understanding of how it can manifest itself. One especially pertinent case to the discussion of media bias is elections. During elections people must vote based on their knowledge of candidates, and much of this knowledge comes from the mass media. The knowledge that voters' gain of candidates can be skewed by media bias; but, this bias can manifest itself in many different ways. Two of the main ways that bias can occur are through gatekeeping and individual bias. 

Individual bias is simply when a journalist cannot prevent their own personal views from influencing their coverage of events and questioning of candidates. Closely related to individual bias is gatekeeping bias. Journalists, and especially editors, have control over what stories reach the mass audience of the electorate, or any other group, through the mass media, by controlling the stories that reach the public they can create a bias for or against a candidate or issue in the general populace, this is gatekeeping bias. Through gatekeeping editors and journalists can keep stories out of the news, preventing the public from learning valuable information about candidates or issues. Gatekeeping is a form of bias because, consciously or not, editors and journalist may choose stories that are concurrent with their own political philosophy, which can bias the media. These two forms of bias must be understood for voters to make informed choices about political candidates. 

Journalists may have individual political biases that influence their coverage and questioning of politicians. Obviously almost all people will have some opinion on political issues and on who should be elected to a political office. These opinions are obviously hard to prevent from entering journalist coverage of the media, but regardless journalists attempt to prevent any of their opinions from entering their objective journalistic works. 

Candidates develop relationships with journalists during campaigns, and these relationships can bias the coverage of a campaign for or against a candidate. Journalists are to avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived and remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility. Yet when covering politics it is important to cultivate contacts inside the 'camp' of the politician in order to gain important information that is not available to other journalists. This extra information gained through relationships with insiders can give an extra edge to the journalists' coverage of the campaign. For the candidates too it is important to develop a relationship with journalists or the journalists may become disgruntled with the candidate and begin to produce negative coverage of the candidate. 

Bias is developed by candidates through close relationships with reporters because it offers advantages in news coverage for the candidate; but it also offers advantages to the journalist because it can give them a better article than they could get without the relationship. Thus relationships between journalists and politicians are often cultivated. It is important to look out for reporting that is clouded by close relationships to the subject, because it can gloss over important issues that might otherwise be covered, or it may highlight relatively unimportant issues. Of course, there are other ways that media can bias coverage, besides close relationships to the people that they cover. 

The Media chooses which issues to cover in campaigns. In campaigns the media can only cover so many issues and gatekeeping bias is an inevitable result. The way that editors and journalists choose stories and how they will present them often is a result of their political convictions. As a result of media's power to set and extend our agenda they can create strong bias in the populace if the media does not discuss one politician's bad traits, but the media focuses on the other candidate's bad traits they will create a negative image of the candidate in the public eye. This form of opinion making is an obvious case of bias, where opinions that are not factually based influence people's actions. There is in fact further evidence that the media can create bias in the electorate through its choice of coverage of politicians and issues. Because campaigns are not expected to pay too much attention to the actual details of policy proposals, particularly on television, and yet are conducted almost entirely in the guise of 'news', this same media can, under the right conditions, make or break a candidate with voters through the manner they choose to portray him or her. The media is preventing stories from about the issues from reaching the populace, and this causes the populace to focus on trivial issues about the candidate that the media choose to portray.  Once they public focuses on trivial issues candidates who are less entertaining are at a disadvantage because they cannot generate as many positive articles.  The issues are what is pertinent in a campaign, so when people stop focusing on them they are becoming biased, that is forming opinions based upon unbalanced or even relevant facts. It is important for people to look for bias in media in the form of gatekeeping bias because otherwise they will not be able to adequately understand candidates to vote on an informed basis. 

A subset of gatekeeping bias is the amount of coverage each party receives. The coverage that each party receives is not equal, and this probably stems from bias on the part of the news agencies and reporters; it is gatekeeping bias because it relates to the stories that news agencies choose to cover.  Obviously people are going to want to advance their opinion, so consciously or not they will change the amount and character of coverage of candidates based on their political opinions. This can result in unbalanced coverage that favors one side over the other. 

Bias in the media during political campaigns occurs in many forms. Some of the forms are very subtle, and have only a little affect on people, while others are more blatant and can change opinions rather drastically. Often the bias is almost unavoidable, such as in gatekeeping, while some can be prevented simply through vigilance on the part of the press. The media is often biased, but that does not mean that people cannot still use the media. When using the media a person must be aware of the bias that can present itself in the media. Once they realize where bias exists in the media people can counteract it by consulting other sources of information; that will allow people to form opinions about issues and elections while minimizing the negative impact of biased media. 

Detecting Media Bias

One of the easiest ways to detect bias is to read many sources of news. When you do this you get more facts and can easily cross check them with each other. When you find missing facts you know that you have found a possible case of media bias. Even if what you find is not media bias it will still provide you with useful information. Another useful way to detect bias is to look for misleading information. There are many ways that misleading information can be put into an article, even if the journalist does nothing to skew the article. 

Ways to Detect Media Bias

•  Editorials that contradict facts given in other articles.
• [A] peculiar - or politically dubious - use of a word or phrase that might stand reality on its head.
• Misleading photographs that contradict the text of an article.
• Headlines are the most-read part of a paper. They can summarize as well as present carefully hidden bias and prejudices.  Be careful and check if the headline makes sense in the context of the article.
• The spectrum of opinion is narrowly framed by the kinds of 'experts' who are featured in print and broadcast news reports - and by those who are left out  Just because all the experts presented in the story hold one opinion does not mean that all experts in that field do.
• A lengthy TV news report with a particular slant might go on for a few minutes, only to be contradicted by a significant statement that is buried as an afterthought or throwaway line at the tail end of the story.

By keeping an eye out for all of these different ways media can be biased it is possible to minimize the impact of the bias; but, because so many people do not actively seek out bias or understand the shapes it can take, people are affected by it. Even if people do try to find bias it is not possible to find it all.  Thus, bias can affect people even if they attempt to find it, but its influence will be more limited.

Conclusion

The media tries to prevent bias from entering its neutral journalistic reports. Regardless of these efforts, many media watchdog organizations believe bias is a widespread problem. Some of these organizations find proof of liberal bias, while others find evidence of a conservative tilt to the news.  Elections serve to highlight the many forms of bias in the supposedly neutral news media.  It is important that people recognize bias so that they are able to use the media while understanding its limitations. The media is an integral part of our life, yet it can cloud our decisions because of the bias that often is a part of the media. However, it is important that the public does not discount the importance of media simply because there are some instances of bias. The media is the best source of information for the majority of the public and it is in the public's best interest to continue using the media to collect information while maintaining awareness of its possible bias.