Let’s talk about media bias: How can we become better consumers of the news?
We log in to our social media platforms and are inundated with memes, quotes, hypotheticals, and news stories. After spending a 30-minute session on such platforms and seeing the various links posted by our friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, we are typically left with a basket of mixed emotions, from anger, sorrow, apathy, and small bumps of happiness and feelings of justice along the way.
We rarely stop and think that our first exposure to media bias is the very platform we log into to communicate with the people in our lives. We simply do not have the time to click on each link, read the article, do the background research, and make an informed opinion of the material we have just read. Far too often we read the headlines and react; a retweet, share, or like if we agree, or an angry face/rant if we disagree. However, more often than not, we will see things we agree with. We are trapped in this perpetual bubble of information which allows us to collectively rage or applaud. We do this because our social bubbles, for the most part, consist of people whose political identity aligns with our own. And for those in our circles who differ, the algorithms of the social media giants make an effort to ensure we only see the posts we typically agree with.
This cycle, unfortunately, further divides us, and more importantly, pushes us away from being adequately informed by sources who do not share our personal biases. Bias in the news is inevitable. After reviewing the top 500 sources of global news, I’ve found that nearly 73% of those sources have some form of bias, be it left, right, conspiracy, or flat out fake. This should not be shocking. Neutrality is rarely, if ever, sexy. We want, no, we crave emotion. We want to be angry collectively, or collectively applaud. Our political bias is the core of our identity, and without something to satisfy that core bias, we are only left with facts. And facts without bias do not charge emotions.
An important note regarding these charts: You will notice there is no category for “Extreme Left”. This is because of the top 500 referenced news sites, none fell into the “Extreme Left” category. It’s not to say there is no “Extreme Left” category, they simply were non-existent in my sample size of the top 500.
The chart above paints an interesting picture. It gathers the top 500 news sites measured by total external references to the original site and ranks them by bias based on the total percentage of pooled external references (a total of 1,879,767,079 external references). In short, the percentages above are derived from how many times a news source was cited via social media, another article, an online encyclopedia, or other online sources. To be transparent with methodology, the sources in that chart were derived from https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ (MBFC). Their mission is to educate the public on media bias and deceptive news practices. Their methods can be found here. I have no personal affiliation with this site, though I use it almost daily to verify news sources and confirm bias. They are, in my opinion, one of the more comprehensive sites to verify your news sources.
With that said, let’s take a look at the chart again.
For ease, we can assume that “least biased” and “Pro-Science” sources are one and the same. The writing style of both are similar, only the “Pro-Science” sources tend to focus on science news in their area, and are not typically as comprehensive as a news source as the “least biased” category. What stands out almost immediately is the “Left Bias” and “left-Center Bias” categories, taking more than half of all news sources referenced. We can speculate as to why Left-leaning sources are referenced more, but that is not the aim of this article. I will leave that up to the informed reader, and welcome theories in the comments. The general picture that chart shows is that the vast majority of the news sources we reference in our day to day lives have some form of political bias. Now let me be clear in saying that bias does not necessarily deem news sources as accurate or inaccurate (more on that below), rather we as a society tend to prefer news sources and headlines that initiate an emotional response, and that is primarily done through bias.
We can make the argument that facts alone can initiate an emotional response, E.G., civilians killed during the collateral damage of war, though it is our personal bias which typically deems how we react emotionally to that headline. In a perfect world, it is the reader’s job to elicit an emotional response towards facts read, not the news outlet’s.
So does bias affect accuracy? Let’s take a look at the chart below.
On the Y-axis, we have a measure of accuracy, and on the X-axis, we have the biases labeled. The accuracy scores are as follows:
When we are sourcing news articles to inform ourselves, it is assumed we want factual sources. While each article on each site may have a different score, we simply do not have the time to fact check and verify each and every article we read. Therefore, we must rely on the accuracy of the source overall. Anything below a score of “4” then, should be looked at with a great deal of scrutiny. We can make the argument that a score of 3 still implies the source has a good mix of accurate information, but we cannot reward mixed reporting. We want to inform ourselves to the best of our knowledge, and therefore we should only demand sources that have a high degree of factual reporting. Looking back on the bias and accuracy chart above, only two “biases” score above a 4: “Pro-Science” and “Least Biased.” As mentioned earlier, these two categories are one and the same. From this chart, we can infer that as the bias of a news source goes more towards the center, the accuracy of the source goes up. When we cater to media bias, we inevitably have to pay the price with a decline in accuracy.
Let’s take a look at one more chart which, arguably, will be the most controversial. We are eliminating the broad categories and focusing only on 1) Left Bias, 2) Least Biased, and 3) Right bias. Furthermore, we are creating a hard limit on accuracy: anything 3 or below will receive a score of “0”, inferring an unreliable source of news, and anything 4 or above will receive a “1”, inferring a reliable source of news. The results will be the percentage of those sources which have a high factual reporting level. The conspiracy and fake categories have been eliminated as they result in “0” on both charts.
In the chart above, we can infer that the least biased sources of news tend to have the highest accuracy in reporting (94.7%). Interestingly, those who source their news primarily from left-leaning sources (84.1%) tend to receive more factual information than those who primarily source their news from right-leaning sources (55.1%). Furthermore, when we look at the previous chart compiling the broad categories, we can see that both “Left-Center” and “Right-Center” sources fare better at accuracy than “Left” leaning or “Right” leaning sources alone. This further enhances our observations that as a media source moves closer towards the center, its accuracy in reporting goes up.
So what does this all mean? We often hear of news outlets self-proclaiming to be fact-based and balanced sources of news. It is important to have a strict measure of what “fair and balanced” means in news and journalism. Many sources that self-proclaim to be balanced are not doing the public any favors. Often times a media outlet will take statements made by politicians and infer them to be facts. Thus we are often left with a scenario of “One side said this, the other side said that.” In an extreme effort by certain media outlets to be fair and balanced, the public is left to fend for themselves, their only utility being advertising revenue for the media sources they consume.
Let’s make one thing very clear: it is not the job of the media outlet to be “fair and balanced” or take an equal approach to two or more conflicting statements made by political leaders. The job of the media and the job of journalists is to report facts. That means if a politician makes an incorrect statement, regardless of bias, the media outlet will 1) call them out for spreading misinformation, and 2) present the verifiable facts to their readers. It is their obligation and duty to do this for their readers, and we as readers must not accept anything less.
So what can we as consumers of media do? For one, we cannot let our political biases cloud the facts of what’s going on in the world. It’s very easy to read a headline that appeases to our political bias, and click “like.” We must strive to be more informed consumers of news and media, and that starts with checking our bias at the door. The next time you see a headline that triggers an emotion, check the source. For simplicity, go to https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ and type in the name of the source. Look at the political bias of the source, and more importantly, look at the factual reporting rating of the source. Do not accept anything below “high.” If they have a mixed factual reporting or lower, verify what was said. Verify it with other news agencies who are rated as least biased, and go further by verifying it with Politifact’s “Truth-O-Meter” or the Associated Press’s “Fact Check.” The chances are high that if you cannot find it anywhere else online, it is likely an unreliable bit of news, and you should not accept it as true until more information becomes available.
Boycotts for certain things in life can be difficult, as we have to find the equilibrium of how much we rely on certain goods/services, and how negative of an impact they have towards society as a whole. News Media is not one of them. We have a plethora of options to choose from when it comes to news; however, we often rely on what is most convenient: turning on the TV.
Let’s take a look at the top three TV news outlets in terms of daily viewers: Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. Fox News has a “Right Bias,” while MSNBC and CNN both have a “Left Bias.” As previously mentioned, it’s not the bias alone that deems whether a news source is accurate, rather, it is the degree of factual reporting. All three of these news outlets have “Mixed” factual reporting scores according to MBFC. This is unacceptable to us as consumers of news media. We must demand a high level of accuracy from the news media we consume, and if they choose to ignore us, we must go somewhere else. There is no middle ground. If we collectively switch our preferences to “High Factual Reporting” and, perhaps with more difficulty, to “Least Biased,” we will, as a society, force the news media outlets to succumb to our demands. But we cannot do this without first understanding bias in the media, and having a centralized place to deem whether a source is accurate, and that is where MBFC is taking the first steps.
Here are the top 10 sources of political news that are “Least Biased” and have a “High Factual Reporting” score.
Center for Responsive Politics (Open Secrets)
For reference, my data set is pasted below, welcome to scrutiny.
Explanation of terms used in this article:
From the site: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/
Least Biased: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/center/
Pro-Science: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pro-science/
Left-Center Bias: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/leftcenter/
Right-Center Bias: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/right-center/
Left Bias: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/
Right Bias: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/right/
Conspiracy: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/conspiracy/
Fake: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fake-news/
Extreme-Right and Extreme-Left: These typically fall under the “Conspiracy” and “fake” categories above, each individual site is labeled as such.
Each source has a “Factual Reporting” rating based on their Factual/Sourcing score above. The ratings are as follows.
(https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/)
Factual Reporting: VERY HIGH. The source is always factual, sources to credible information and makes immediate corrections to incorrect information and has never failed a fact check.
Factual Reporting: HIGH. The source is almost always factual, sources to mostly credible low biased or high factual information and makes immediate corrections to incorrect information and has failed only 1 fact check.
Factual Reporting: MIXED. The source does not always use proper sourcing or sources to other biased/mixed sources. They may also report well-sourced information as well. Mixed sources will have failed one or more fact checks and do not immediately correct false or misleading information. While the majority of the information may be factual on these sources, they need to be checked. Further, any source that does not disclose a mission or ownership information will automatically be deemed mixed.
Factual Reporting: LOW. The source rarely uses credible sources and is simply not trustworthy for reliable information. These are the sources that need to be fact checked for intentional fake news, conspiracy, and propaganda.
Factual Reporting: VERY LOW. The source almost never uses credible sources and is simply not trustworthy for reliable information at all. These are the sources that always need to be fact checked for intentional fake news, conspiracy, and propaganda.