On Bias in Media and Academia

I would now like to take time to discuss the role that bias plays in the media, what we experience as opposed to what is acceptable. I will end on a note discussing briefly bias in academia.

What is media bias? For the purpose of this article I would describe media bias, not as a journalist or newscaster avoiding neutrality when discussing a worthy issue. I think we can make generic judgements on these events without a religiously adhering to neutrality. True neutrality is respecting and giving equal time to two sides in a debate. I would describe media bias as modifying what is circulated to fit a specific agenda, leaving only a token amount of the opposing opinion.

Of course I cannot write an article on media bias without mentioning Fox News, which alternates between denying what they do, and then pointing to other media as having a liberal bias in order to claim they balance the scales. Jon Stewart corrected them quite nicely when he said that the rest western media do not have a specifically liberal bias, rather they have a bias towards sensationalism, whatever the media feels will get them ratings. Though money from advertisers based on ratings is also of no small consequence. This sensationalism is seen in that media's quick ability to jump on left-wing politicians who act hypocritically or unexpectedly idiotic. Basically Anthony Weiner. Fox News on the other hand has excused any contradictions from Republican politicians that suit their agenda.

Excuse me while I state the obvious. What is unacceptable is that aside from sensationalism is Fox News, their active priority to manipulate their audience doesn't only defeat the purpose of news, it's anti-informative.  I favourite public policy poll of mine indicated that people who watch Fox News are less informed about news and current events then people who watch no news whatsoever.
By comparison (and this I never would have anticipated) viewers of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show are better informed about current events then viewers of any other American news network, so says public policy polling. Jon Stewart commented on the scale of his credibility by saying, smartly, "I haven't risen to their level, they've stooped to mine."

Should news networks always claim to be neutral? No, not really. I would have a greater respect for Fox News if, lies aside, they would acknowledge their bias as what they believe in outside of the 'opinion segments' of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly.
Take The Guardian for example. It is one of the more expensive British newspapers that casually acknowledges its liberal bias in its articles. Regardless, it places an emphasis regardless the whole story, as opposed to lying by omission. While both in opposition and in government you would find opinion by PM David Cameron in The Guardian, and in the extreme you would even find full opinion articles by Tea Party members, republished with their permission.

What of bias in academia? It is the very nature, the very description of an academic study to have no intention or agenda. Those academic authors are clearly, for empirical reasons, encouraged to have expectations or hypotheses, but any study that has an end goal.

This is perhaps the only permittable criticism of The Spirit Level. This grand book, The Spirit Level is an economically left-wing study written in causal language with academic methods and referencing. The researchers sought to show that the social health of societies across income classes do better as they become more equal. They went above and beyond this, and while doing so solidified their research methods from any avenue of attack.  The ultimate goal of this would be so that the findings of their study could not be criticised without purely political motivation. In this, the authors succeeded.

While The Spirit Level was never meant to be a wholly academic study in the slightest, but the fact that they found what they set out to is still a valid criticism. From the economic right wing, it may prompt comparisons with the Cato Institute, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Organisations not unlike these receive huge paychecks from private interests, then have academics write brilliantly written 'academic' papers all with the end goal of reducing taxation and regulation. The Ludwig von Mises Institute has a nice review of anti-corruption documentary Inside Job: It prompts the notion that these bankers and traders are not really criminals, they just take advantage of a system they just find unfair. What the reviewer explicitly acknowledges is a eagerness to see purely government officials on trial.

Both seek the end results of their study, one more actively than the other. Virtue is necessary (and suitable) to distinguish the two, ironically, but this virtue may be used in a universal sense. The selfless virtues motivating the writers of The Spirit Level are universally superior to the selfish virtues of the academic writings working for the Ludwig von Mises Institute.