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CNN, cognitive bias, conservative bias, Fox, Fox news, ideology, liberal bias, news bias, partisanship, political bias, political ideology, political parties, politics, psychology, Western Kentucky University
Most people consider some news sources ideologically biased. Many will say Fox is conservatively biased while other will complain of the liberal bias of CNN. But is that because those news sources are biased or because people perceive them as biased?
Research by Joel Turner at Western Kentucky University indicates that the perception of bias may not be based on the content of the news. Prior polls had shown that people tend to report that Fox has a strong conservative bias and that CNN has a strong liberal bias. To test this Turner took five news stories from both Fox and CNN. Then he had those stories re-recorded in a professional news studio using the original transcripts of the stories and a professional anchor. Each story was recorded three times, once it was verbally identified as being from Fox, once from CNN and once without any network association.
Participants were recruited to watch the news stories then answered questions about the stories and themselves. The interesting thing is how individuals perceived bias in the stories. When the stories (both Fox and CNN) were NOT attributed to a news network participants perceived them as unbiased. It did not matter whether the original story came from Fox or CNN, both were rated equally as unbiased. But when the stories were attributed to Fox they were seen as having a conservative bias. Again it is didn’t matter if the original story was from Fox or CNN. Finally when the stories were attributed to CNN they were perceived as having a liberal bias regardless of the original source of the story.
But it gets more interesting from here; the researcher looked at how the individual’s personal ideology interacted with their perception and found astonishing results. Ideology was measured on a 7 point scale from strong liberal (-3) to strong conservative (+3) with 0 representing ideological moderate. Ideological moderates perceived equal bias in both news sources, yet they perceived no bias when the stories did not indicate a news source. But when the perceived bias in the news source the ideology of the individual conflicted with each other then the individual perceived even greater bias in the news. Yet when the perceived bias in the news source was consistent with the individual’s ideology then they minimized the bias. This was so powerful that strong liberals perceived twice the amount of bias in Fox news as moderates while not seeing any bias in CNN. On the flip side strong conservatives saw twice the bias in CNN as moderates did while not perceiving any bias in Fox news.
This is quite amazing considering that when the stories were not attributed to any specific news source they were not seen as being biased. The simple fact that the anchor stated the news network led people to see bias in the reporting even if it wasn’t present.
Now I do have to state a caveat, none of the news stories selected came from pundits or talking heads of either network. They were actual news stories not editorials or news commentary or opinion pieces. The pundits on the different networks certainly show a great deal of bias on all sides of the spectrum. Instead this was about the news not opinions and it seems that when it comes to the news we see more bias than may be present in the news. So next time you see a story posted by Fox news or CNN or any other news source you think is biased stop yourself, take a look and think carefully if the actual story is biased before you judge it.
SocioPolitical Dysfunction 
Very interesting. Do you think the perception of bias stems from opinion pieces and pundits then carries over to how people see the actualnnews?
I would be hard put to say certain parts of fox like oriley aren’t biased, inversely I’d say others like maddow are clearly liberally biased.
If that is the case do you think it has anything to do with how those opinions are represented? For example with pundits specifically, many people don’t seem to know the difference between a pundit and a journalist.
I think it is a dynamic system. The pundits and their positions become associated with the news source’s political position. Essentially they color the view of the news source. Once a new source is associated to an ideology in people’s minds then group identity takes over. Group identity can be activated subconsciously and extremely quickly. It tells you that the news source is either part of ‘us’ or ‘them’. That identification of groups colors the individual’s perceptions of the news source even before the read or hear anything from the news source. Since different groups of people are attracted and repelled from the different sources based on their ideology then the news source aims to keep their viewers by selecting pundits and such that attract those people. That feeds right back into the cycle and perpetuates it.
I don’t know if this is due to people not separating pundits from journalists or not. I would lean toward the idea that once a news sources is mentally associated with a group identity then that identity guides views of the news source. If you think about it once you identity an organization with a certain group then you inherently want to associate all people in that organization with that identity. When you stop and think about it you can rationally admit that not all people in the organization are necessarily the same. But your first reaction is to identify all individuals in the organization with the affiliations of the organization.
The purpose of news reports is to inform as to the facts. Facts are not liberal or conservative, nor are they moderate. Facts are facts. News is therefore not liberal nor conservative if and only if the reports are accurate, containing all known facts and reports are updated as new facts are discovered.
Reporting opinion as fact is adulteration of the facts. “Raw Story” consistently leads every story with a headline that exaggerates the facts making claims not supported by facts. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh often invents whatever is necessary to support a their views.
To recognize this the listener must research other sources. Many do not take the time and thus maintain a false view of the world. Example: Barrack Obama outlawed conventional light bulbs and Michelle Obama is going to force everyone to eat broccoli. Both are false and both were reported as facts. Those who reported these falsehoods know their statements are false. Those sources are liars and cannot be trusted.
As in your previous post, The linear Left to Right, liberal to conservative classifications are deeply flawed. A more accurate scale would be those who support democracy and those that support plutocracy and oligarchy.
Spot on! I am actually writing a piece on ideology and the interpretation of facts based on a recent study. You will probably enjoy that piece when I finish it and get it posted.
I appologize but I forgot the link to the study when I published this. I wrote it on the train to school in word so I couldn’t pull up the website for the link. But it is now included and I will put it in this comment also.
Click to access Bias-in-TV-News_Turner.pdf