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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2022 and 16 April 2022. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
BriarGornall,
Yufei Z (
article contribs). This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 January 2022 and 22 April 2022. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Chloe Hongyi Wu (
article contribs).
This topic contains
controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be
disputed.
Before making any potentially controversial changes to the article, please carefully read the discussion-page dialogue to see if the issue has been raised before, and ensure that your edit meets all of Wikipedia's
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edit summary.
Education assignments
Cleanup March 2024
Noting here that I've been
WP:Bold and begun another round of edits to try and get this article to a B-class article. There were some older studies that were removed as well as unsourced material. Others have been flagged as potentially having sources that are not of high enough quality and may be removed going forward. Academic studies was folded under the US section since all remaining studies are US-based and focused - planning to integrate the studies from this section into more topic-specific areas (e.g. studies on demand-driven models would instead be in the demand-driven section)
Superb Owl (
talk) 01:45, 12 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Here's some material I removed from the 'solutions' section that needs better citations (especially the paragraphs with BLP issues):
Another technique used to avoid bias is disclosure of affiliations that may be considered a possible conflict of interest. This is especially apparent when a news organization is reporting a story with some relevancy to the news organization itself or to its ownership individuals or conglomerate. Often this disclosure is mandated by the laws or regulations pertaining to stocks and securities. Commentators on news stories involving stocks are often required to disclose any ownership interest in those corporations or in its competitors.citation neededoriginal research?
In rare cases, a news organization may dismiss or reassign staff members who appear biased. This approach was used in the
Killian documents affair and after
Peter Arnett's interview with the Iraqi press. This approach is presumed to have been employed in the case of
Dan Rather over a story that he ran on 60 Minutes in the month prior to the 2004 election that attempted to impugn the military record of George W. Bush by relying on allegedly fake documents that were provided by
Bill Burkett, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Texas Army National Guard.citation needed
One such allegation of misleading balance came from Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News. He stated in an internal e-mail message that reporters should not "artificially hold George W. Bush and John Kerry 'equally' accountable" to the public interest, and that complaints from Bush supporters were an attempt to "get away with... renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry." When the conservative web site the Drudge Report published this message, many Bush supporters viewed it as "smoking gun" evidence that Halperin was using ABC to propagandize against Bush to Kerry's benefit, by interfering with reporters' attempts to avoid bias.
Superb Owl (
talk) 21:59, 13 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Further material removed due to lack of citations and excessive examples:
=== Time biased media and space biased media ===
This subsection may be
unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. Please
improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the
talk page.(March 2024)
Time biased media
Harold Innis suggests that time biased media are hard to move and durable. Examples of time biased are stone, parchment, and clay.[1]better source needed He argues that due to being difficult to move, time biased media does not encourage territorial expansionm but does facilitate the development of hierarchy. They are kept for more traditional, sacred, and civilized societies.[2]better source needed Time can be described as en entity where only the information in the environment is seen as important.[2]better source neededHarold Innis believed that our societies today moved away from this media bias in order to allow for more democratic practices as opposed to monarchic practices.
Space biased media
Space biased media is another type of bias originating from
Harold Innis. In contrast to time biased media, social biased media is light and portable (easy to move).[1]better source needed An example of space biased media is paper. Space biased media allows for the expansion of empires over space, can be quickly transported, administrative, has a relatively short lifespan and allows for limitless opportunity.[1]better source needed Harold Innis argues that space biased media has allowed society to create a more accessible world in everyday life.[2]better source needed Space biased media, he argues, is prevalent in today's society.
=== Language ===
Bias can stem from the language used, and in the words chosen. Mass media has a worldwide reach, but must communicate with each linguistic group in some language they understand. The use of language may be neutral, or may attempt to be as neutral as possible, using careful translation and avoiding culturally charged words and phrases. Or it may be intentionally or accidentally biased, using mistranslations and trigger words targeting particular groups.citation needed
For example, in
Bosnia and Herzegovina there are three mutually intelligible languages,
Bosnian,
Croatian, and
Serbian.citation needed Media that try to reach as large an audience as possible use words common to all three languages.citation needed Media that want to target just one group may choose words that are unique to that group.citation needed In the United States, while most media is in English, in the 2020 election both major political parties used Spanish language advertising to reach out to Hispanic voters.citation neededAl Jazeera originally used
Arabic, to reach its target audience, but in 2003 launched
Al Jazeera English to broaden that audience.citation needed
Attempts to use language designed to appeal to a particular cultural group can backfire, as when
Kimberly Guilfoyle, speaking at the Republican National Convention in 2020, said she was proud that her mother was an immigrant from Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans were quick to point out that they are born American citizens, and are not immigrants.[3]relevant? –
discuss
There are also
false flag broadcasts, that pretend to be favoring one group, while using language deliberately chosen to anger the target audience.citation needed
Language may also introduce a more subtle form of bias. The selection of metaphors and analogies, or the inclusion of personal information in one situation but not another can introduce bias, such as a gender bias.[4] Use of a word with positive or negative connotations rather than a more neutral synonym can form a biased picture in the audience's mind. For example, it makes a difference whether the media calls a group "terrorists" or "freedom fighters" or "
insurgents". A 2005 memo to the staff of the
CBC states:[5]better source needed
Rather than calling assailants "terrorists," we can refer to them as bombers, hijackers, gunmen (if we're sure no women were in the group), militants, extremists, attackers or some other appropriate noun.
In a widely criticized episode, initial online
BBC reports of the
7 July 2005 London bombings identified the perpetrators as terrorists, in contradiction to the BBC's internal policy. But by the next day, journalist
Tom Gross noted that the online articles had been edited, replacing "terrorists" by "bombers".[6]better source needed
Anglophone definitions of what constitutes news are paramount; the news provided originates in Anglophone capitals and responds first to their own rich domestic markets.[7]needs updateverification neededSuperb Owl (
talk) 05:27, 21 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Further excessive examples removed from Political bias subsection
Other studies argue the media has a liberal bias.[8][9]Mark Liberman criticized Groseclose and Milyo's findings as having evident biases.[10][11] Conservatives have argued that Facebook and Twitter limiting the spread of the
Hunter Biden laptop controversy for a couple days on their platforms before they knew if it was misinformation "proves Big Tech's bias," while others argued that even though some details of the story turned out to be true, that the mistake was understandable in the context of happening not long after the 2016 wiki-leaks dumps.[12][13]Superb Owl (
talk) 05:38, 21 March 2024 (UTC)reply
=== Nationality and ethnicity ===
Many news organizations reflect, or are perceived to reflect in some way, the viewpoint of the geographic, ethnic, and national population that they primarily serve. Media within countries are sometimes seen as being sycophantic or unquestioning about the country's government.citation needed
^De Burgh, Hugo (2000). Investigative Journalism: Context and Practice. Routledge.
ISBN0-415-19053-3.
^Kuypers, Jim A. (2014). Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States. Lanham (Md.): Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 177–206.
ISBN978-1442225930.
The term 'media bias' often is understood to mean an ideological bias, while this article also spends a significant amount of text on structural biases that are not ideologically-driven - I think renaming 'media biases' would be a better encapsulation of the topics discussed on this page.
Superb Owl (
talk) 22:53, 20 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Wiki Education assignment: ENGL 1301
This article is currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 9 May 2024. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
LC1061 (
article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by
LC1061 (
talk) 18:14, 24 April 2024 (UTC)reply
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Media, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Media on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MediaWikipedia:WikiProject MediaTemplate:WikiProject MediaMedia articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Journalism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
journalism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.JournalismWikipedia:WikiProject JournalismTemplate:WikiProject JournalismJournalism articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to
philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles
The
contentious topics procedure applies to this article. Parts of this article relate to the
Arab–Israeli conflict, which is a contentious topic. Furthermore, the following rules apply when editing the parts of the page related to the contentious topic:
You must be logged-in and
extended-confirmed to edit or discuss this topic on any page (except for
making edit requests, provided they are not disruptive)
You may not make more than 1 revert within 24 hours on any edits related to this topic
If it is unclear which parts of the page are related to this contentious topic, the content in question should be marked within the wiki text by an invisible comment. If no comment is present, please ask an administrator for assistance. If in doubt it is better to assume that the content is covered.
Further information
The exceptions to the extended confirmed restriction are:
Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace only to
make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided they are not disruptive.
Non-extended-confirmed editors may not create new articles, but administrators may exercise discretion when deciding how to enforce this remedy on article creations. Deletion of new articles created by non-extended-confirmed editors is permitted but not required.
With respect to the WP:1RR restriction:
Clear vandalism of whatever origin may be reverted without restriction. Also, reverts made solely to enforce the extended confirmed restriction are not considered edit warring.
Editors who violate this restriction may be blocked by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offence.
If you are unsure if your edit is appropriate, discuss it here on this talk page first. When in doubt, don't revert!
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2022 and 16 April 2022. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
BriarGornall,
Yufei Z (
article contribs). This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 January 2022 and 22 April 2022. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Chloe Hongyi Wu (
article contribs).
This topic contains
controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be
disputed.
Before making any potentially controversial changes to the article, please carefully read the discussion-page dialogue to see if the issue has been raised before, and ensure that your edit meets all of Wikipedia's
policies and guidelines. Please also ensure you use an accurate and concise
edit summary.
Education assignments
Cleanup March 2024
Noting here that I've been
WP:Bold and begun another round of edits to try and get this article to a B-class article. There were some older studies that were removed as well as unsourced material. Others have been flagged as potentially having sources that are not of high enough quality and may be removed going forward. Academic studies was folded under the US section since all remaining studies are US-based and focused - planning to integrate the studies from this section into more topic-specific areas (e.g. studies on demand-driven models would instead be in the demand-driven section)
Superb Owl (
talk) 01:45, 12 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Here's some material I removed from the 'solutions' section that needs better citations (especially the paragraphs with BLP issues):
Another technique used to avoid bias is disclosure of affiliations that may be considered a possible conflict of interest. This is especially apparent when a news organization is reporting a story with some relevancy to the news organization itself or to its ownership individuals or conglomerate. Often this disclosure is mandated by the laws or regulations pertaining to stocks and securities. Commentators on news stories involving stocks are often required to disclose any ownership interest in those corporations or in its competitors.citation neededoriginal research?
In rare cases, a news organization may dismiss or reassign staff members who appear biased. This approach was used in the
Killian documents affair and after
Peter Arnett's interview with the Iraqi press. This approach is presumed to have been employed in the case of
Dan Rather over a story that he ran on 60 Minutes in the month prior to the 2004 election that attempted to impugn the military record of George W. Bush by relying on allegedly fake documents that were provided by
Bill Burkett, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Texas Army National Guard.citation needed
One such allegation of misleading balance came from Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News. He stated in an internal e-mail message that reporters should not "artificially hold George W. Bush and John Kerry 'equally' accountable" to the public interest, and that complaints from Bush supporters were an attempt to "get away with... renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry." When the conservative web site the Drudge Report published this message, many Bush supporters viewed it as "smoking gun" evidence that Halperin was using ABC to propagandize against Bush to Kerry's benefit, by interfering with reporters' attempts to avoid bias.
Superb Owl (
talk) 21:59, 13 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Further material removed due to lack of citations and excessive examples:
=== Time biased media and space biased media ===
This subsection may be
unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. Please
improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the
talk page.(March 2024)
Time biased media
Harold Innis suggests that time biased media are hard to move and durable. Examples of time biased are stone, parchment, and clay.[1]better source needed He argues that due to being difficult to move, time biased media does not encourage territorial expansionm but does facilitate the development of hierarchy. They are kept for more traditional, sacred, and civilized societies.[2]better source needed Time can be described as en entity where only the information in the environment is seen as important.[2]better source neededHarold Innis believed that our societies today moved away from this media bias in order to allow for more democratic practices as opposed to monarchic practices.
Space biased media
Space biased media is another type of bias originating from
Harold Innis. In contrast to time biased media, social biased media is light and portable (easy to move).[1]better source needed An example of space biased media is paper. Space biased media allows for the expansion of empires over space, can be quickly transported, administrative, has a relatively short lifespan and allows for limitless opportunity.[1]better source needed Harold Innis argues that space biased media has allowed society to create a more accessible world in everyday life.[2]better source needed Space biased media, he argues, is prevalent in today's society.
=== Language ===
Bias can stem from the language used, and in the words chosen. Mass media has a worldwide reach, but must communicate with each linguistic group in some language they understand. The use of language may be neutral, or may attempt to be as neutral as possible, using careful translation and avoiding culturally charged words and phrases. Or it may be intentionally or accidentally biased, using mistranslations and trigger words targeting particular groups.citation needed
For example, in
Bosnia and Herzegovina there are three mutually intelligible languages,
Bosnian,
Croatian, and
Serbian.citation needed Media that try to reach as large an audience as possible use words common to all three languages.citation needed Media that want to target just one group may choose words that are unique to that group.citation needed In the United States, while most media is in English, in the 2020 election both major political parties used Spanish language advertising to reach out to Hispanic voters.citation neededAl Jazeera originally used
Arabic, to reach its target audience, but in 2003 launched
Al Jazeera English to broaden that audience.citation needed
Attempts to use language designed to appeal to a particular cultural group can backfire, as when
Kimberly Guilfoyle, speaking at the Republican National Convention in 2020, said she was proud that her mother was an immigrant from Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans were quick to point out that they are born American citizens, and are not immigrants.[3]relevant? –
discuss
There are also
false flag broadcasts, that pretend to be favoring one group, while using language deliberately chosen to anger the target audience.citation needed
Language may also introduce a more subtle form of bias. The selection of metaphors and analogies, or the inclusion of personal information in one situation but not another can introduce bias, such as a gender bias.[4] Use of a word with positive or negative connotations rather than a more neutral synonym can form a biased picture in the audience's mind. For example, it makes a difference whether the media calls a group "terrorists" or "freedom fighters" or "
insurgents". A 2005 memo to the staff of the
CBC states:[5]better source needed
Rather than calling assailants "terrorists," we can refer to them as bombers, hijackers, gunmen (if we're sure no women were in the group), militants, extremists, attackers or some other appropriate noun.
In a widely criticized episode, initial online
BBC reports of the
7 July 2005 London bombings identified the perpetrators as terrorists, in contradiction to the BBC's internal policy. But by the next day, journalist
Tom Gross noted that the online articles had been edited, replacing "terrorists" by "bombers".[6]better source needed
Anglophone definitions of what constitutes news are paramount; the news provided originates in Anglophone capitals and responds first to their own rich domestic markets.[7]needs updateverification neededSuperb Owl (
talk) 05:27, 21 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Further excessive examples removed from Political bias subsection
Other studies argue the media has a liberal bias.[8][9]Mark Liberman criticized Groseclose and Milyo's findings as having evident biases.[10][11] Conservatives have argued that Facebook and Twitter limiting the spread of the
Hunter Biden laptop controversy for a couple days on their platforms before they knew if it was misinformation "proves Big Tech's bias," while others argued that even though some details of the story turned out to be true, that the mistake was understandable in the context of happening not long after the 2016 wiki-leaks dumps.[12][13]Superb Owl (
talk) 05:38, 21 March 2024 (UTC)reply
=== Nationality and ethnicity ===
Many news organizations reflect, or are perceived to reflect in some way, the viewpoint of the geographic, ethnic, and national population that they primarily serve. Media within countries are sometimes seen as being sycophantic or unquestioning about the country's government.citation needed
^De Burgh, Hugo (2000). Investigative Journalism: Context and Practice. Routledge.
ISBN0-415-19053-3.
^Kuypers, Jim A. (2014). Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States. Lanham (Md.): Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 177–206.
ISBN978-1442225930.
The term 'media bias' often is understood to mean an ideological bias, while this article also spends a significant amount of text on structural biases that are not ideologically-driven - I think renaming 'media biases' would be a better encapsulation of the topics discussed on this page.
Superb Owl (
talk) 22:53, 20 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Wiki Education assignment: ENGL 1301
This article is currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 9 May 2024. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
LC1061 (
article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by
LC1061 (
talk) 18:14, 24 April 2024 (UTC)reply