• Glenn Beck and bias
• Bernie Goldberg (here on diversity)
• The state of debate (CNN, O’Reilly and Geraldo, McGlaughlin Group)
• Jon Stewart and Crossfire (McGlaughlin Group and rich vs super rich parody)
• Check out the ‘rules‘ Charles Pierce has devised to try to in some way explain all of this noise (vs news) and its effect on the public. According to Pierce, it’s about ‘moving units’ (we’ll talk about social proof in a few weeks), volume level, and what is called the ‘rationalization trap’ (spiraling commitment to an ideology, a brand, a politician or party, a sports team, a cult [in the extreme], etc.).

What’s the commercial news media approach? Often it involves using simple shorthand. Why? It saves time. Imagine trying to convey to viewers/readers/listeners the complexities of different viewpoints of various people and groups in the news. It would be like watching a football game, only with four or five teams on the field. Like one of those M.C. Escher lithographs. Too complicated, many Americans prefer a simpler, if not simplistic, narrative. We like a good competitive sporting event, and we like to root for our team and know who’s winning. So ‘bias’ is often expressed in terms of political party, or partisan, differences. And I would be remiss not to mention that shouting matches work better than measured discourse. At least in terms of ratings. And ratings are what commercial news media need to interest advertisers–if no one is watching or reading, why would companies pay advertisers to pay money for space, time, etc.? The following sequence should help you understand how we get from politics, to left vs right, to Coke vs Pepsi:

• Left/Right comparisons (old maps, new maps, big sort)
• Jon Stewart and Crossfire (the rich vs the super rich parody)
• Individual versus structural explanations of bias: individual political views of journalists vs ownership concentration–or Journalists vs their employers (scene from ‘Network’)
• Analogies: Coke and Pepsi, anyone?
  • Pepsi–Coke–Pepsi–Pepsi
  • Notice that Pepsi seems more inclined to include Coke in its commercials. Why would a company include its competitor?

Who benefits from accusations of partisan bias? Political parties? If Coke and Pepsi, or Republicans and Democrats, or MSNBC and Fox, can convince you that they’re the only games in town, they’ve already won the battle. This works well with presidential debates–it’s pretty much just the republican and the democrat. The republicrats. Don’t have to worry about those pesky third, fourth, fifth and sixth party candidates (few other democracies are multi-party systems where only two parties control the narratives and debate terms). Of course, it helps that the two national parties have controlled the presidential debates since 1988 and the rules that govern who can participate, giving them a virtual lock on the public spotlight at campaign time. Can’t get the numbers, can’t be in the debate. Can’t be in the debate, can’t get the numbers (a Catch-22).

Disambiguation

An important rule of propaganda is to appeal to people’s values and belief systems. In other words, how do news outlets appeal to our biases? What does the news story you share tell us about the audience being targeted, and the quality of information it’s being fed? To go deeper if you’re up for it . . .  how might news outlets (and politicians) deepen our biases and commitment to them?  How do they make us want to root for a team? That is the essence of disambiguation.

All of this is, if you were diligent and spent some time following the links, a way to convey a different kind of bias in the news, a commercial bias. It’s the money. Money drives much of the content we see–the ‘better’ the content, the more it’s tailored to an audience, and the better that audiences is identified, the greater the chances of attracting the interest of major (often corporate) advertisers. And their money. And because the average attention span of media consumers is measured in seconds (less than 10, according to a Microsoft study in 2015), it will have to be eye-catching and superficial. And disambiguation is the means for drawing in that audience, getting it to feel some level of commitment to the ‘team,’ whether it’s a cable news network, or a political party. Americans love their sporting events, even the patently scripted ones like professional wrestling, or the ‘got talent’ shows. The performers are talented, no doubt, but the show is heavily scripted, as are all ‘reality TV‘ shows. How twisted is that logic? Yet most of us buy it without thinking twice. Heroes and villains, surrounded by drama, celebrity, and a clever ‘involvement device’.

So the news may seem partisan, or the approach anyway, and in the case of Fox there’s no doubt it is–if you have doubts, find an example of President Trump being criticized. If you do, you might notice the substance of the story is Pepsi’s (wait. I mean democrats’) envy or desire to bring him down. Somewhat the same with MSNBC, but in their case Trump cannot do anything right. And of course, wouldn’t MSNBC and Fox love to be the only two choices news consumers consider? And after maybe–maybe–an hour (with 1/4 of the newscast being commercials) of news, programming follows with hours of opinion shows taking the news ‘product’ and ‘spinning’ it in such a way that it fits the audience’s political and partisan preferences. Call it ratings bait if you will. To lure an audience, to ‘sell’ to advertisers. Where is that in the journalists’ code of ethics, you ask? What kinds of news stories, or what kinds of viewpoints in those stories, will be denied coverage for fear of offending an audience, or not meeting their expectations for a certain kind of coverage? Most of them. Yet, if the ‘mainstream’ outlets are all covering the same narrow, safe set of stories, it appears as though they all agree on what is ‘news’ for the day (that is the propaganda principle of ‘social proof‘).

Most all commercial programming works this way–have you ever watched a TV series that was a ‘critics’ favorite’ but was canceled after a season? A network still in business that said ‘we know it’s not making money, but we’re going to use profits from other shows so that we can continue to offer quality programming.’ The reality is the decisions are less about the quality of the programming and more about audience size and revenue calculations. In the case of news, it may look partisan, it may be partisan, but it likely reflects that audience’s views. There is a bias in other words toward what kind of programming sustains some predictable level of viewers/readers/listeners/visitors. Make the public think it’s just a war between Coke and Pepsi, or the GOP and dems, and not only have you distracted them from that underlying economic—not journalistic–principle, you’ve also created a sporting match of sorts, and an audience that buys stuff.

And Americans love their sporting matches, and are fiercely loyal to their favorite teams and like to see them ‘win.’ In other words, you’ve got ready-made ratings bait cleverly sold as news. Yet when representatives of these two parties ‘win’ an election, it is often because they have received large campaign donations from well-funded groups, companies and individuals, and those donors will be expecting something in return. Coke and Pepsi, after all, are pretty much the same products, with slightly different combinations of sugar, CO2, coloring and flavoring. Any real differences lie in the packaging, the marketing.

Whose points of view are people most likely to see reflected on commercial news?  What about alternatives (e.g., Democracy Now)? How are they different? Chomsky, Herman and Lewis suggest in this video that commercial news media is often little more than well-packaged form of social control. What is their argument? Can we use some journalistic standards to help us sift through sites that are trying to inform, versus those that are trying to persuade or merely attract an audience that will interest advertisers?

There are issues in terms of how stories are covered, but also issues related to which stories will not be covered. How many of these stories receive mainstream coverage? Is it conspiracy? Fear of public pressure, or advertisers going to a competitor? Owners currying favor with other large corporations? Government threatening to withhold those exclusive interviews? Is it possible to criticize commercial news in a mainstream venue, or do you have to do it with satire on a Larry King interview segment (as Jon Stewart did)?

So what, you ask? Or put slightly differently, is the press free to report as it sees fit?