About 40 J-School students stayed in school to watch the vice presidential nominee debate last Thursday. From the cheers that accompanied Biden’s responses to the jeers that accompanied Palin’s, it was rather apparent that most students there were Obama/Biden supporters. Some students were even handing out and playing Palin BINGO (check it out at www.palinbingo.com). This was rather unsettling, because for a roomful of journalists who pride themselves on fairness and lack of bias, there was a notable lack of fairness and a fair amount of bias.
I know Lee Hernandez recently addressed the issue of a Republican in journalism school, and now we can put some numbers to his complaints. For the purposes of the mini-experiment, I emailed all of the students in the 2008 class.
First, we’ll calculate the responses, viewing them as a microcosm of the field of journalism as a whole (I know this isn’t totally scientific, but let’s just accept it as such for now). Then we can address the issue of media bias. Just for the record, a 2005 study by UCLA (scientific and all!) concluded that media bias exists and is a pervasive issue. Duh, but it’s always good to have some support.
57 students responded to my questions. Of those 57, a whopping 47 – that’s 82 percent – of those support Obama/Biden over McCain/Palin. Of the others, five are unsure, 2 are leaning towards McCain/Palin, and 1 is a definite McCain/Palin supporter.
Admittedly, this poll of mine is not totally (to underexaggerate) scientific – it reflects only some students in one graduating class, in one school, in one location in the US (NY, to be exact). So maybe it’s just the J-School that’s overwhelmingly liberal. Or maybe it’s just our class. Or maybe it’s just these 57 students.
Or maybe – and this is my inclination – it’s reflective of a larger problem within journalism.
Steve Boriss addressed media bias in a post about Tim Russert’s opinion of media bias in his blog, The Future of News. Boriss quoted Russert, who said, “If someone suggested there was an anti-black bias, an anti-gay bias, an anti-American bias, we’d sit up and say, ‘Let’s talk about this, let’s tackle it.’ Well, if there’s a liberal bias or a cultural bias we have to sit up and tackle it and discuss it. We have got to be open to these things.’”
While I appreciate the sentiment of tackling and discussing, I’m not sure it’s an effective way to end media bias on a political scale. In classes and lectures in the J-School, students and professors have pointed to specific news organizations that are known to be politically biased liberally or conservatively. So far, nothing reporters have done has significantly increased public trust in the media’s unbiasdness in the political arena.
In his blog Buzz Machine, Jeff Jarvis addressed this issue, concluding that bias is real, and journalists just need to practice transparency. Basically, let your audience know what your bias is, because everyone has biases and opinions of some sort, and those biases will affect your reporting. And even if you truly believe that you are the rare journalist who can totally and completely separate your personal opinions from your reporting, your audience doesn’t believe that. So you’re already missing some of their trust.
This, I believe, is the best way to go. All of us come from different political, economical, and sociological backgrounds. By saying up front what we are and what we believe – reporting with our biases, and not trying to report in spite of them or without admitting that they exist – maybe we can regain public trust.
I’ll start: I’m a Republican. I’m an Orthodox Jew. I support Israel’s right to exist. I don’t support gay marriage or gun control or government interference.
Who’s next?