As a communication major and aspiring journalist, I have always been fascinated by the news. Both of my parents and stepparents graduated with degrees in mass communication, and two of them are still in the industry today. I've grown up around journalists, watching and learning the ins and outs of newspapers, magazines, and broadcast news. I'm not an expert on the subject, but I am fairly knowledgeable.
That's why it drives me absolutely crazy to see the constant flood of Facebook friends screeching "BIAS!" whenever a major newspaper or magazine endorses a presidential candidate. My town's local newspaper recently endorsed one of the candidates (the less popular one in my area), and my Facebook friends immediately jumped down the throat of the staff, vowing to never read another paper. I even had a friend tell me that my major was entirely based around bias, and while that was fairly insulting, it is also unequivocally false. This week, I have chosen to break down parts of the newspaper for the journalistically challenged, so to speak.
If you have ever picked up a newspaper (and I doubt most readers in my age group have) you will see that it is divided into sections. Different papers differ depending on the size of the staff and the market, but your main sections will be news, opinions, arts and features, and sports. The bulk of the articles that you will read in a daily or weekly newspaper fall into one of these categories.
Journalists have different criteria they must meet in writing different stories. In a news story, for example, a writer may not share his or her opinion. News stories are entirely fact-based, and the best news stories will have many quotes from witnesses or other people knowledgeable about the subject of the story. Features, on the other hand, are written on human interest topics: they tend to be more flowery, less fact-based, and give more of a glimpse into the eyes of the subject of the story. Though I one day hope to be in hard news, the bulk of my experience thus far has been feature writing.
Then there is the opinion section. In this section, a specific group of writers (i.e., not reporters) may write their opinion on a subject of their choosing. These pieces are called editorials. This is where endorsements are placed. When a group of columnists or editorial writers publishes an article that lists reasons why they support one presidential candidate and not the other, it is not a bias. It is an opinion, and it only reflects the opinion of the writer(s) of the piece or the editorial staff as a whole. It does not reflect the opinion of the entire newspaper. The editorial staff and the news staff are completely separate entities. Most of the news staff isn't even aware of what the editorial staff has written until publication.
Media bias does exist, however, but not in endorsements. A bias can be clearly seen when news networks give more negative coverage to one person/subject/political affiliation than they do another. Fox News and MSNBC are perfect examples. Fox News spends the majority of its time reporting negatively on Democrats, while MSNBC spends more time shedding negative light on Republicans. Entities like Glen Beck's The Blaze aren't even news sources--they're designed to give people of a certain belief a platform to give their commentary. In other words, people like Tomi Lahren are not news sources; they're commentators who get paid to sit in front of a camera and spew their opinions, not facts. That isn't to say that sharing your opinion isn't okay--newspapers do it too, but they do not market their opinions as fact. When and if that happens, then there is a problem.
Media bias is a problem, but it does not give you a right to insult people who are in the profession. Most journalists are honest people who are equally disgusted with the route the media has taken in the past several decades. Journalism professors teach us how to report or write the different types of stories in an appropriate manner. Most journalists don't have an agenda; they just want to give a voice to the public and let people know what they need to know.
So, the next time a paper or magazine endorses a presidential candidate, please keep your mouth shut about it online, because they are well within their right to do that. And if you don't like the fact that writers are allowed to share their opinions?
Not our problem.
