Wednesday's Biased Item - March 2, 2005
NPR Spurns Social Security “Reform” Tag, But in Clinton Years…
Excerpt
The excerpt below is an example of media bias by SPIN. It is from March 2nd "CyberAlert", found at MediaResearchCenter.org. (For a definition of SPIN, click on "Types of Media Bias" below.)
NPR Spurns Social Security "Reform" Tag, But in Clinton Years...
Ron Elving, NPR's Washington editor, has instructed National Public Radio staffers not to use the word "reform" to describe President Bush's proposal to change the Social Security system, NPR's media critic Brooke Gladstone reported on Monday's Morning Edition. "Reform, if you look at the dictionary, has a strong implication of improvement, to better something. It's a corrective process," Elving argued.
But a decade ago, NPR's Morning Edition crew had no problems referring to the Clintons' plan to increase the government's control of the health care industry as "reform." Back on September 23, 1993, host Bob Edwards intoned: "President Clinton went before a joint session of Congress last night to announce the most sweeping domestic initiative in a generation, his long-awaited health care reform plan."
Types of Media Bias
To accurately identify different types of bias, you should be aware of the issues of the day, and the liberal and conservative perspectives on each issue. (See our chart “Conservative vs. Liberal Beliefs”)
Types of Media Bias:
Omission – leaving one side out of an article or a series of articles over a period of time... (read more)
Selection of Sources – including more sources that support one view over another... (read more)
Story Selection – a pattern of highlighting news stories that support one side of an issue over another... (read more)
Placement – the location in the paper or article where a story or event is printed; a pattern of placing news stories so as to downplay information supportive of one side... (read more)
Labeling – comes in two forms: 1. Tagging of person from one party or group with extreme labels while leaving the other side unlabeled or with more mild labels. 2. A reporter not only fails to identify a liberal or conservative as such, but also describes the person or group with positive labels, such as “an expert” or “independent consumer group”... (read more)
Spin – occurs when the story has only one interpretation of an event or policy, to the exclusion of the other. Spin involves tone- a reporter’s subjective comments about objective facts... (read more)
Previous Biased Items
- Accountability Journalism
December 10, 2008 - NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof Acknowledges Media Bias
December 3, 2008 - ABC’s Tapper Says Media Favored Obama
November 26, 2008 - Abandon All Hope
November 19, 2008 - Washington Post Admits Bias Towards Obama
November 12, 2008
