Wednesday's Biased Item - October 1, 2008
When Watchdogs Snore: How ABC, CBS & NBC Ignored Fannie & Freddie
Directions
Read the excerpt below (from the CyberAlert posted at MRC.org). Read "Types of Media Bias" in the right column. Then answer the questions.
Questions
What types of bias is the excerpt below an example of?
Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the answer.
Excerpt
The two mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -- seized by the government September 7 before they went completely bankrupt... -- have been in obvious trouble for much of the past five years -- with criminal investigations, accounting scandals, firings, resignations, huge losses and warnings from the Federal Reserve that their huge portfolio of mortgage securities posed a risk to the overall financial system.
But prior to this year, the watchdogs at ABC, CBS and NBC found time for only 10 stories on the financial health and management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A review of the three networks' morning and evening news programs from January 1, 2003 through December 31, 2007 found nine anchor-read items or brief references to the companies troubles, plus one in-depth report by CBS's Anthony Mason on the May 23, 2006 Evening News, after Fannie Mae was fined $400 million for accounting fraud.
It's not that the networks [avoid reporting] business news. A 2005 report from the MRC's Business and Media Institute found heavy coverage of the scandal surrounding Enron, but no interest in the growing scandal surrounding Fannie Mae: "A LexisNexis search of ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN on the term 'Enron' from the nine months around when the story first broke -- Oct. 1, 2001, to July 1, 2002, produced 3,017 hits....A similar LexisNexis search was performed for the term 'Fannie Mae' for those same media, from June 1, 2004, to March 1, 2005, again during the time the story was breaking. This search discovered a paltry 37 matches." See: www.businessandmedia.org
Read the entire post at mrc.org. Several examples are provided of warnings about and problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that NBC, ABC and CBS did not report.
- Read another article about the same issue at businessandmedia.org.
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
- Washington Post Admits Bias Towards Obama
November 12, 2008 - Wannabe Pundits
November 5, 2008 - Most Voters Say News Media Wants Obama to Win
October 29, 2008 - N.Y. Times Iraq War Coverage Drops to All-Time Low
October 22, 2008 - Should the Media Report on Presidential Candidates’ Abortion Records?
October 15, 2008
