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Framing the News

This article, Two Views of the Same News Find Opposite Biases, by Shankar Vedantam was in the Washington Post Online this week. I'm often frustrated by the constant complaining about the "liberal" or "conservative" media. For the record, I think that media consolidation can only harm, that mainstream media is biased, not so much to the left or right (except for, of course, Fox News), but toward the status quo, and that mainstream media depends too much on an episodic, rather than systematic, frame for the stories it cover. But that's not the point of this post. I'm not the first, nor will I be the last to rant about these issues on the web.

This article described a study that showed that partisans on either side of an issue, when shown the exact same media clips, each find bias in favor of the other side. Kind of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation they call the "hostile media effect." The most interesting part for me:

"...The best-informed partisans were the most likely to see bias against their side... [because they]... often feel the news lacks context. Instead of just showing a missile killing civilians, in other words, partisans on both sides want the news to explain the history of events that prompted -- and could have justified -- the missile. The more knowledgeable people are, the more context they find missing."

I didn't see the conclusions as depressing. Okay, they're depressing, but I finished the article thinking, "Well, this is only knowledge that can help." Yup, I guess I really am ready to dive in. My first day of school is in exactly a month.

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