This is a longish post on the power of bias in the media.
I am always intrigued by 1): what subjects find their way into the news and, just as importantly; 2): what is kept out!
After all, since what makes the news is an editorial decision it is not always what most people would consider to be the vital issues of the day. Coverage of celebrity gossip including stories of film stars, members of royal families and other famous people on holidays, having babies, being arrested for drug offences etc. are often afforded higher status than stories that one would think would be of far higher importance in respect of real people’s lives.
While this is partly because we all enjoy a little gossip, and are intrigued by how the other half (or the other 0.001%, if the truth were told) live it is also, undoubtedly, due to pressure on editors to include aspects of life that powerful vested interests – who are sometimes the owners or major influencers of the media outlet – want to promote as being of great importance or, perhaps, to keep other matters that might be challenging the kind of world that they want to portray, out of the news.
I am sure that someone has researched whether or not the incidence of stories in the media tallies with what powerful vested interests want to promote – if they have I’d like to see it as I, intuitively, feel that they are very influential indeed!
Now perhaps this is a personal observation and you might think that it is in the realm of conspiracy theory, but sometimes I feel that if powerful vested interests want to get people to forget an issue they actually use media saturation to bore people. After continual exposure, people begin to focus on the conflict (or the personalities) behind the issue and lose interest in the issue itself. I don’t know whether this is deliberate or not but I certainly have observed it.
Slightly different, but related to this, I reach back into my teenage years to a time when I have vivid memories of the media saturation of the Vietnam War. Many commentators at that time remarked that because the horrors of war were beamed into our living rooms every night for many years, people would turn off war and that the Vietnam War would truly be the war to end all wars. How wrong they were – far from turning us off war, the constant exposure actually, I believed, kept it foremost in our consciousness.
Yet another example is the phenomenon of compassion fatigue, where people in rich Western countries get fed up watching starving children suffering in poor countries. This results, apparently, in a falling off of donations and diminishing of interest in the root causes of starvation – many of which may be linked to our Western economic model which the powerful vested interests have a stake in perpetuating anyway.
Topicality also influences the bias of the media. I remember after the tragedy of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 the word itself, tsunami, became very topical, and it found its way into different descriptions of everyday events that occurred with a frequency that was far in excess of the ordinary.
Bias, in respect of the Focus Group, will often have a hierarchy of sympathy, being sympathetic towards particular individuals while pouring vitriol on others in similar circumstances, or identifying someone who has done well following a lot of adversity as a goodie and someone from a similar background who, for example, went to prison, as a baddie.
And this is important because top of the list in news reporting (and in media in general) is the ‘goodie vs. baddie’!
The media (and the entire entertainment industry) thrives on this to make their output exciting and saleable. It is easy to do an exercise yourself to spot the bias. Take, for example, a film or perhaps a TV series. Look at the film or series carefully. See what feelings you have towards the various characters, i.e. the goodies and the baddies. Then try and figure out what the character represents – politically or socially. You will, inevitably, have the same feeling towards what the character represents as what you have towards the character him/herself.
As feelings are a lot more powerful than dialogue or script or knowledge, one can only imagine at the effect – both consciously and subliminally – of these biased representations on millions or even billions of people throughout the world. It would be virtually impossible to assess the impact!
American and British films, TV series, comedies etc. constitute a very big part of our entertainment in Ireland. In my lifetime, I have observed that the cruel, sly, fanatical, unpleasant, immoral, sometimes brutal, often stupid people, who smirk instead of smile, snigger instead of laugh, and rarely cry or show tender emotions in films – not only political thrillers or war blockbusters, but also many other types of genres – have (mostly) been – along the timeline of my life – (so-called Red) Indians, German, Japanese, Russian and/or Eastern European, and very often, nowadays Arabic.
For example, in the hugely popular adventure comedy Back to the Future, Doc, who built the time machine, stole the plutonium to power it from a group of Libyan nationalists – who he then made fools of – and then Marty was chased (unsuccessfully) around the streets by a very dark-skinned baddie with a stupid look on his face.
As I write this, in 2020, there is a quasi-comedy series on telly set in a Caribbean country where the local police (all black skinned) have to be a assisted by a white skinned officer in solving their many murders.
And in the biggest box-office grossing film of all time, Gone With the Wind, the superiority of the white ascendancy class over their black slaves – portrayed, by the way, as well treated, and content with their inferior status – runs like a thread through the entire film.
It is very common to portray those who we wish to denigrate in a negative light. In the 19th Century, the Irish were portrayed as stupid, weak-minded, lazy and ignorant in the English media. Jewish people were portrayed as evil and conniving in Germany in the 1920’s-30’s.
And some other little observations!
Who are the Allies? Over many decades of media reporting and entertainment the allies are always on the side of good – for some reason. And who are the men of violence? The oft-condemned men of violence are always on the side of bad – the people we must all think little of and hold in contempt. As if the Allies were not men of violence.
We grew up to think of the word Axis as the most terrible of all evils – the opposite of the Allies, the alliance of fascists of Germany, Italy and Japan in World War Two. Lo and behold, the word resurfaced in 2002, and was joined by the word evil (the Axis of Evil) to describe some Arab countries on which the USA was waging war.
The purpose of using the term Axis was, I have no doubt, to get ordinary people to associate Arab countries with the fascist countries of the 1930’s. The term was, of course, unquestioningly lapped up by the media.
Thinking again about the Allies, I remember reading books or stories about the Second World War where a soldier on the Allied side attacks, for example, an enemy machine gun nest or performs some other action on land, sea or air, knowing that certain death will result from his actions but he believes in the cause he is fighting for so he does it anyway. When he dies in the process he’s a hero, praised for his selflessness and courage, and awarded medals posthumously. But when the Japanese fly their aircraft into ships in kamikaze attacks, knowing certain death await them they are described as madmen, proof that the Japanese are fanatical and insane – inferior to the level-headed Allies. Nowadays when a suicide bomber – and I’ll come back to how we view terrorism in a later post – blows himself up and in the process kills a large number of innocent people he’s evil, mad and deranged, and is condemned and vilified.
Once again I stress that I am not making any political points in all the above examples – I am merely encouraging us to consider the effect of all this bias on our thinking.
In our entertainment industry, the majority of noble, righteous, pleasant, honourable, intelligent, far-seeing, respectful, clever people who show human emotions have (generally) been North American (mostly white with the odd black African-American) or Western European.
Of course there are many films and TV series, perhaps a little lesser known, that challenge this bias, but the majority of the huge earning blockbuster films or series – including comedies – have been as above. They will sometimes contain enough sympathetic script to somewhat alleviate the badness/stupidity or immorality of the enemy, but this is mere lip-service to a kind of fairness or weak impartiality.
Even within films and TV series that are thoughtful (and may be reflective of minority struggles) I have often observed stereotypes that reinforce the general societal view of the minority portrayed.
More relevant perhaps to the subject of this website, it is a similar story when poor people are portrayed. Very often they (no matter what century the film or series is set in) have certain characteristics such as dependency, low intelligence, addiction, dishonesty, incompetence, sometimes even violence, thick accents, perhaps loose morality, subservience, and, of course, long suffering.
Sometimes they have a kind of earthy wisdom that temporarily shows up their so-called betters, but generally the more typical characteristics prevail. Some of these characteristics are portrayed directly, and some indirectly/subtly and perhaps even a little deviously.
And a newspaper is much the same. It is possible to glean bias by reading it carefully and seeing how different classes or groups of people are portrayed.
And, of course, we can also learn a bit about ourselves by taking note of what we are drawn to in the media. Because we also reinforce certain biases by what media we buy, choose to watch, go to see, or, in the modern world, what we click on.
That is, we put bias into the news ourselves by reading/watching things that we agree with, or that conforms to our worldview. We can feel good when a journalist (or politician or celebrity, reported in the media) says something we agree with or has the same opinion as us. So we keep reading/watching what makes us feel good. This is a kind of feedback loop. That is, we are fed what we want to eat and we keep affirming that which we are fed.
As an exercise, it is good to read things that we don’t agree with. This is very easy nowadays in the Internet age. Try it and see how you feel. For example, if you are an atheist read stuff that highlights the benefits of religious practices. Or vice versa. If you are a little left of centre, read right-wing websites! See how you feel reading something that is opposite to what you generally believe in. It is always good to see, read or listen to opinions that challenge our core beliefs and values.
Bias in the media does, of course, make for great entertainment – and I’m not advocating that we change it to boring, bland, politically-correct uniformity. In fact, I enjoy a bit of Oirish caricature myself in films made about Ireland or the Irish, and there are many hilarious programmes showcasing the humour and wisdom of the not-very-advantaged section of the population.
I also acknowledge that there are many films, books etc. making a laugh of rich people, the gentry, professions of all kinds, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors, spies and/or the established order. There is a hilarious film entitled ‘Analyse This‘ lampooning my own choice of profession (psychotherapy) which I enjoyed hugely.
But I think – and this is the important bit – it is good to be aware of media bias and notice its effects, repeated day in, day out, week in, week out, year in, year out, on our attitudes!