(This article, excerpted from Brent Baker's book How to Identify, Expose & Correct Liberal Media Bias, courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
by Brent Baker
To demonstrate how to detect bias in a news story, take a look at two examples of biased network news stories.
First, here's an ABC World News Tonight story from May 3, 1992, days after the Los Angeles riots:
Anchor Forrest Sawyer: “The death toll in the Los Angeles rioting rose to forty-six today, and that makes it the nation's bloodiest civil unrest in seventy-five years. Now that the smoke is clearing, L.A. residents are arguing over who is to blame. As Tom Foreman reports, many say that blame goes all the way to the top.”
ABC News reporter Tom Foreman: “As the clean-up continues, the federal government is being swept into the circle of blame, for failing to address inner-city problems, and leaving poor people in despair.”
Rep. Maxine Waters: “Absolutely desperate, absolutely angry, and justifiably so. Nothing is working for them. The systems aren't working.”
Foreman: “In recent years, as federal funding for social services has fallen, many have disappeared. Gone are programs for job training, health care, child care, and housing.”Bruce Johnson, L.A. resident: “A lot of black people don't have no jobs or nothing else you know.”
Foreman: “Bruce Johnson once worked at a federally funded job. The funding dried up. He has been without steady work since. His wife Pat was getting a federally funded education. That's over too.”
Pat Johnson: “I think the government stinks. You want me to be honest, I think it stinks. Like I say, they promise you everything, it give us nothing, you know.”
Foreman: “Some people believe the President has not recognized any social motive for the violence.”
President George Bush, May 1, 1992: “It's not a message of protest. It's been the brutality of a mob. Pure and simple.”
Foreman: “People here say the President should listen.”
Woman on street: “Who's going to listen? I bet they listen now. They listen now, won't they. If this is where you have to get their attention, damn it, get it. Any way you can.”
Foreman: “Increasingly, people are saying that all of the violence had very little to do with Rodney King. Instead it was the desperate call of a community fighting for change. Tom Foreman, ABC News, Los Angeles.”
Foreman's story reflected bias by spin; bias by selection of sources; and bias by commission. Foreman's spin on what caused the riots (the federal government failed to address inner-city problems and that the riots were a “desperate call of a community fighting for change”), matched the liberal spin at the time. Conservatives believed the individuals who committed the violent acts were responsible, not societal pressures.
Except for a George Bush soundbite, which Foreman used to back his thesis that Bush “doesn't get it,” the other four soundbites supported the liberal view on what caused the riots. Bias by commission came in Foreman's declaration as a fact beyond dispute that “federal funding for social services has fallen, many have disappeared. Gone are programs for job training, health care, child care, and housing.” That's a ludicrous assertion, since federal funding for virtually every social program grew faster than inflation during the 1980s.
Second, here's a March 23, 1992 CBS Evening News story on child poverty:
Anchor Connie Chung: “A new snapshot today of the health and well-being of children in this country. For a growing number of them, it's not a pretty picture. Eric Engberg reports on the young face of poverty in America.”
CBS News reporter Eric Engberg: “The way America treats its children from newborns to teens has deteriorated to danger levels according to a study out today. This premature baby, born to a cocaine-using mother in a Washington hospital, weighed one pound, ten ounces at birth. Such underweight births, often a precursor to serious health problems, are on the rise across the country.”
Dr. Victor Nelson, Greater SE Community Hospital: “Here over the last few years, we have doubled this to almost fifteen percent.”
Engberg: “Other yardsticks for measuring child well-being compiled by the child advocacy group Kids Count point to trouble. While the death rate for infants has declined, the teen years have gotten more dangerous. Violent teen deaths climbed eleven percent in five years. Reason: soaring rates for murder and suicide. More children are having children; there were 76,000 more babies born to single teens in 1989 than in 1980. The number of children living in single-parent families has grown by two million in the decade. The study found one in five children was poor, an increase of twenty-two percent during the eighties.”
Douglas Nelson, Annie E. Casey Foundation: “And if we don't turn these numbers around in the decade, we, I mean every American regardless of age or their family status, we're going to be in deep trouble.”
Engberg: “As child poverty has grown, social workers have encountered more homeless children.”
Marlys Wilson, social service worker: “They forget how to laugh, they just sit, they cry a lot. We have a lot of kids that cry. They've lost a sense of trust.”
Engberg: “Americans are very aware that something is wrong in the way children are treated. A poll released with today's survey found that adults, by a margin of two to one, think today's kids have it worse than their parents did. Eric Engberg, CBS News, Washington.”
Engberg's story demonstrated five types of bias. First, bias by story selection. A liberal organization released a study with a liberal theme and CBS considered it newsworthy. Second, bias by labeling. The Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Center for the Study of Social Policy, are liberal advocacy groups. Engberg failed to properly identify them. Third, bias by commission. Without citing any statistical source, Engberg insisted “social workers have encountered more homeless children.” He also cited, without any balancing counterpoint, the Casey Foundation's claim that child poverty increased 22 percent in the 1980s. In fact, even the Children's Defense Fund, a left-wing lobby for increased welfare dependency, calculated that the percentage of children in poverty declined from 22.3 percent in 1983 to 19.6 percent in 1989.
Fourth, bias by omission. In building a case for how the welfare of children deteriorated in the '80s, Engberg excluded critics like Heritage Foundation analyst Robert Rector, who told The New York Times the report was “pure mental rubbish” that “ignores $150 billion in welfare; so it doesn't look at the children's standard-of-living conditions.” Census Bureau statistics don't consider substantial non-cash welfare benefits such as housing assistance and Medicaid. The exclusion of critics like Rector brings us to Engberg's bias by selection of sources. All three espoused the same point of view.
