Bias in the news media

Second Summer

Second Summer

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I use Google News a fair bit, and they tend to group headlines together that relate to the same piece of news. This provides good opportunities for comparing the coverage in different media outlets. I must say, in the UK, one newspaper stands out as unfailingly conservative and reactionary: The Telegraph - sometimes referred to as The Torygraph, can be trusted to deliver the reactionary angle on almost any piece of news. Generally, they are not quite as backwards as Fox News and your average neocon politician in the US, but they are not too far behind. I find that The Daily Mail, which often gets a bad rep, to be more balanced, although they are more sensationalist.

As a recent example, take a look at the headlines about the High Court ruling regarding the government's spying on UK citizens:

The Telegraph: Thousands of lives at risk after High Court rules snooping powers unlawful
PCWorld: UK High Court gives government nine months to rewrite data retention law
The Guardian: Opinion: Finally, the high court puts a brake on snooping on ordinary Britons
Daily Mail: In-depth: David Cameron's spying powers are 'inconsistent' with the law, High Court rules

There was a similar bias with the recent developments about the planned ease on fox hunting that the SNP thankfully decided to weigh in on.

What is worrying about this it that The Telegraph has such a high coverage of the news - they seem to cover almost everything. As a result, their articles are often displayed prominently on Google News.
 
Two years later, and the situation is much the same. I'm debating whether I should sign up as a member of the Labour party (£4 per month) or as a supporter of The Guardian (£5 per month).
 
I think The Guardian is really biased too, just to the left. YouGov | How left or right-wing are the UK’s newspapers?

I mainly read The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent and the FT. I also read The Washington Post. I mean, I don't read all of them daily, :Dbut most of them every week. I also watch the BBC news and I think that has left wing bias, even though it is supposed to be impartial. Channel 4 news has left wing bias too, but I find they have some very interesting world news stories on there that the other news channels don't pick up.
 
Moll Flanders said:
I think The Guardian is really biased too, just to the left. YouGov | How left or right-wing are the UK’s newspapers?
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Yes, you're right, of course. Though to the Guardian's credit, at least they seem to better label so-called opinion articles (in the online edition at least) than the competition, and they appear less 'tabloid'. I don't think I would place them to the left of The Mirror and The Independent, but maybe there's something I'm not seeing.

(My personal concern about media bias is mainly about the right-wing kind.)
 
Moll Flanders said:
I think The Guardian is really biased too, just to the left. YouGov | How left or right-wing are the UK’s newspapers?

I mainly read The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent and the FT. I also read The Washington Post. I mean, I don't read all of them daily, :Dbut most of them every week. I also watch the BBC news and I think that has left wing bias, even though it is supposed to be impartial. Channel 4 news has left wing bias too, but I find they have some very interesting world news stories on there that the other news channels don't pick up.
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I agree. The BBC is very left wing bias. Many newspaper colonists don't portray what the everyday person is saying.
 
Sounds like change is in the air for The Daily Mail as a new editor takes over from Paul Dacre:
Instead – and much more interestingly – Dacre will be now replaced by his colleague Geordie Greig at the beginning of September. Only two months in it – except that Greig’s instincts on Brexit are a million miles from Dacre’s and those two months will be nail-bitingly uncertain ones for any compulsive Brexiter.
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More: Regime change at the Daily Mail will create aftershocks across Middle England | Alan Rusbridger
 
I have watched the same news articles on CNN and then on Fox news and they are completely diametrically different presentations.....Its all rather funny to watch :)
 
I'm noticing that certain news stories, if you can call them that, are almost exclusively covered by a certain small subset of the UK newspapers: Do you remember that plane from Malaysia Airlines that went missing a few years ago, the MH370? For months and years afterwards there were various conspiracy theories, put forward by so-called "boffins" (i.e. people with little or no real credentials who claim to be subject matter experts) that received prominent coverage by newspapers like the Express and the Daily Mail.

These days these same newspapers seem more interested in covering stories about asteroids on supposed collision coarse with Earth, something which very few other media outlets seem to care about. Meanwhile, these same newspapers seem suspiciously quiet about climate change, unless it's a story that tries to discredit the science or those who speak out against the lack of action.

This difference in focus is, well, interesting.
 
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