2
properly acquiring and processing the information presented to the viewer. If true, this
circumstance raises many intriguing possibilities for research regarding information
processing as it relates to television news. Therefore, the goal of this study is to gain a
deeper understanding of information processing as it relates to information received from
the televised news media.
Framing the Arguments Surrounding Television News Bias
Survey research illustrates that people perceive CNN and Fox News Channel as
being ideologically biased. This perception remains strong despite the inability of
scholars to uncover any pattern of systematic ideological bias within the content of the
news. Graber (1980) and Robinson and Sheehan (1983) found that any ideological bias
in the media was for the most part evenly distributed in examining the amounts of
positive and negative news coverage. Robinson and Clancy (1985) determined that any
bias that does exist in television news is bias against incumbents and front-runners as a
function of the journalistic practice of holding them up to a higher level of scrutiny.
Weaver (1972) and Hofstetter (1976) found that any bias that existed was driven by
independent news standards rather than political ideology. Iyengar (1987; 1994) and
Bennett (2000) support these findings when arguing that news stories have become more
episodic or simplistic in nature, but generally are not ideologically biased.
2
Most
important, however, is that none of these scholars uncovered any significant evidence that
the content of television news was ideologically biased.
2
Of course, much of this research predates the origin of Fox News Channel, and many of these studies
predate the rise of cable news (and thus CNN). Therefore, it is possible that some of these authors would
be amenable to the position that Fox News Channel and CNN are ideologically biased. However, the fact
that the more recent studies have come to similar conclusions as the earlier studies leads me to infer that the
academic belief that there is no ideological bias within television news media remains strong.
Convention