Concerns about Bias
In 1996, CBS news reporter Bernard Goldberg shocked the media establishment by
publicly judging in a Wall Street Journal editorial that “The old argument that the networks and
other ‘media elites’ have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it’s hardly worth discussing
anymore. No, we don't sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we’re going to slant
the news. We don't have to. It comes naturally to most reporters” (Goldberg 1996). Goldberg
then (famously or infamously, depending on one’s point of view) followed up those accusations
with two best-selling books on the topic (Goldberg 2001; Goldberg 2003). Such perceptions of
liberal media bias have given rise to their own media industry, with additional widely-read
books, written by various authors, appearing on a regular basis (Coulter 2002; Stossel 2004;
Anderson 2005). Not to be outdone, liberal apologists have published their own popular books
to argue that the mainstream media in fact has a conservative bias (Alterman 2003; Franken
2003; Nichols and McChesney 2005).
Though often sensationalized, as in the books cited above, concerns about ideological
bias in the American news media are certainly not foolish. The slanting of mass information,
even if subtle or unintentional, may have enormous political and social consequences. A long
string of social science studies have demonstrated the capacity of the media to set the agenda for
public discussion and to frame the way in which issues are understood (Robinson 1974;
McCombs and Shaw 1977; Iyengar and Kinder 1987; Iyengar 1991; Hetherington 1996; Nelson
Clawson, and Oxley 1997). This does not mean that the media simply insert beliefs and
preferences into the blank minds of the public; but the “truths” told by journalists do provide
many – perhaps most – of the limited building blocks from which personal opinions about public
issues are constructed (Entman 1989). Even people who may not be directly swayed by the
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Convention