Page 33 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

BIAS

relation to news and current affairs reporting in the print media and
television, and occasionally in talkback radio. Accusations of bias
assume that one viewpoint has been privileged over another in the
reporting of an event, inadvertently leading to the suggestion that
there are only two sides to a story. This is rarely the case.
Claims of bias can be understood as relying on the assumption that
the media are somehowcapable of reflecting an objective reality,
especially in discussions of news reporting. But news, like any other
form of media representation, should be understood as a ‘signifying
practice’ (Langer, 1998: 17). It is better understood by analysing
selection and presentation rather than by seeking to test stories against
an abstract and arguable external standard such as ‘objectivity’. Indeed,
while there is no doubt that both news reporters and media analysts
can and do strive for truthfulness (much of the time), nevertheless it is
difficult to ‘envisage howobjectivity can ever be anything more than
relative’ (Gunter, 1997: 11). It is better to understand the news not as
the presentation of facts, but rather as the selection of discourse
through which to articulate a particular subject matter or event. Thus,
understanding the representations contained within the news can be
achieved by, for example, discursive analysis rather than accusations of
bias. As McGregor (1997: 59) states, it ‘is not a question of distortion
or bias, for the concept of ‘‘distortion’’ is alien to the discussion of
socially constructed realities’.
In his study of HIV/AIDS and the British press, Beharrell manages
to avoid claims of biased reporting in his analysis, providing a more
meaningful way of examining why certain discourses are more
favoured in news reporting than others. He notes that proprietorial,
editorial/journalist and marketing strategies all act as key influences on
news content covering AIDS (1993: 241). But he is able to explain
why certain approaches are taken within these stories without accusing
the media of deliberately distorting the facts (something that is central
to many accusations of bias). Beharrell demonstrates a method that
improves understanding of the nature of media representation without
resorting to the concept of bias. Studies such as this also avoid another
implicit weakness of the ‘bias’ school of media criticism, namely that
such accusations are traditionally levelled at viewpoints that fail to
concur with one’s own.

See also: Content analysis, Ideology, News values, Objectivity

Further reading: McGregor (1997); Philo (1990)

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