Media bias is the bias or perceived bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and
stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media
bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the
standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or
article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely
disputed.
Practical limitations to media neutrality include the inability of
journalists to report all available stories and facts, and the requirement that
selected facts be linked into a coherent narrative. Government influence, including overt and
covert censorship, biases the media in some countries, for example North
Korea and Burma. Market forces that result in a biased
presentation include the ownership of the news source, concentration
of media ownership, the
selection of staff, the preferences of an intended audience, and pressure from advertisers.There are a number of national and international watchdog groups that report on bias in the
media.
Media in Pakistan, with few exceptions,
is serving its own interest. Journalists are unfamiliar to the standards of
professionalism, ethics and morality. Instead of promoting social harmony,
disseminating information in impartial way, condemning extremist ideologies,
presenting real picture of prevailing situation, focusing on various issues of
national interest etc., many of the well-known journalists don’t tire of
discussing Zardari and fueling anti-Americansentiments. They have remained
successful to the extent to make people believe that Zardari and Co is root of
all ills afflicted on Pakistan and once the current Gov. is shown the way to
home by any mean -be it constitutional or unconstitutional - Pakistan will come
out of current plight.
What coverage they have given to other socio-economic issues of national concern? How many talk shows had been organized to spotlight the impending water crises before the current floods? What effort they have made to organized a purposeful public discourse to find real causes of energy crunch? Have they put any sincere effort to discern the causes of bad governance at all spheres of administration? Have we seen any program, exceptions may be there, on education, literature, science and technology?
If media's performance is to be judged on coverage of judiciary executive row, or maligning Asif Ali Zardari then it is doing excellent job. However if its role is to be judged on the pure journalistic scale, the score will remain miserably low.
What coverage they have given to other socio-economic issues of national concern? How many talk shows had been organized to spotlight the impending water crises before the current floods? What effort they have made to organized a purposeful public discourse to find real causes of energy crunch? Have they put any sincere effort to discern the causes of bad governance at all spheres of administration? Have we seen any program, exceptions may be there, on education, literature, science and technology?
If media's performance is to be judged on coverage of judiciary executive row, or maligning Asif Ali Zardari then it is doing excellent job. However if its role is to be judged on the pure journalistic scale, the score will remain miserably low.
Also the concentration of media ownership into
the hands of a few people is of concern to people at both ends of the political
spectrum. For example, Rupert Murdoch controls more than half the newspapers in
Australia, including the only major daily newspaper in Brisbane, Adelaide and
many regional cities, and is lobbying for changes to Australian media ownership
laws to enable him to buy a television network (Lawson 2003).
Powerful
corporations are not only represented in the media by corporate spokespeople
but they also seek to multiply their voice by funding others to speak for them
as well. A major focus of the new corporate activism, which has been a response
to the perceived liberal bias of journalists, has been to ensure that
corporate-funded people are the ones that the media turn to for comment, be
they scientists, think-tank ‘experts’ or front group spokespeople.
The use of
front groups enables corporations to take part in public debates in the media
behind a cover of community concern. When a corporation wants to oppose
environmental regulations or support an environmentally damaging development it
may do so openly and in its own name. But it is far more effective to have a
group of citizen’s or a group of experts – preferably a coalition of such
groups – which can publicly promote the outcomes desired by the corporation
while claiming to represent the public interest. When such groups do not
already exist, the modern corporation can pay a public relations firm to create
them.
Merrill
Rose, executive vice-president of the public relations firm Porter/Novelli,
advises companies:
Put your
words in someone else’s mouth … There will be times when the position you
advocate, no matter how well framed and supported, will not be accepted by the
public simply because you are who you are. Any institution with a vested
commercial interest in the outcome of an issue has a natural credibility
barrier to overcome with the public, and often, with the media. (Rose 1991)
Corporate
front groups often portray themselves as environmentalists. In this way
corporate interests appear to have environmental support. The names of these
groups are chosen because they sound as if they are grassroots community and
environmental groups. The Forest Protection Society in Australia, for example, was
established in 1987 with the support of the Forest Industry Campaign
Association (Rowell 1996: 240). It shared the same postal address as the
National Association of Forest Industries and its fact sheets promote logging
in rainforests as ‘one of the best ways to ensure that the rain-forests are not
destroyed’ (Burton 1994: 17-18). (In 2000 it came out of the closet and renamed
itself Timber Communities Australia [http://www.tca.org.au/TCAIndex.htm].)
Corporate
front groups may also portray themselves as independent scientific groups whose
aim is to cast doubt on the severity of the problems associated with
environmental deterioration and create confusion by magnifying uncertainties
and showing that some scientists dispute the claims of the scientific community.
For example groups funded by the fossil-fuel industry emphasize the uncertainty
associated with global warming predictions (Beder 2002b: ch 14).
Another
strategy used by corporate front groups is to recognize environmental problems
caused by corporations but to promote superficial solutions that prevent and
pre-empt the sorts of changes that are really necessary to solve the problem.
Sometimes they shift the blame from corporations to the individual citizen. For
example, the Keep America Beautiful Campaign focuses on anti-litter campaigns
but ignores the potential of recycling legislation and changes to packaging. It
seeks to attribute litter and waste disposal problems to individual are acting
irresponsibly and admit no corporate responsibility for the problem (Beder
2002b: ch 14).
The media
often use these front groups as sources of information and quote their
spokespeople without realizing their corporate origins or acknowledging in
their news reporting the corporate connections of the groups. The same is true
for think-tanks, which are overwhelmingly funded by corporations and wealthy
corporate-aligned foundations. Various studies by FAIR have found that
conservative and centrist think-tank experts are used as news sources many
times more often than experts from progressive or left-leaning think-tanks
(Dolny 2000). These think-tanks are cited without any indication of their
ideological basis or funding sources and their personnel are treated as
independent experts (Solomon 1996: 10).
The
increasing trend for corporations to use front groups and friendly scientists
as their mouthpieces has distorted media reporting on environmental issues
since the media often do not differentiate between corporate front groups and
genuine citizen groups, and industry-funded scientists are often treated as
independent scientists. Because of the myth of scientific objectivity
journalists tend to have an uncritical trust in scientists (Nelkin 1987: 105)
and few ‘question the motivation[s] of the scientists whose research is quoted,
rarely attributing a study’s funding source or institution’s political slant’
(Ruben 1994: 11). Nor do the mainstream media generally cover the phenomenon of
front groups and think-tanks and artificially generated grassroots campaigns,
which would serve to undermine their operation by exposing the deceit on which
they depend.
In simple
words it’s very difficult in my view that we can see some positive change in
media biasness and ethics unless these Giant Corporations are out there but
still some options can sort out things in much better way,
·
Creating national
endowments for journalism and media to ensure long-term financial independence
·
Allocating funds to
content-providers as a function of audience and/or via a range of voting
mechanisms
·
Expansion of the
public broadcasting model to provide space and visibility for these outside
content-providers
·
Subsidizing
investigative reporting (at the local, national, and international levels) as
well as professional training for journalists
·
Subsidizing media
infrastructure
·
Removing advertising
from public TV stations, as imminent in France and Spain. This reduces
commercial bias of their content and pressures their competitors to reduce
bias; it also shifts ad revenues to private media, complementing plans to
subsidies media consumption and media entry.
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