News and Neutrality

Someone, perhaps Neil Postman, said that the media doesn’t tell us what to think, but it tells us what to think about.  In the early US, many journalists styled themselves as “Watchdogs for Democracy,” charged with investigating corruption and protecting human rights through the press. Later, journalists called themselves “objective,” claiming that they would merely report the events of the world without judgment. Many of our corporate media still make this claim, crying foul if anyone suggests they have prejudice or bias.

As an experiment, then, I perused what four of our major news corporations published as news on the home pages of their internet sites.  Leaving out editorials, celebrity and sports coverage, and advertising, whatever is left–news–might or might not be objective.  I will leave it to you to decide what findings are here, what is valid, or if you wish to carry out this analysis in a more long-term and scientific way.

Sampling of Internet Home Pages of Four Major Networks: Numbers of News Stories

30 September 2007

 

	FOX	MSNBC	BBC	CNN
Anti-Democrat	7	0	0	0
Anti-Bush	0	0	1	0
Neutral GOP	3	2	0	1
Neutral Dems	0	1	0	3
US Violence	13 (59%)	12 (48%)	3 (30%)	8 (42%)
US Non-violent	9 (41%)	13 (52%)	7 (70%)	11 (58%)
Iraq	3	2	0	1
Iran	5	0	1	2
World Violence	12 (100%)	15 (60%)	10 (40%)	5 (50%)
World Non-Violent	0 (0%)	10 (40%)	15 (60%)	5 (50%)
Disease/Health Fears	9	3	1	2
Tech Fears	4	3	1
Economic Fears	2	4		1
Weather/Environment Fears	1	3	3	3
Civil Rights Fears	5	3	0	0
Celebrity News	13	12	2	3
Humor	1	4	2	2
Advertising	9	11 disguised*	0	3
Sports	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Total News Stories	73	71	42	43
Total Negative Stories	61 (84%)	45 (63%)	20 (48%)	23 (53%)
Total Non-Negative Stories	12 (16%)	26 (37%)	22 (52%)	20 (47%)

How did I determine the categories?  Here are some notes on my thinking:

• “Anti” — the headline contained diction which implicitly or explicitly judged the event.  For instance, one Fox story was titled “Butting In” for coverage of the Democratic strategies in Congress. In contrast, there were “neutral” stories which, by headlines anyway, covered the event without loaded language (“Debate over Dems Bill”).
• “Violent/Non-violent” — The violent stories include crime, death, war, etc.,  any story where humans abuse other humans.  Non-violent is a far larger category which includes both positive stories (“Lost Woman Rescued After Four Days”) or stories not based on death and disease (“Fire Dept. Gets New Truck”).
• “Fears” — A category which specifically shows dangers, broad or individual in the particular area (“Brain-eating amoeba” or “Tropical Storm Could be Hurricane”).  What’s interesting about these stories is that they are in addition to the “Violent” stories above.  A new tech device on the market was categorized as “Non-violent” whereas “New Computer Virus” is tech fear.
• * As an observation, the advertising on MSNBC’s site is mostly formatted exactly as their news headlines are, making it difficult to distinguish.  Buried amongst the other categories, they call ads “Sponsored Stories.”  Hmm.

What should I be thinking about?  And with whom will I discuss it?