by Paul Schingle

Created on: November 08, 2008   Last Updated: November 27, 2008

Bias in the mainstream media? Is it possible? Of course I'm being facetious and of course the answer is yes, but what I'd like to know is, what is the definition of "mainstream" by whoever came up with this question? Whenever I hear about the bias of the mainstream media, I think of right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh telling us that the "mainstream" media is liberally biased. Let me get this straight. Rush Limbaugh is supposed to pass for objective? Of course mainstream media shows bias, but so does any type of media. Any of us who writes knows that a writer puts a little of him/her self into the writing. It's the nature of the beast.

The key for consumers of news and other media is to be critically objective of the things we read (or hear or see). Unfortunately, critical thinking is becoming more and more of a lost art. When I was a sophomore in college I took a course called "How to think like Spock." It was a seminar class taught by a psychology professor in which we were exposed to a lot of different types of writing on a number of subjects-most of which had some practical use in the world of psychology. We all had a longer term paper due at the end of the semester in which we read several articles on the same subject and tried to filter out the bias and find the meaningful data. My topic was the validity of the polygraph.

It's interesting how even scientific "research" is biased in the end. I found articles stating that the polygraph is the most accurate way we have (or had at the time) to tell if someone is lying. I also found articles stating that the polygraph is useless when determining truthfulness. Of course, the real truth lies somewhere in between. After gathering data from more than a dozen articles, I came to the conclusion that, yes, the polygraph is a fairly accurate tool and correctly discerns liars from truth tellers in about 95% of all cases. Of course, this means it's an inaccurate tool 5% of the time. So, while it may be a helpful tool, it is not the be-all and end-all of discerning truth. Think about it, 5% is still a lot of error. If this was the only tool we used, a lot of people could lose their jobs, or worse, go to jail because of bad information. My conclusion is beside the point, though. The point of the course, and my research, is to learn how to think critically. The same can be said for consumption of the news.

If you are listening to a current events story and you get your commentary from Al Franken, there is going to be an obvious left-leaning bias. Listen to commentary on the same subject by Rush Limbaugh and you'll get a very different feel for what's happening. Add your own bias as a listener and it's hard to tell fact from opinion. The key to the matter is critical thinking. And we'd all be better served if we exercised some of this when consuming the news.

Is their bias in the "mainstream media?" Of course there is. Bias is human nature. Every one of us-every member of the human race has preconceived notions. The best thing for all of us to do is to listen/view/read more than one source and think critically about what we've just been told.

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