Republicans and Democrats see news bias only in stories that clearly favor the other party

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Marjorie Hershey, Indiana University (THE CONVERSATION) Charges of media bias ‘” that ‘œthe media’� are trying to brainwash Americans by feeding the public only one side of every issue ‘” have become as common as campaign ads in the run-up to the midterm elections. As a political scientist who has examined media coverage of the Trump presidency and campaigns, I can say that this is what social science research tells us about media bias. First, media bias is in the eye of the beholder. Communications scholars have found that if you ask people in any community, using scientific polling methods, whether their local media are biased, you’ll find that about half say yes. But of that half, typically a little more than a quarter say that their local media are biased against Republicans, and a little less than a quarter say the same local media are biased against Democrats. Research shows that Republicans and Democrats spot bias only in articles that clearly favor the other party. If an article tilts in favor of their own party, they tend to see it as unbiased. Many people, then, define ‘œbias’� as ‘œanything that doesn’t agree with me.’� It’s not hard to see why. ‘˜Media’ is a plural word American party politics has become increasingly polarized in recent decades. Republicans have become more consistently conservative, and Democrats have become more consistently liberal to moderate. As the lines have been drawn more clearly, many people have developed hostile feelings toward the opposition party. In a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, 45% of Republicans said the Democratic Party’s policies are ‘œso misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being,’� and 41% of Democrats said the same about Republicans. A poll conducted in midyear 2022 by Pew showed that ‘œ72% of Republicans regard Democrats as more immoral, and 63% of Democrats say the same about Republicans.’� Not surprisingly, media outlets have arisen to appeal primarily to people who share a conservative view, or people who share a liberal view. That doesn’t mean that ‘œthe media’� are biased. There are hundreds of thousands of media outlets in the U.S. ‘” newspapers, radio, network TV, cable TV, blogs, websites and social media. These news outlets don’t all take the same perspective on any given issue. If you want a very conservative news site, it is not hard to find one, and the same with a very liberal news site. First Amendment rules ‘œThe media,’� then, present a variety of different perspectives. That’s the way a free press works. The Constitution’s First Amendment says Congress shall make no law limiting the freedom of the press. It doesn’t say that Congress shall require all media sources to be ‘œunbiased.’� Rather, it implies that as long as Congress does not systematically suppress any particular point of view, then the free press can do its job as one of the primary checks on a powerful government. When the Constitution was written and for most of U.S. history, the major news sources ‘” newspapers, for most of that time ‘” were explicitly biased. Most were sponsored by a political party or a partisan individual. The notion of objective journalism ‘” that media must report both sides of every issue in every story ‘” barely existed until the late 1800s. It reached full flower only in the few decades when broadcast television, limited to three major networks, was the primary source of political information.