THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL

COMMUNICATION
CHAPTER 9
E X A M I N I N G T H E C O N U N D RU M S O F P O L I T I C A L N E W S B I A S

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 THE CONTEMPORARY NEWS
LANDSCAPE

Gatekeeping is “the process by which the billions of

messages that are available in the world get cut down
and transformed into the hundreds of messages that
reach a given person on a given day” (Shoemaker,
1991, p. 1)

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 CABLE NEWS WITH ATTITUDE

• Fox News CEO Roger Ailes saw their job • MSNBC, formed at the same time as Fox
as mobilizing the masses around their News, has taken a liberal perspective
preferred candidate through the
mouthpiece of the media
• Ailes told his executives “I want to elect
the next president” two years before the
2012 election (Sherman, 2014, p. xvi)

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 IDEOLOGICAL WEBSITES

• The web and social media have taken • Ideologically bent sites such as Breitbart
political journalism in expansive, enriching News became major factors in the 2016
but sometimes perilous new directions election
• Some sites seamlessly combine fact and
opinion, often concealing their ideological
leaning

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 CITIZEN JOURNALISM

• Both the term and the practice crystallized in South Korea, by

an online etrepreneur, Oh Yeon-ho and declared on Feb. 22,
2000 that “every citizen is a reporter.”
• Oh and three South Korean colleagues started an online daily
newspaper in 2000 because, he said, they were dissatisfied with
the traditional South Korean press and the govt.-owned KBS
• the first news website in Korea to accept, edit and publish
articles from its readers, in an open source style of news
reporting
• About 20% of the site's content is written by the 55-person
staff, while most of the articles are written by
other freelance contributors (around 38,000) who are mostly
ordinary citizens.
• Influential in the 2002 Presidential Election in South Korea won
by Roh Moo-Hyun
• citizen reporters are paid according to the ranking of their
stories—”basic,” “bonus,” or “special”
Source: https://cmfr-phil.org/media-ethics-responsibility/ethics/power-to-the-people/
 CITIZEN JOURNALISM

• that is conducted by people who are not • countries affected by political upheaval and often in
professional journalists but who disseminate countries where print and broadcast media are
information using Web sites, blogs, and social controlled by the government have used a variety of
media (https://www.britannica.com/topic/citizen-journalism) technological tools to share information about hot
spots
• How it developed:
 e.g. Arab Spring uprising of 2011 that started
 Citizens in disaster zones have provided instant
text and visual reporting from the scene in Yemen
e.g. 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant
disaster
slow reporting of true conditions by the govt-
owned media NHK led to the in search of
relevant on-the-ground information
SAMPLE WEB SITES
 PHILIPPINE INITIATIVE

• The idea of transforming ordinary Filipinos into

citizen journalists is slowly gaining acceptance.
• Because of the “low Internet penetration rate and the
high web maintenance fee, most citizen journalism
sites in the Philippines are owned by bigger or
mainstream media organizations” (Source: https://cmfr-
phil.org/media-ethics-responsibility/ethics/power-to-the-people/)

• peryodismong yapak or “barefoot journalism”

(coined by Danilo Arao, a University of the Philippines journalism
professor)

• In other countries citizen journalism thrives in stand-

alone web sites like OhmyNews.

• Some examples are the Sun.Star’s “Citizen Watch”

and GMANews.TV’s “YouScoop”

example: Sun.Star Network’s “Citizen Watch: The

Arroyo Presidency”
 PARTNERSHIP
• Today, the Philippine traditional media—print and
broadcast—have used citizen journalism in short
messaging and multimedia messaging
systems
• In the 2007 elections, ABS-CBN launched a project
which was supposedly patterned after the idea of
citizen journalism. “Boto Mo, i-Patrol Mo”
• this gave ordinary voters the power to report
unusual and suspicious activities in their
neighborhoods through their mobile phones. ABS-
CBN then flashed the reports on air.
• But citizen journalism should follow the basic
principles observed by traditional news media,
according to some veteran journalists
• Vergel Santos, chair of Business World’s editorial
board has this to say:
“Journalism calls, not only for the understanding of
certain skills, but the acquisition of certain skills at
certain levels. So, being able to build a site and
disseminate whatever information you wish to
disseminate to audiences does not constitute
journalism…”
 TOWA R D S P RO F E S S I O N A L I Z AT I O N OF CITIZEN
JOURNALISM

• OhmyNews enforces strict registration rules

• Some websites have also required their contributors
to abide by certain ethical rules. Sun.Star’s “Citizen
Watch” asks writers to take into consideration the
CyberJournalist.net’s Bloggers’ Code of Ethics
• USA have realized the importance of news
• this is a modified form of the US Society of
Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
• One provision states that bloggers, like journalists,
should be “honest and fair in gathering, reporting, and
interpreting information.”
for citizen journalists and has asked its
reporters to disclose details concerning their
bank accounts to the editorial board
values and other basic journalistic standards,
hence offering Journalism 101 classes to
interested citizen journalists under their
management.
 CITIZENS ENTER THE FRAY

• Citizen journalism has become • Often conflates live streaming with truth,
ubiquitous opening it to question
• Example: Passersby with camera phones
recording videos of police shootings of
unarmed African Americans, or exposing
authorities’ complicity with crimes in
online posts

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 FACEBOOK AS DECIDER

• Many websites such as Google, Facebook, • A takeaway:

and Reddit use algorithms to decide what
gatekeeping is not dead, but the gates
stories to show the viewer
and keepers have changed
• Personalized news raises a lot of
questions, such as whether citizens
receive news carefully culled to reflect
their biases and preferences rather than
information they need to make
responsible decisions

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 FAKE NEWS

• Fake news is a fabricated story created
with an intention to deceive, either to
gain profitable clicks or promote a
political ideology
• Fake news was a significant factor in the
2016 US Presidential election
• Fake stories on Trump’s behalf gained
more traction
• Some fake news stories in 2016
originated outside of the US and
represented extremist interests as well
as promoting the political policies of
Russian president Vladimir Putin
• The dangers of fake news are real even if
its reach is frequently exaggerated

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL
NEWS BIAS
Ideologically or politically based news
bias occurs when there is a consistent
media pattern in presentation of an issue, in
a way that reliably favors one side, or
minimizes the opposing side, in a context
when it can reasonably be argued that there
are other perspectives on the issue that are
also deserving of coverage
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
1. There must be a consistent pattern in the
nature of the coverage
2. Requires abundant inclusion of content on
behalf of the favored side and systematic
exclusion of the other group
3. The biases emerge through reliably
conducted scientific analyses of news
content
4. There must be other reasonable
perspectives that are minimized or excluded
due to apparent political disposition
5. The other perspectives are deserving of
coverage
 THE LIBERAL
NEWS BIAS
THESIS

Is there a liberal bias to the

news? If so, to what extent?

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 UNPACKING LIBERAL NEWS BIAS
Two parts to the liberal news bias thesis:
• Reporters and editors hold liberal, left-of-
center attitudes
• Journalists project these attitudes into news
stories
• There is evidence that elite journalists have
liberal political attitudes
• There is anecdotal evidence that national
media may tilt liberal on some issues
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
Problems with the liberal news bias thesis:
• While elite reporters and editors lean left,
mainstream reporters and editors across the
nation do not
• In scientific content analyses, there is no
newspaper bias, negligible news magazine
bias, and moderate but inconsistent
Democratic bias in television
• Recent study shows news describes issues in
primarily nonpartisan terms that depicts
both sides negatively
• Negative coverage of a group is not the
same thing as bias
 HISTORICAL PROGRESSION OF GENDER
BIAS IN POLITICAL NEWS

• 1972: Women’s Movement gathers steam;
supporters emphasize that more women
should run for office
• Sex-role prejudice was pervasive
• 1984: Geraldine Ferraro announced as
Democratic VP candidate, while NBC
anchor Tom Brokaw announces
“Geraldine Ferraro … The first woman
to be nominated for Vice President
… Size six.”
• News devoted less coverage to female
candidates running for Senate between
1982 and 1988, and coverage was more
negative
• Female presidential candidates received
less coverage in 1972, 1988, 2000, and
2004
• The gendered double bind is the
sexist notion that women cannot be both
professionally competent and feminine

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 REVIEWING THE 2008
AND 2016 CAMPAIGNS
• In 2008, Clinton was described early on in more
physical terms than average for male candidates
• Cable news and websites were filled with biases,
often vicious and vulgar
• Clinton received many gender-based insulting
messages
• Positive Clinton coverage focused on:
• Her experience
• Primary debate successes
• Nearly shattering glass ceiling in 2008
• First woman to gain major party’s presidential
nomination
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
• Negative coverage of Clinton outpaced negative
coverage of Obama in 2008 and all candidates in the
early 2016 campaign
• A key factor: Clinton was a frontrunner
• 2008 negative coverage came in part because of
newsworthy strategic campaign errors
• In 2016, considerable negative coverage centered on
Clinton’s use of a private email server that raised
national security concerns and sparked FBI investigation
• 2008 negative coverage of Sarah Palin mentioned
her gender 6 times more often than counterpart
Joe Biden
• Palin coverage was often blatantly sexist, at other times
focused on shortcomings as a candidate
 CLINTON AND THE
GENDERED DOUBLE BIND

Clinton faced a double bind with her

preference for pantsuits, and news
coverage of her clothing made her
wardrobe more salient over the years.

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 BIASES ABOUT FEMALE CANDIDATES
AND APPEARANCE

• News coverage of female candidates
focuses more on appearance and wardrobe
• Palin took stereotypically masculine issue
positions while displaying “the trappings of
femininity” (Lawrence & Rose, 2010, p. 221)
• Palin exemplifies the “damned if you do and
damned if you don’t” aspect of news of
female candidates; journalists scrutinize
women’s looks whether they cultivate their
appearance and wardrobe or not
• Studies find that voters do not judge male
and female candidates differently when
news refers to their clothing
• Extensive literature shows that women are
objectified more than men
• Feminine traits are stereotypically viewed as
incongruent with leadership
• In the US politics is viewed as a masculine
domain (but this may be changing)

© 2018 Taylor & Francis

 CONCLUSIONS
(USA CASE)
• In one sense, political news is biased in
that it favors the two major party
candidates and frames the election as a
game
• National reporters are liberal, national
news on some issues sometimes tilts
liberal
• Journalists across the nation are more
conservative
• Social science studies cast strong doubt
on the liberal news bias thesis
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
• Gender bias has historically been a factor
in the media treatment of female
candidates
• The 2016 campaign showed that sex-
typed and sexist issues continue
• Biases become problematic when they
take morally offensive, prejudiced
positions and when they contain
inaccurate information or fake news
• Political journalism is flawed and
imperfect, but remains endemic to
democracy
 PHILIPPINE CASE

• April, 2016 campaign trail: Duterte joked about the gang
rape of an Australian missionary who was killed in a prison
riot.
• May, 2017 -- speaking to Philippine troops , he said he
would take responsibility for any rape they might commit
• August, 2017 -- he called Agnes Callamard, a U.N. special
rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, a “daughter of a whore”
after she condemned the police shooting of a teenage drug
suspect in his “war against drugs”
• On VP Robredo as possible future President:
 “This is not for a woman,” referring to the
President’s office. “You know, the emotional setup of
a woman and a man is totally different. It will drive
you nuts. This is the sad story.”
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1384852/leni-sara-react-to-rodys-remarks-on-female-
leaders,
 He jokes about the “legs” and “short skirts” of the
VP

• May, 2016 after the Manila visit of Pope Francis that caused
traffic:
“Pope son of a whore, go home. Do not visit us again”
 PHILIPPINE CASE

• Will it be an important • Will it be a potent tool in

avenue in awakening the the 2022 Elections– either
political awareness as a mechanism for mass
of the mass/public sphere? “voters’education” or
a means to report
election fraud and other
irregularities?
 IMPORTANT TERMS

Political communication Amplification Modes of Pol.

Public Sphere/Mass Sphere Messages in Social Media

structure, representation, filter bubble, slacktivism, crowd-sourcing

interaction Citizen Journalism

Vertical and Horizontal Links in MODULE 4:

Pol. Comm.  Penal Populism
 Politics of Hope
Mediatization
 Politics of Anxiety/Fear
Gate-keeping  Mass Belief System
Agenda-setting
Priming