Bias

Given certain recent misunderstandings, I feel it imperative that I explain my position more clearly regarding the liberal bias of the majority of the media.

As an historian and classicist, and an attentive student of Mr Honick's high school history class, I am well aware that unbiased information does not exist. Even the most sterile scientific data has a bias, since human beings decided which data to collect, where it would be collected, and at what intervals the measurements would be taken. News scavengers have to choose which data to collect, and out of that information which data to present and how to present it (hard news? fluff story? scare tactics?). I actually have a soft spot for ancient historians, who wore their hearts on their sleeves; for the same reason, I feel more comfortable with Fox News than "liberal" networks and fundamentalist Christians than some "tolerant" liberals; I know where I stand with them, and I am sufficiently comfortable with my own opinions to not waver.

The existence of bias, however, does not means it is a positive thing, just as the existence of evil does not make it a perverse form of good. I take issue with extreme bias of all forms; despite the rather provocative sentence in the preceding paragraph, I am not a fan of either Fox news or fundamentalism. The difference is that the bias on the liberal side is better hidden, and therefore harder to ameliorate. The crevasses in Antarctica are dangerous because you can't spot them.

The increasing fragmentation of media makes the general populace ever more vulnerable to news that is heavily weighted to a single viewpoint. The weakness of human beings to a "confirmation bias", in which one listens more carefully to something with which one agrees, is well-known in media and advertising circles ("confirmation bias" doesn't seem evolutionarily beneficial, but that's a topic for another day). It's easy to become addicted to one news source, whether that be Fox or CNN or NPR, and let it color your world view.

Satire, although it is an ancient and potent solution and therefore dear to the heart of this Classics major, is only a partial solution. Satire is useful in several ways: it can be used even if (especially if) the satirist possesses the opposite bias of the satirized, and satire's acerbic nature makes it memorable. Satire, however, is a parasitic genre: it depends on its audience knowing something about the subject it satirizes, or else descends into uninformed invective, which is no better than listening to a non-satiric programs which shares the bias of the satirist.

The only solution (ut opinor) for avoiding bias as much as possible in an increasingly fragmented media landscape is a diligent effort to read news sources from different viewpoints. The problem here, of course, is that it takes mental effort to synthesize any thesis and its antithesis, and many people are unwilling to expend that effort, when it is easier and simpler to hold onto their beliefs.