The state of the Fourth Estate
There is a lot of stuff on the blogosphere about the mainstream media (or MSM as the more conspiratorially-minded refer to it) and bias of the BBC. My principal sources of information are the media - I hear things on the grapevine, but that’s pretty mediated, I read Hansard and watch BBC Parliament - and so I have no way of determing the quality of a given outlet except by comparing it to other media outlets and, where possible, checking the facts against primary sources.
I would like to do a media snapshot of Britain - what do all the media in Britain say on a randomly selected day? It would be a big job - watching all the 24 hour news channels, all the news bulletins, listening to all the radio bulletins, reading all the newspapers - and couldn’t be done by one person. It would, though, be a potentially interesting exercise.
I am aware that this could be a very flawed process. If there is a problem with the media and the check is the media, it wouldn’t accomplish anything. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchers, or words to that effect - was Juvenal’s way of saying it was pointless setting eunuchs to guard virgins when the former were still corruptible. That is why I want to check against primary sources where possible. It would, in any case, let us see quantitatively which sources cover which stories with what degree of importance.
What do people think?
xD.
May 19th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
As I said in my email, the value of the study would depend on what day you did it on. You would have to find a day when there is some major partisan event going on on which opinion is polarised.
As I said, I do think that bias is often in the eye of the beholder. The Right might think the BBC is biased but that is (a) because they themselves have a bias against a state-owned broadcaster and (b) because it is not as right-wing as the print media. But then I would point out that the print media itself is markedly biased to the right.
In 1983, only 1 national paper out of the 10 or so there were endorsed Labour.
May 20th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
The print media isn’t subsidised like the BBC is. The right’s protest isn’t at bias in general, if you don’t like it - don’t read it, but at the idea we should be forced to pay for a left-biased service.
I actually think that the newspapers are biased left if anything. After all, the right-wing papers have higher circulation which suggests more papers per reader who buys a left-wing paper.
May 20th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Matt, in your comment you are _assuming_ the bias you allege. I am trying to explaim (in the 1st comment) _why_ you might think its biased. But just because you think its biased doesn’t mean that it is.
This idea that the newspapers are biased to the left is laughable. As you can read above, i gave the evidence that the papers are, in fact, biased to the right. In 1983, only one paper backed Labour. Even in 1992, only the Mirror, the Guardian and the FT (bizarrely!) did.