When I was coming of age in the UK, I grew wearily used to highly predictable talking points in the political process. One totally predictable one was the tendency of defeated politicians and political parties to whine about "media bias" after they lost elections.
I have been watching the same phenomenon unfolding in this recently-concluded election cycle, with numerous folks writing complaints about perceived media bias. Phrases like "the media is in the tank for Obama" have been dropping into cyberspace like so much wedding confetti.
Yesterday I had a lengthy exchange of views (not always polite) with a work colleague who is convinced that the media is biased in favour of what he termed "the left". He also believes that the media is biased against Christianity (but that is another issue to be explored another time). He produced cites to support his contention of bias, and was unmoved by my response that I can produce one competing cite for every one of his cites.
What I was attempting to do (unsuccessfully) was to shift the debate from "you say I say" mutually annihilating accusations of bias towards a more sober reflection about the underlying issue.
When I got home and debriefed my own personal frustration with the exchange, I came to realize that I have a fundamental underlying disconnect from people who would whine about "bias", which explains why I regard arguments about bias as mostly a waste of time.
The underlying reason why I pay relatively little attention to the bias issue is that I do not watch TV, listen to the radio or read books, websites etc. to have my own opinions reflected back at me. In fact, if I realize that this is what is happening, I rapidly lose interest. I go to sources of information for ideas, and challenges to my current mode of thinking. Most of my favorite books are books that forced me to look at issues in a different way.
If you watch TV to have your opinions and emotions reflected back at you, and you decide that is not happening, what is your reaction going to be? Most likely you are going to become frustrated and start wondering why you're getting information that you do not agree with.
One of the more important lesson take-aways from George Lakoff's studies on cognitive framing (summarized in his 1997 book "Moral Politics" and in other related books since) is that, when confronted by information that disputes their worldview, most people will seek to discount or discard the information, rather than attempt to process it. Accusing an information or opinion source of "bias" is one of the most convenient ways of discounting conflicting information. (Another one that I have heard recently is the dismissal of facts with the exclamation of "that's just your opinion...").
I'm not expecting information sources to always provide me with information or opinions that totally agree with (in fact, if I find that happening, it bores and worries me), because I am going to process the contrary information and attempt to make sense of it. I may end up discounting or dismissing it, but I am going to try to process it first.
My key careabouts for information sources are therefore very different from a lot of people's. I am looking above all for completeness and accuracy in information provisioning. I am going to be frustrated by incomplete or misleading information, poor presentation, poor argument construction, fallacious reasoning more than I am frustrated by any perceived "bias".
I regard the topic of "bias" as a sterile and largely pointless discussion topic, since it usually degenerates within a few seconds into a "I think they say therefore they are biased" type of discussion, where the arguers retreat to familiar cliches like "liberal media", "corporate media" etc. and hurl competing cites at each other before sitting there in "see, I'm right" poses. The main issue is the endemic, institutionalized acceptance of poor research, reporting and follow-up on media stories. Egregious examples of all of these abound.
The bottom line is that the mainstream media is simply pervasively and egregiously incompetent. We can argue for days about the root causes, and possible remedies. In the meantime I have basically stopped watching network television and listening to the radio. I get my information almost entirely from the internet, books, and magazines. The "bias" debate can continue until Hell freezes over for all I care. Until the fundamental shortcomings of the media are addressed, I am a bemused spectator for most of the bias shouting matches.
UPDATE - A blogger on the Rocky Mountain News website has written an article which appears to be (at least partly) blaming services like CraigsList for the current poor outlook for newspapers in the USA. (The Rocky Mountain News is suffering from circulation and revenue drops, like many local and regional newspapers).
The article has ignited the usual cries of "media bias" from commenters on both sides of the political spectrum, but it takes me right back to my comments above - cancelling a publication subscription just because you don't agree with the articles, and blaming "bias", is really just an indirect way of saying that mostly you just want newspapers to reflect your opinions back at you.
I stand by my argument that the underlying issue with the established media is lack of competence, not bias.