Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Who's more biased -- the press or the public? Roy Peter Clark, news guru at the Poynter Institute, says (highlight added): "The public bias against the press is a more serious problem for American democracy than the bias (real or perceived) of the press itself. That is one reasonable conclusion to a study of media credibility conducted by Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn...." Here's Roy's essay in full. Here's the Sacred Heart U press release on its media credibility poll. Here's the discussion of Roy's essay. So much for my having to come up with a reading assignment for this weekend's Media & Society class homework! Some related questions for possible discussion: How do you decide how much to trust or believe a poll? How do you decide how seriously to take an opinion column? Or a news story? Or a Web discussion? How do people define "the press" or "the media" or "bias"? Do print newspapers, online newspapers and broadcast news all deserve the same criticisms? Do "readers" and "TV news viewers" and folks who get most of their news online perceive things the same way? Jon Stewart's name came up in class. Watch this interview, in which he and Bill Moyers talk about credibility. Next steps for Media & Society class: Go to the Radford University library (online) Search the database our library calls "communication & mass media complete" for academic journal articles with "perceptions of news bias" in the title. (EBSCO Host is the database provider.) Pick the most recent one Look at the other resources the database offers: Cited References Times cited in this document Related search terms Broaden the search by removing the word "perception," changing "news" to "journalism," "bias" to "prejudice." See what different results you get. 7:54:29 PM    comment []

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