Extra, Extra: News media biased!

January 21, 2003

The more pernicious bias is less substance, more fluff

"The news media are biased." It's the most common complaint I've heard throughout my career as a journalist. And it's true: The news media are biased.

We're biased in favor of change, as opposed to the status quo. We're biased in favor of bad news, rather than good news. We're biased in favor of conflict rather than harmony.

Increasingly, we're biased in favor of sensationalism, scandal, celebrities and violence, as opposed to serious, insightful coverage of the important issues of the day.

Of course, with a news aggregator, the traditional media can become only a fraction of one's media diet: The next front[ier] in the disruption of traditional media . If it can't show up in NetNewsWire, I probably won't read it regularly.

Posted by Andrew Raff at January 21, 2003 10:35 PM