BIAS AND BALANCE IN JOURNALISM

Prepared by:

GEAN M. MALANOGGrade VII – Daffodil

News has always been an important communication tool in today’s living. It is considered to be the main medium to convey local, national and international information to the public. News paper is the main conveyor of news but there are also many other sources of it like magazines and books in print media, radio and television channels, and Internet connections in electronic media. As someone who is interested in media, avoiding bias and maintaining balance are both important in providing our readers or viewers with credible sources of news information.

INTRODUCTION

A survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE (1999)) revealed that 78% of the public believed that there was bias in news reporting.

Stromberg (2004) assumes that individuals have a probability of spotting an article of interest, where that probability is increasing in the space allocated to the subject by a news organization. Due to economies of scale the news media favors large groups by providing more space to issues of interest to them. Politicians then provide more projects to groups that are more likely to learn of those projects and hence vote for the politicians.

Dyck and Zingales (2003) provide an explanation for bias stemming from the relation between a journalist and his/her sources. To induce a source to reveal information, the journalist provides positive spin to stories to reward the source for providing the information.

INTERNATIONAL

In the Philippines, media bias has long been a problem and it was seen all over the giant TV network, ABS-CBN, when it refused to air an ad of the former President Joseph Estrada, a presidential candidate in 2010 Presidential Election, one which highlights his spending priorities in health, education and infrastructure, along with the debt servicing spending, in comparison with the past administrations.

The figures, which are official government figures, show that during the brief stint as president, Estrada's spending priority was highest among all administrations.

NATIONAL

Another media bias was the subdued local coverage of flash floods in Davao City. Compared with when the main island of Luzon, and the capital Manila, that have been devastated by natural disasters, the media has been comparatively subdued. When Luzon was hit by typhoons Ondoy and Milenyo, normal TV programming was changed to accommodate special reports and other coverage by the big media outfits based in Manila.

In contrast, most of the appeals for donations circulating among social networking sites following the flash floods in Davao City are citing news articles from foreign news organizations rather than local outfits.

LOCAL

Media bias has become very alarming today since it has affected the quality, accuracy, and breadth of news content delivered to the public, from changing the true reality and influencing the future events. One way to solve this problem is by instilling to the journalists the importance of Journalistic Codes of Ethics. Codes of ethics are very important in guiding journalist's actions in order to allow for coverage that is in the public's best interest.  Breaking the code of an organization might result to a punishment of some type, sometimes including having membership discontinued.

CONCLUSION