Read more
This article underlines one of nowadays important matters: the implication of advertisers in the media coverage. Media bias, the perception that the media is reporting the news in a partial or prejudiced manner, may occur when big advertisers influence the media content. The author of this article develops diverse concrete cases which gives us a stronger perception of this phenomenon.
I would like to flourish this reasoning by adding a recent controversial case: France 2 (a French television) and its report on the Coca Cola industry. The journalist gives a negative image of the industry, highlighting the different ecological and human impacts the brand has on Planet Earth. Shortly after its broadcasting, a rumour emerged on the commercial agreement between Coca Cola and France 2: the beverage industry decided to cancel its agreement with the TV Chanel. At the end, none of this was apparently true but Coca Cola expressed its pejorative opinion in a letter addressed to France 2.
This additional case underlines how media are important for industries and how they use it as a lobbying instrument; the same way politicians use media to convey their political image. The main difference between these two types of actors concerns the commercial relationship with the media. As a consequence, media bias appears more frequently when it concerns big advertisers.
I would like to end this comment by saying that I am convinced this article leads our minds to adopt multiple interpretations and point of views. I decided to adopt this perspective because I am globally interested in the lobbying field. This article gives me the opportunity to imagine a parallel between advertisers and politicians and the way they use TV channels as lobbying instruments.
Sources:
http://study.com/academy/lesson/media-bias-criticism-definition-types-examples.html
http://www.challenges.fr/entreprise/20130131.CHA5800/les-dessous-de-l-affaire-coca-cola-france-2.html
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/AEJ_Govt%20advertising%20and%20media%20coverage%20of%20corruption%20scandals_cbb969cd-4266-4818-8656-8d751e9b5b28.pdf
http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/joshua-adel/160413/la-publicite-l-autre-pays-du-lobbying
Read more
Nowadays, most of media is owned by private companies and derives its revenue from advertisers, both of which have a direct influence on its editorial content and the agenda setting. Much has been already said about it, both in the article and in the comments section; not so much however, about the even more damaging media’s complaisance towards governments. Examples of it, include big newspapers keeping silence about delicate and compromising news for governments or even the “non-official covers” where state agencies (CIA, FBI, etc.) recruit and mentor young journalist to publish their stories. Since they don’t work in an official capacity, both parties can benefit from this partnership while having plausible deniability (here an example). This well- known bias has allowed the development of collaborative websites where readers work to spot and report any bias in news, separating facts from opinion. One example is fairspin.org which collects the full spectrum of political news and opinions and lets the community vote if a particular story leans left or right. Apart of the concerns around press freedom, there is also the economic factor when mixing government or political influence and the media. As noted, Gal-Or, Geylani, and Yildirim, (2012), established a link between subscription fees and media bias. Specifically, “it is shown that when readers prefer news consistent with their political opinions, newspapers slant news toward extreme positions to alleviate price competition for subscribers”. Also they argue that the effectiveness of advertising, for some products, may depend on the political opinions of readers of the advertisements, so for example, while liberals would be more appealed towards “green” products, conservatives would prefer more “American” products.
As with everything, these bias (governmental and corporate) stem from an economic profit desire, but can initiatives like Google Contributor alleviate this problem? The central element is the ads, but how are ads perceived by each one of the parts involved? For media platforms they are a tangible source of revenue, the more advertisers/ads the more revenue they will make (assuming no detriment in the audience perception). For users it is not so obvious; even if the “personalized” ads that we received are supposed to be intelligent, efficient and effective, while allowing transactions to be made in a pleasant manner for the buyers, in reality, most of the advertising seems to know anything at all about us or what we might buy. Companies often fail to fine tune how their show their ads, missing the opportunity of taking real advantage from the information that advertising networks provide to them. The obvious solution would be to give up more of our personal information for better targeting but in most cases this is not the consumers desire; prove of it, is the success of browser plug-ins that prevent ad companies from tracking users. For the time being, readers will continue to ignore the vast majority of the online ads considering them the cost of the “free” content and infrastructure that they enjoy in the web. Finally, for the advertising companies the story is even more cumbersome. In a new study on search ads from ebay research labs, Blake, Tadelis & Nosko (2014) suggest a broad exaggeration of the effectiveness of web searches. They concluded that “more frequent users whose purchasing behavior is not influenced by ads account for most of the advertising expenses, resulting in average returns that are negative”. Other conclusions cast some doubts about the effectiveness of clicking on ads. For example they say that the people who click most ads aren’t being influenced while the people who are being influenced aren’t actually clicking ads. Some people argue that since today consumers have so much easy-available information about a product or service (reviews, comments etc.), advertising is losing its persuasive power so –even for the internet- it is not possible to tell which ads work and which ads don’t. On a side note it is pertinent to emphasize that other similar studies have found web ads to have higher ROI.
It is only clear that more information is needed in order to determine the real payoff of internet ads for each one of the participants (especially users and advertisers). Evidence in one way or the other can easily mean the collapse/impulse of the business model as exposed in this article.
Sources
Blake,T., Steven Tadelis,S.,& Nosko, C.(2014) Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large Scale Field Experiment (Available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w20171)
Read more
This post tells us about media bias and the economic effects of multi-sided platforms: on the one hand advertisers on the other readers. Some examples were given, such as the scandal of HSBC, the car sales marketplace, and even picturesque situations involving real families or famous individuals.
In order to contribute to the discussion, I would like to emphasize the media bias and its effects on the politics. No more susceptible to all news and reports than them: the professional politicians. So we will start with the seminal article Gentzkow and Shapiro (2010) which states that ideological segregation on the Internet is low in absolute terms, higher than most offline average (excluding national newspapers), and significantly lower than segregation of face-to-face interactions in social networks.
That is, the media bias exists, but the effects present in the theory are ambiguous when we relate this media bias with those made on voters. Schroeder and Stone (2014) in “Fox News and Political Knowledge” that from a stylized model try to build a relationship between voters, news outlets and a bias of FOX channel in favor of Republicans, reducing exposure to any news that may favor the Democrats. Despite all the opening arguments in favor of the Republicans, the results found by the actors there is no evidence of large effects on average political knowledge from 2000 to 2008 caused by FOX. However, FOX access increased knowledge about topics on which it focused attention, and decreased knowledge on other issues.
In the same direction, Yurukoglu and Martin (2014) on “Bias in Cable News: Real Effects and Polarization”, try to understand what are the persuasive effects of slanted cable news (Fox News and MSNBC) on partisan voting. They estimate a model of allocating time to watching news channels, considering Influence of exposure on ideology during the presidential elections in the US between 2000 and 2008. But the results point the other direction this bias: Large effects of Both Fox News and MSNBC on partisan voting. The authors estimate that 10+ point increase in the Republicans vote probability for an extra hour a week of Fox News, otherwise -10 points for MSNBC in 2008 (using IV methodologies). Anyway, yes there is media bias that impacts the political polarization and generates effects on the type of content to be disclosed in these channels, including political content.
However, Cushion (2012) and Ellman (2014) present a vision of possibilities of thinking about media regulation aimed at reducing the existing bias. In this sense, the authors emphasize the importance of public broadcasters coexistence, as a way to increase competition in the audience, reducing the bias in existing multi-sided platforms in the media sector. Ellman (2014) tries to produce a model in which the regulator can “introduce charges” for hard news, building social welfare function curves and profits in a monopoly and duopoly in the media sector. In fact, the author tries to emulate remedies of economic regulation to try to assess the impact of the introduction of this regulation on the market, in order to reduce the media bias and increase social welfare. The problem is that “media regulation” is a complicated subject because it involves elements beyond the economic and which are very important in a democracy: freedom of expression, “autotutela”, etc.
Finally, media bias will always exist and the debate about it is not restricted to the economic world, but it requires reflections in the political, social, legal fields, etc.
SOURCES
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/matthew.gentzkow/research/echo_chambers.pdf
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2381172
http://web.stanford.edu/~ayurukog/cable_news.pdf
http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-democratic-value-of-news-stephen-cushion/?K=9780230271531
http://www.csef.it/IMG/pdf/ellman_presentation.pdf
Show lessRead more
I think that media bias is a big problem and that readers / consumers are not sufficiently aware that advertisers directly or indirectly influence media content. An example of this type of bias is the one represented in Wines books. The magazine “envoyé spécial” (France 2) had already raised this issue during one of those emissions. He made the observation that many wine guides needed advertising growers to survive and that most wines advertisers received a good rating (above average) in magazines or guides where they paid advertising. The magazine raised the issue without any time to make an econometric analysis to justify this finding.
Despite the lack of data of econometric analysis, I think that this bias is actually present. Indeed, both parties (magazines and advertisers) have incentives to ensure that the products are good rated. For magazines, the incentive is financial since this type of magazine is highly dependent on advertising. Magazines could not survive without the presence of advertising. For advertisers, the incentive is of course in sales. A 2006 survey by the site vinealis showed that 35% of wine lovers believe that the opinion of the wine critics determine their choice and 19% say that the opinion of critical influence their choices. These figures allow us to understand the importance for growers to be well noted in magazines and specialized guides.
These numbers may seem high but plausible to me because of certain wines characteristics. Wine is a product with features that are difficult to calculate and compare. There is no common characteristics that can be compared (such as engine power for a car). Tastes in wine vary greatly depending on the individual (subjective criteria), and people tend to trust the specialists’s magazines. Moreover, wine is an experience good. It is generally known quality after having bought. For all these reasons, it is normal that people trust the magazines and specialized guides. This is especially true for expensive wines and where the purchase is risky. Making inquiries before purchase is an important step in the buying process.
In conclusion, I think that customers of such magazines / guides should be aware of the bias that is present. If the consumer wants quality information without the presence of bias, he must be willing to pay a high price for a commercial-free guide, which reduces the risk of bias of this type. As part of a wine purchase, the price a consumer is willing to pay for information quality is highly dependent on the price of the wine concerned.
Source :
Nelson P (1970) Information and Consumer Behavior. Journal of Political Economy 78: 311-329.
Byron, R.P. and Ashenfelter, O. (1995). Predicting the quality of an unborn grange. Economic Record, 71: 40-53
http://hlalau.skynetblogs.be/archive/2009/06/09/de-l-influence-des-journalistes-du-vin-sur-la-consommation.html (accessed 16 March 2015)
http://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-magazine/france-2/envoye-special/ (accessed 16 March 2015)
http://www.winebusinessnews.fr/le-lab-le-prix-du-vin-un-bon-signal-de-qualite-36325-2/ (accessed 17 March 2015)
http://lapub.over-blog.com/article-30427256.html (accessed 17 March 2015)
Read more
Media bias exists and will always exist due to the need of summarizing a story to be able to tell it. A perfectly unbiased story is thus not possible and the goal is, if we find bias to be harmful, to minimize it. Nonetheless, media bias has increased for a variety of reasons. Here are some of them.
First of all, the media has become increasingly commercial. Medias supported by the state or independent medias, medias that do not rely on external funding, have dramatically decreased both in importance and in mass. Most medias rely now on advertisement for their funding and thus on attracting a certain type of “customer”. Less biased medias still exist but they are becoming gradually extinct. Internet has become a safe haven for independent views and thus a broader spectrum of analysis. The problem is the lack of credibility and thus legitimacy of Internet based medias. It is true that nowadays every major mass media has an online version but they seem to suffer even more from biases for the simple reason that they try to attract “customers” that are even more volatile using more sensational news or news that attract a specific pool of customers(sports, fashion, etc)
The second reason comes from the fact that medias belong now in majority to conglomerates that will avoid news that could hurt them and push stories that can help them make a profit. The number of sources of information might have grown but the ones providing them have diminished. Nine major conglomerate share the majority of the media business. And even if they do not belong to a conglomerate, publishers will think twice about upsetting their advertisers, seeing they are often the one financing the platform. But another point must be made about the nature of the consumers of the media. People like to read a story written by someone who thinks the same way as they do. Knowing this, medias have two choices. Spin the stories in a way that attract readers that think like you or choose the stories that attract the most readers, shocking and/or bad news, eventually a combination of both.
To sum up, the main reason for the increase in bias can be found in the changes that affected this particular platform. The addition of another side, the advertiser or conglomerate, has drastically disrupted the platform. In some cases, the media and the conglomerate are the same side pushing biases to a maximum. The economics of platforms destined to provide information need to be redesigned if we want to avoid scandals such as the HSBC case.
Sources:
http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.be/2015/03/the-economics-of-media-bias.html
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jsnyder/files/2.partisanbias.usnewspapers_0_0.pdf
Herman,E. & Chomsky, N.(1989)Manufacturing Consent, the political Economy of the mass media. Pantheon Books, Chicago
Read more
Through my comment I ll try to explain my opinion in a first time about two-sided media bias. Afterwards I’ll highlight another example of multi-sided media bias in the world of video games.
1° Opinion
Information has always be subject to bias. Nonetheless with globalisation and increase of education level people have become able to ask fair and true information.
Media companies are two-sided platforms. Their typical revenue model is to product contents that attract people who read – listen – watch – share these contents (first side), becoming targets for advertisers(second side).
Nowadays, the most of popular information is free but creating or sharing information is costly. In order to not be only dependent of advertising revenue, the media have to find other streams to improve their revenue model.
The main problem highlighted in the article is that media depend on other companies to survive. As P.Osborne writes «HSBC, as one former Telegraph executive told me, is the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend» (1). The fact is that once you are dependent of someone to enable your activity, he will use this powerful position to fulfill his goals.
I believe that to solve this problem, media have to find other streams of revenue to be less dependent of companies who have interest to have power on them. To illustrate my points, here is an article about innovation of new revenue streams in digital media (2).
Nonetheless, the problematic seems to be widespread as written by P.Osborne : «Mr MacLennan agreed that advertising was allowed to affect editorial, but was unapologetic, saying that “it was not as bad as all that” and adding that there was a long history of this sort of thing at the Telegraph»(1). Then we should wonder if it’s an unusually case limited to this major newspaper or if others are concerned too. The reality of this issue seems also quite complex. Indeed, information is something really difficult to handle, there is a huge place let by interpretation to manipulation. Actually, it’s nearly impossible to say what is fair and true in regarding information because it will depend of many parameters differing according the sensibility of everyone. In addition to that, the network of influence between media and business seems also opaque as said by P.Osborne : «HSBC refused to comment when I asked whether the bank’s decision to stop advertising with theTelegraph was connected in any way with the paper’s investigation into the Jersey accounts» (1). But also really complex «When I asked theTelegraph why the Barclay brothers were involved, it declined to comment» (1).
There exists lots of different media bias. (3) Without being specific, we need to take in consideration what kind of bias are damaging and which are not and Under which conditions. Just to give an illustration on the vastness of the topic, let’s focus on the bias by omission I’ll ask a simple question : In which case of bias by omission a media doesn’t commit a fraud on its readers ?
Finally my opinion is that there is not really a problem since there is not only one media. The huge number of media allow people to get different sources of informations and then to get their own opinion of the reality. Indeed, even if the Telegraph didn’t give fair and true information about HSBC, other media did. It’s our responsibility to be aware of the «influence game» that exist everywhere and to be critical about the information provided by media.
Is GOOGLE contributing to the solution ? My opinion is negative. Even if GOOGLE avoids the «advertising media bias» there are still plenty of bias and will not increase the quality of information for people who diversify their sources. Then, the idea that the main providers of informations become dependent of revenue provided by google service is actually the same as the HSBC case except that it will be at a bigger scale.
2° Other story – video games
I would like to highlight an other example of possible bias, but this time in the world of video games. Many providers of critics and special content about video games are confronted to the same kind of problem. Their model is also a multi-sided platform, the website proposes contents to readers and then advertisers pay to be seen by them. Added to these sides we can highlight a last group known as the video game producers who want to be shown on that website to reach the gamers community.
It’s with this last side that video games critics have problems. Indeed in order to propose the best information and content possible they need to be invited to special events, get previews of games, be allowed to have special reportages, and many more by the games producers in order to be seen as a good provider of content, and then that the website be visited by people fond of exclusivity and special reportage.
It leads to an unbalanced relationship of power between video games producers and critics. The game producers could use their strong position to put pressure on critics and then get good grades on their website. It happened once with Gamekult, a well known website about video games. It has been put in the black list of Sony because of a grade consider as «not good enough» for its game «Heavy rain»(4). Or the general director of Jeuxvideo.com who admits that their website is 100 percents dependent of games editors. (5)
Moreover, with video games people are able to differentiate good or bad information about video games ratings. Indeed there is a large community that is also able to rate those games. Then it happens frequently that rates are very different if they are given by professionals critics or by gamers. (6). Nevertheless we also need to take in consideration that the gamers’rating is not always objective. For instance some people were ranking the game before its release. (7)
Nonetheless, I believe that blockbuster are overrated because of the pressure of editors and it’s usual that gamers community take offense in this. Even if we have to take in consideration that it’s not as easy as rating cars because it’s not always possible to compare 2 games with different universe or gameplay.
To put it in a nutshell I believe that the whole economic world can be seen as balanced and unbalanced power relations. Where the dominant can use its advantage to create bias. In my point of view it’s not possible to avoid that because media are mainly dependent of other actors. To decrease unbalanced relations media have to find several streams of revenue and of special contents.
But my opinion is that the best thing to do is to warn people of that. Then they will be able to create their own information by cross-check informations of different sources.
sources :
(1) https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne/why-i-have-resigned-from-telegraph
(2) http://www.nordicom.gu.se/sites/default/files/kapitel-pdf/08_barland_0.pdf
(3) http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/types-of-media-bias/
(4) http://www.lesnumeriques.com/l-independance-sites-jeux-video-en-question-n27255.html
(5) http://www.merlanfrit.net/Correspondance-avec-Cedric-Mallet
(6) http://www.metacritic.com/feature/game-critic-scores-vs-user-reviews
(7) http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/do-gamers-really-want-unbiased-reviews/
Read more
There are a lot of different origins of media bias. It occurs for multiple reasons such as Ideologies [1], bribes or a lack of information. I will focus on three particular powerful media bias.
First, one of the most obvious bias is related to an internal reason: the desire to attract people by offering a demanded information. Indeed, the media platforms will prefer to produce contents that please consumers more and thereby, are more likely to adapt and transform information.
Secondly, media bias can occur because of an external pressure from influencing parties such as lobbies, governments or powerful personalities [2]. An obvious example can be observed in countries with a strong control on expression liberties such as Burma or North Korea [2].
Finally, as described in the article, an indirect positive network effect can force the media to please more the advertisers. This problem has been tackled by a new service of Google, Contributor. It enables consumers to pay to avoid advertisements and thereby, to be ensured that the media producer is not influenced by any advertisers.
Regarding the potential success of Contributor, I think it is clearly an excellent way to collect data on both the consumers and the media producers. However, I’m not sure it will become a profitable service for google. Indeed, aside the advertising media bias, there are a lot of other sources of bias as described above. Therefore, Contributor will not ensure people that the media content is the right information.
However, if this new service of Google becomes a success, it will change the way of funding the online media industry and the way of consuming information.
Sources
[1] M. Gentzkow, J. Shapiro, (2005), Media bias and reputation, National bureau of economic researsh
[2] https://www.boundless.com/political-science/textbooks/boundless-political-science-textbook/media-10/media-bias-74/media-bias-406-5663/
Read more
It is not so complicated to find several examples of media biases on the internet literature. Whether it is in politics when a newspaper or a radio / TV program decide to privilege political party because its audience is oriented in the same side of the politic or whether it is related to “advertising bias when selecting media stories based on what will please advertisers” (http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-bias.html), all media biases can be seen, according to Matthew Gentzkow, as an ice cream. Indeed, “just as ice cream makers give customers the flavors they want, newspapers give their readers the stories and slant they want” (Gentzkow). Here are some studies to show how a media can be polarized due to the slant that the readers want:
– http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/matthew.gentzkow/research/biasmeas.pdf.
– Trust in Government and Media Slant: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Media Effects in Twenty-Seven European Countries by Andrea Ceron and Vincenzo Memoli.
– Several UCLA-led studies by Tim Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo (http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664).
Different interesting concepts related to “the impact of advertising in media bias” are developed by Esther Gal-Or, Tansev Geylani, and Tuba Pinar Yildirim in their book. “The readership effect” is when a media wants to increase its readership to provide a larger audience to advertisers and to charge them higher advertising fees. This force the media to reduce the bias in the information that it gives in order to improve its client’s trust. “The incremental pricing effect” on the other hand is when a media wants to mitigate the price competition for the subscribers and for the advertisers by polarizing its information. Indeed, by doing so it will reduce the intensity of the price competition for the readers and moreover for the advertisers.
Now, according to the extent of heterogeneity in the interest that the subscribers give to the advertiser’s products, advertising may lead to an increase or a decrease in the information biases. If the heterogeneity is important, advertisers will choose a single-homing strategy for placing their products. Therefore, “the incremental pricing effect” will overcome “the readership effect” and it will lead to a bigger polarization. On the contrary, if the heterogeneity is small, a multi-homing strategy will be chosen by the advertisers. In this case, only the readership effect will survive and the polarization will be reduce in the media outlet.
Another comprehensive paper by Nadine Lindstädt applies the theory of multi-sided market to the media market. It fits in the actuality where media are used more than ever and “can impart knowledge and can shape public opinion” (Anderson & Gabszewicz 2006: 569). It is a very rigorous paper which pass through a great part of the multi-sided market theory; namely, the different actors in the game, their interactions, their goals, the effects and externalities that could arise in this subject, the applications of all those concepts to the media market, and so on. The paper conclude that, nowadays, a lot of industries can be analyzed as a multi-sided market. It sum up the different characteristics of a multi-sided market and its components (at least two sides and a platform). It also reminds the benefits of a multi-sided analysis to better understand markets such as media market, advertising markets or antitrust. Finally, it ends with further interrogations and issues that still not have perfect answers. Especially it lingers on the problematic of the economic competition and the competition on diversity of opinion in the media market (also the compatibility problem of the theory of multi-sided markets and the theory of media bias). See “The Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platform Businesses” to go further.
A third article may be useful to answer the question of the solution proposed by Google. “Conflicts of interest and incentives to bias: A microeconomic critique of Google’s tangled position on the Web” is an article written by Bernhard Rieder and Guillaume Sire which tries to understand the different services offered by Google (especially the advertisement service) and the several actors around Google using the multi-sided market theory. It also discuss “the economic incentives to ‘orient’ search results in self-serving ways which follow from Google’s double role as both search and advertisement business” (see Rieder and Sire, 2013 : 3). The paper concludes by leaning on strong microeconomic concepts to propose ways of regulations of the dominant position of Google on its advertising and search market.
References:
– http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-samuelson-media-bias-explained-in-two-studies/2014/04/23/9dccdcf6-cafd-11e3-93eb-6c0037dde2ad_story.html
– Evans, D. S., & Schmalensee, R. (2013). The antitrust analysis of multi-sided platform businesses (No. w18783). National Bureau of Economic Research.
– Gal-Or, E., Geylani, T., & Yildirim, T. P. (2012). The impact of advertising on media bias. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(1), 92-99.
– Lindstädt, N. (2010). Multisided Media Markets: Applying the Theory of Multisided Markets to Media Markets. Available at SSRN 1532248.
– Rieder, B., & Sire, G. (2013). Conflicts of interest and incentives to bias: A microeconomic critique of Google’s tangled position on the Web. New Media & Society, 1461444813481195.
Read more
The problem with the advertisers is that they are everywhere. In the magazines, on tv, newspapers and of course on the internet. As Helene Linsmeau said, some people on internet can use adBlock (an extension that you can add on your internet browser) in order to block the adds. However, more and more websites don’t allow people to look at its contents if you don’t enable this extension on their websites. So it is a solution but it is less efficient than it used to be.
Media bias can be an economical issue for some but it can also be political. In 2011, Tim Groseclose argued that media bias typically aids Democrats by 8-10 points in a typical election (http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/06/16/book-liberal-media-distorts-news-bias). So we can say that some medias have some political or market pressures that force leaders in others businesses to rethink the way they are conducting their business (http://townhall.com/tipsheet/carolplattliebau/2012/09/25/the_biggest_problem_with_media_bias).
On the student new daily, they explain the different types of media that we could confront (http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/types-of-media-bias/).
– The bias by omission: ignoring facts by leaving one side out of an article.
– The bias by selection of sources: by including more sources that support one view over another.
– The bias by story selection: a pattern of highlighting news stories that coincide with the agenda of either the Left or the Right, while ignoring stories that coincide with the opposing view.
– The bias by placement: story placement is a measure of how important the editor considers the story.
– The bias by labeling that comes in two forms
– The bias by spin: it occurs when the story has only one interpretation of an event or policy, to the exclusion of the other.
To return to the article, I think that google had a great idea but a lot of websites won’t join it as for some, the goal is to gain profit. However, changes on the internet could be really quick and so it is unpredictable to say if it will work or not.
Read more
Nowadays we consume advertising wherever we look: online, on the streets, in restaurants’ toilets. It has become impossible to avoid every type of advertising. Dhalla (1978) defines the creative efforts of advertisers as a will to build favorable attitudes that will eventually lead to purchase.
The whole point of advertising is to create a bias, a positive bias in favor of the product/service, and, implicitly, a negative one towards the competition. In the German automobile magazine example, comments being influenced by the advertising talks to the effectiveness of it.
I believe the real problem comes in measuring the influence of the advertising. Advertising is intended to create a positive effect on consumers, to make them unconsciously biased towards a product (cognitive and affective response) which will lead to them choosing that particular product at the purchase moment. However, in the internet advertising nowadays, visiting and purchasing on some internet sites will automatically result in you being exposed to the advertising for that site or for complementary products to your purchase on your browser. For example, when I purchase plane tickets, I will automatically receive advertising related to that purchase on my Facebook page. If we were to translate this in real life it will sound as follows: I go to the travel agency to buy tickets, when I get out of there, people will follow me around the city showing me posters of advertising for insurance, hotels etc. I believe in real life this is called harassment.
So the question that follows is at what moment does the amount of advertising consumers are exposed to become negative and how can advertisers measure and manage it? Google’s solution is helpful, but does it really help us to manage the whole implications of online advertising? Platforms like Facebook and Youtube empowers consumers to express their bias and become advocates for their preferred products. In this case, does the audience remain an audience or passes to the advertiser’s side, irrespective of the (non)monetary linkage? Doesn’t this kind of bias influence more profoundly: having a friend publishing positive information about a product? Doesn’t this influence even more than the advertising in the German automobile example?
All in all, I believe it is in the duty of the advertiser to offer the costumer the possibility to block its advertising. For example, when purchasing online, the costumer should be offered the possibility to block every online advertising coming from the company. This will save money to the company and help them keep a positive image in the consumer’s perspective.
Dhalla, N.K., (1978). Assesing the Long Term Value of Advertising, Harvard Business Review, 56(1), pp 87-95.
Show lessRead more
It is clear that Media Bias is an important issue in democracies, in terms of human rights but also in terms of economics.
Wikipedia [1] provides us a nice working definition: “Media Bias is the bias or perceived bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term “media bias” implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. […] Practical limitations to media neutrality include the inability of journalists to report all available stories and facts, and the requirement that selected facts be linked into a coherent narrative. Government influence, including overt and covert censorship, biases the media in some countries, for example North Korea and Burma. Market forces that result in a biased presentation include the ownership of the news source, concentration of media ownership, the selection of staff, the preferences of an intended audience, and pressure from advertisers”
Many example of media bias can be found around the web. The website “Student News Daily” even dedicated a special page to this matter [2]. ““Wednesday’s Example of Media Bias” is a weekly example of biased news reporting. Also included on each page are questions about the excerpt and definitions of the types of media bias.” My fellow commenters have already pointed and analyzed many interesting examples.
Why is the phenomena so common? From an economical perspective, it is always a matter of incentives. As stated in the article, medias are multi-sided platform. Indeed, newspaper (and medias in general) are competing to persuade advertisers to buy them some ad space.
According to Anderson [3], we can analyze the media bias with a hoteling model. An interesting view there is that medias can only extract profits thanks to singlehomers viewers (because they provide an exclusive access to this audience). The problem of multi-homers is that several medias can offer an access to them. The competition to be the one offering this access is fierce (price competition). This simple take-away of the analysis is already quite interesting and support my point: In my opinion, most readers in real life are multi-homers and this weakens the bargaining power of individual media. Media Bias is a way to be favored by advertisers and still earn some benefit in the transaction.
I think that, in the case of a physical newspaper, the market (as it is shaped nowadays) does not provide the right incentives to avoid this issue. One could think about improving the regulatory framework to correct this problem.
Nevertheless, I think the problem is slightly different when it comes to online medias. For example, a news website. I think we should analyze this with two multi-sided platform. I invite you to consult the quick scheme I made : http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2015/12/1426607851-media-bias.png
One would be the website, a two-sided platform: with the readers and the “advertiser supplier”. The other platform would be the “advertiser supplier”, for example Google. For this platform, I will reuse the analysis performed by Chloé Jacqmin in a previous comment on this page.
Actually, there is no direct transaction between advertisers and the website. The Website rents some advertisement space to Google. Google then used its algorithm to provide pertinent advertisements to the reader (using the data gathered around each user, its cookies, etc.). In this model, we can assume that the advertisers do not have the possibility to choose a favorite among website. Advertisement is spread on the web independently of any external relations between Medias and advertisers. In such a model, it seems that there would be far less incentives for the Medias to please the advertisers by “avoiding” to report some information.
Source:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias
[2] http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/archive/example-of-media-bias/
[3] Anderson, S. P., Foros, O., & Kind, H. J. (2013). Competition for advertisers and for viewers in media markets. University of Virginia mimeo.
http://www.ebos.com.cy/cresse2013/uploadfiles/2013_S16_pr_1.pdf
Read more
It is known that the power which advertisers have over the media is huge. A few months ago, Santander, one of the largest banks operating in Spai,n bought the covers of the most important newspapers. That day, in the most widely read newspapers’ cover did not appear news, just a big advertisement promoting the Santander’s scholarship program is SMEs. It was the first time that the seven Spanish bestseller newspapers published a cover occupied entirely by an advertisement. This was deeply criticized in the social networks, but in my opinion, the real problem is not there. From my point of view, media, as any other firm, serve to those that contribute to its benefits. Insofar those benefits are mostly contributed by advertisers, media are slaves of their interests, even though, with the consequential loss of credibility, there is a loss of consumers. Advertisements have helped press to survive, but when the truth is manipulated in order to benefit (or not to damage) certain public or private institutions’ interests and the “inaccuracy” in information drives to serious consequences on health or environment, it is clear that these practices should be regulated.
Even so, advertising is more than ads and sometimes there are more subtle ways to sell your product than publish an advertisement in a newspaper’s cover. An example is the “complementary copy”, a usual practice in the women’s magazines. Beauty products advertisers demand tutorials that teach how to use their products and positive coverage of beauty subjects; clothing advertisers want to be accompanied by fashion spreads; food advertisers expect recipes that need their products in the magazines where they publish its advertisements… In short, advertisers want editorial content related to their products in order to create a “supportive editorial atmosphere” for advertising. “Ms.”, a women’s magazine founded in 1972, was the first publication of this typology that refuse to use this kind of practice, though it suppose the loose of several potential advertisers. Gloria Steinem, who was one of the founder editors of Ms, told in an article in 1990 that her magazine was spurned General Mills, Pillsbury, DelMonte, Kraft and other food brands because Ms’s policy of not run recipes. Also, she wrote that that in the ratio of advertising to editorial pages in women’s magazines, the ads average only about 5 percent more than in “Time”, ” “Newsweek,” and “U.S. News”, but its ad-related content was much more. She chose randomly some woman’s magazines and she found that, in the best case, just 20% of the pages were free of ads or ad-related content.
Regarding the economic analysis, in the paper “What do the papers sell? A model of media bias”, Matthew Ellman found two main results. First, when advertising is large enough, competing papers set maximal accuracy, even on topics that affect advertisers. So advertisers have no influence when their importance is greatest. Second, in contrast, advertisers get influence if they are able commit to withdraw advertising from paper that are too accurate on certain sensitive topics. Large and coordinated advertiser have the power of threat and influence via these cut-off commitments and this leads to poor coverage on important issues.
Sources:
http://www.udel.edu/comm245/readings/advertising.pdf
http://www.iae.csic.es/investigatorsMaterial/a8287092114archivoPdf1062.pdf
Show lessRead more
There are several causes of media bias. Advertising and spin control tactics by Public Relations firms are two ways that the media is manipulated outright.
A spin is defined by wikipedia as a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against a certain organization or public figure.
Many scientific studies have been made, for some years now, in order to understand how to convince and mold public opinion. Those studies are well used by firms that try to attract or retain as much readers as possible.
The question is « how to select unbiased information ? » in such a context. For instance, when it comes to politics and media, the left argues that the right is more biased than the left while the right argues that the left is more biased than the right. But who’s right ? Everyone has their own opinion about media bias. As Steve Levitt said : « Measuring media bias is a really difficult endeavor because unlike what economists usually study, which are numbers and quantities, media bias is all expressed in words ».
Each journal has its own category of readers (from different political orientations). Given that, most readers are looking for confirmation of their beliefs by reading newspapers that best fit with their own beliefs. It only makes sense for newspapers to adopt a biased position, because they are providing a product to consumers that is in line with their consumers’ expectations. In that way, they can charge higher prices.
Furthermore the vast majority of people get their political information from the media. Hence it has a huge impact and firms can benefit from it.
However, it is up to us, readers of the 21th century, to consult different medias before establishing our own opinion on a particular subject. In fact, we have access to multiple sources of information and we can thus adopt a critical standpoint about the information that is conveyed to us.
References used :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_%28public_relations%29
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/upset-about-political-bias-in-the-media-blame-economics/
http://freakonomics.com/2012/02/16/how-biased-is-your-media/
http://williamrwilson.hubpages.com/hub/what_causes_media_bias
Read more
People are more and more disgusted by all the ads they are facing on the internet. Even if it is an important source of revenue, alternatives appear like the Google’s idea. Some extensions like Adblock are very appreciated thanks to the great arrangement they do on each website we are surfing on it. The Google’s initiative is an interesting idea but it cannot be apply to every website. Ebay, for example, cannot go on the same way then Google because ads are a great part of it turnover. I think that for every website of sales it will be difficult to stop putting ads on the internet.
What Contributor propose is to change the relation between the advertisers and the audience. According to this change, the audience become the paying side and the advertisers have to disappear. For the web manager, the amount money they can earn from the audience is smaller than the amount the advertisers would have paid. Indeed, the web managers ask a lot of money from the advertisers proportionally to the audience they have. But they cannot ‘increase’ the price for the audience because the website need them. Then websites are linked to a small price for the audience and they will not be enough to run them.
To avoid biases such as reported in the article, I think that a mix of the two ‘money comings’ will be the better solution. We have to accept ads to have a free service (this is a clear evidence of multi-sided platform) and if we will to avoid the ads a little fee can be paid. But if the ads were more adapted to the content the indirect network effects may be a good compensation for the presence of advertising. I realize that the problem of media biases will only be reduced by not resolved with this solution.
Show lessRead more
Media bias is a real issue for two reasons.
Firstly, when the principal source of revenue come from an other company, or from a third part, you cannot go against their interests. Media are not the only one touched by that kind of phenomenon, politicians also need fund for their campain (it’s quite an issue in the U.S.), football club depend a lot of the money received from their sponsors (as an example, many big football club are sponsored by people or companies closely related to petroleum or gas, in that context they promote non-renewable energies).
Secondly, concerning the media, the problem is even larger. Indeed, they are supposed to be neutral and unbiased. But how could they be neutral when they need the money of companies. For example, the french newspaper “Le Figaro” is a part of the group Dassault ( whose the famous industrial Serge Dassault is the owner). In that case, we could be sceptical concering the impartiality of thus newspaper.
From an economical point of view, one could say that this situation is logical. Looking media as a two-sided platform, it’s clear that advertisers are the one willing to pay more to have access to the readers, they have a larger indirect utility. Moreover, peple having more and more ways to have access to the information, they are less and less willing to pay for a newspaper. So a new equilibrium in the finance of media seems to be difficult to reach and advertisers will probably keep their influence and the media bias will stand.
Show lessRead more
The main question of this post is how advertising influences the content of media.
“Media bias can be defined as selective omission, choice of words, and varying credibility ascribed to the primary source.” (Gal-Or et al.,2012).
As it said above,” newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV channels can be seen as two-sided platforms”. So they have the audience and the advertisers to satisfy. In order to attract advertisers, they have to have a large audience so they can touch a lot of people. The audience is attracted by the content of the media.
Of course, the medias don’t want to put information that could offend the advertisers because they are their source of revenues. But on the other hand, to attract audience they cannot transform or hide to much information.
I think that most of the time, people listen, buy, watch the media that fits the best their opinions so the medias must be careful when they choose their advertisers. Indeed, they better choose advertisers which do not go in the opposite direction so they reduce the risk of conflict of interest. But that is a little bit dangerous as well, it could lead to more and more bias, in order to please the audience and reenforce them in their opinion and at the same time please the advertisers. As I see it, the example with the cars review illustrated that idea.
Media bias can be adapted to sports where we can also observe the influence of advertising which would be sponsors.
In the article of Rösch (2014), he studies the influence of sponsors on results of sports and more specifically surf ( in the competition of ASP world Tour). We can also see sports events as a two-sides market, there are the customers (the public) and the sponsors. The sponsors have an interest in the public attracted by the event and the results of the surfers (in this case) they are sponsoring. According to surfers, they might be unfair treatments between the participants of the competition, depending on the sponsor that organize the events. The surfers sponsored by the sponsors of the event could be favored during the competition and by the commentators. So in the article, they try to analyse that with datas to see if there are biased results.
Obviously, it is difficult to measure an devaluate the importance of media bias.
Source:
Gal-Or, E., Geylani, T., & Yildirim, T. P. (2012). The Impact of Advertising on Media Bias. Journal Of Marketing Research (JMR), 49(1), 92-99.
http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be:8888/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=2d66dd13-bace-4310-8427-c5a5dd53e876%40sessionmgr4002&vid=2&hid=4209
Rösch, J. (2014). More surf, less bias: The influence of advertising in two-sided sport markets. International Journal of Sport Finance, 9(4), 331-345.
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be:8888/abicomplete/docview/1625562752/BE1ADF80A7614F4FPQ/2?accountid=12156
Read more
I think for there to be a positive effect of advertising on users, these ads must be restricted and targeted by the site. However, choosing the context of its newspaper for example, according to the preferences of the advertising, is not a good thing for me. The media is losing its main function, which here is to inform users and give them all the information they are looking for and not those who are in agreement with the advertisements.
Contributor Google is a very good idea as the monthly fee is low enough and allows people to control the ads they want to see or not on some sites. I think the sites that accept to be part of also have an advantage although they lose the money raised through advertisements. They prove their independence and people who want unbiased information will be more likely to move towards such sites.
Gentzkow and Shapiro explain this issue in their document “Media bias and reputation”. They give an economic explanation of this phenomenon. In the part III, they explain media bias for Monopoly. You will find below the link of the document.
There are quite a lot of examples illustrating these media biases and here are two of them.
First, let’s take the example of the elections between Obama and Romney.
In a report on the profile of the two candidates, a few days before the election, the presenter deliberately gives positive information related to Barack Obama and negative compared to Mitt Romney. On several points, she only mentions Obama’s good side by omitting the bad and will spread more widely about what might be lacking in Romney. For example, it does speak of Obama’s father as a great economist. As for the family of Romney, she will present her mother as a woman trying to force the dogs to be trained, while she was precisely against this aspect of circus and concerning his father, she will insist heavily on the Mormon religion. (But don’t talk, for example, about the fact that Obama’s father was Muslim). And so, throughout the story, she will choose to show the information highlighting Obama and deserving completely Romney. Please find below the link of a video analyzing this report (quite long).
Another example concerns the journal of the RTBF. Mr. Destexhe (MR) has noticed that when reporting on national strikes, the newspaper especially mentioned the perspective of strikers and gave the impression of taking their party. Unlike other newspapers, RTBF hasn’t faced other opinions such as those of the government deal against trade unionists or people who wanted to work. The Senator therefore denounces the lack of objectivity of the RTBF.
Sources:
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/matthew.gentzkow/research/BiasReputation.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jV1-Z001xw
Show lessRead more
For this comment, I’m going to talk about media bias and what I think about it and why to be careful about some kind of media.
First of all, I think it’s not possible to have media without bias because of the pressure from different stakeholders. We have advertisers which want as much audience as possible and and we also have customers (the audience) which most of the time don’t like to watch too much advertising.
There also have other stakeholders (government,…) which could manipulate media in order to handle the population. For instance, we observe the dictatorship in North Korea where Kim Jong-un could manipulate a lot of people with media bias and it was the same problem with Hitler few years ago. That’s why it’s really important to have a « critical spirit » about what you read, learn and watch.
Secondly, each writter of articles are human persons. Same if these people want to be impartial and neutral, they take place on the subject indirectly and sometimes it could be really difficult to be objective. It’s often the case in newspapers where it’s difficult to be neutral over different kind of subject. It could be a political or a personnal vision. It’s well known that some newspapers are more oriented to the right or the left political party.
Finally, it could also have medias where some comments or notes could be subjective. I will take the example of video games ratings (jeuxvideo.com,…) and films ratings (allocine.com,…). You have sometimes notes which seems to you so high compared the film or the video-game tested. It could be a difference in taste (subjective), but you also know that it’s really important for creators to be well coted on this kind of website to sell their products. Therefore, why these creators will not influence their notes with a financial compensation ?
To conclude my comment, I think there will always have bias to different level in medias and that’s why each reader must have a critical view and always have to wonder if the writter of an article is objective in order to be well informed.
Show lessRead more
In this Internet full of advertising, a new tendency without ads is appearing. Some are differentiating their products/services as well as the information/news websites in the purpose of earning money by another way. Others are just stopping the adds like AdBlock.
Google also react to this tendency and implement a system that is similar to crowd funding for artists,… Indeed, customers pay few dollars in the purpose of helping sites they visit; in exchange, the ads disappear.
This new service of Google, Contributor, may change a lot the future of the Internet.
Firstly, it will permit to Google to have more information about consumers and their needs; information that can be useful to discriminate the offers or to sell.
Secondly, it may bring to Google a monopoly power. Indeed, all websites have interest to choose the Google ads’ program, AdSense, because they will win money in both cases, if the visitor pay or not a contribution, if he hasn’t the adds or he has.
On one hand, this monopoly effect may be positive for customers, it brings them a solution to remove the advertising. But on the other hand, if this service is developed worldwide, in the long term the internet will be split, one part with fees/contribution and without advertising for wealthy person and the second one full of adds and free.
Moreover, depending on the way to share the donations, some websites may not survive. Two reasons influence that fact; the fist is that the total amount is smaller than the one received by websites for advertising. It may growth if a lot of people subscribe to Contributor, which will be in the really long term. Secondly, it depends how Google split this total amount. For example, if it’s only on circulation on the website; an infamous site, where normally more people click on adds, is disadvantageous and may be not longer profitable to provide a free service.
I discussed about few main consequences of the new Goggle’ service, Contributor, but we need to keep in mind that it is, currently, only a prototype and that the “reaction” of third parts need to be taken into account, which I do not. Indeed, reaction of websites, consumers, ad’s services, law,.. may completely influence the predicted changes.
References Used:
[1]https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/
[2]http://www.nextinpact.com/news/91024-avec-contributor-google-veut-financer-sites-par-don.htm
[3]http://www.lakestarmccann.com/blog/google-contributor-mean-online-ads-domed/
[4]http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/30/new-ways-to-fund-the-web
[5]http://www.linformaticien.com/actualites/id/34863/contributor-ou-l-internet-des-riches-google-lance-son-propre-adblock.aspx
[6]http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1323282/google-contributor-end-ads-web
[7]http://pro.clubic.com/it-business/actualite-740519-contributor-google-adblock.html
[8]http://www.themediabriefing.com/article/google-contributor-unanswered-questions-about-the-ad-substitutor
[9]http://www.frandroid.com/editoid/265739_google-contributor-au-secours-du-web
[10]http://factionmedia.com/trend-tracking-google-enters-the-ad-free-fray/
[11] http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/20/7255779/google-contributor-will-let-you-pay-to-see-sites-without-ads
[12] https://gigaom.com/2014/11/20/google-launches-contributor-a-crowdfunding-tool-for-publishers/
Read more
Ellman and Germano remind us of the two contrasting views on advertising in the media. On the one hand, the « regulatory » view is concerned about the risks of media bias, where newspapers distort their content « to accomodate advertiser concerns ». But on the other hand, the « liberal » views points out that advertising allows the media to be independent from states and political parties. This idea is close to the point made by Mr. Charles-Edouard Taelemans in previous comment. Medias can have political orientations and present information in a certain way that is in alignment with its political orientation. On the other hand, a newspaper can be influenced by its funders, be it important advertisers or the state.
In the second case, the media bias is caused by the media’s dependence on funding. As a result of this dependence, funders can exert a certain power on the newspapers and even influence the content of their publications.
One example that has recently made the international headlines is Fox News. The news channel has benefited from federal funding for many years and is often criticised for both its inaccuracy or even false reporting and its right-wing, conservative bias. I think the example of Fox News has already been made in the article “A tale of Sheiks and cheques”. Only recently, Fox News has been sued by the Paris city council for spreading incorrect news about the existence of « no go zones » in Paris and other French cities. During an interview on the channel, Nigel Farage also claimed that the sharia law had been introduced in Britain. According to Jane Fae, on politics.co.uk, Fox News is spreading the myth of « Europe being progressively colonised by Muslims following some islamic master plan » (Jane Fae, politics.co.uk, 2015). The question can be raised whether the media’s funders play a role in these false reportings.
The media has two main sources of financing ; through the subscription asked to its readers and through advertising or state funding. As mentioned earlier, while this external funding allows the media to survive, it also gives advertisers or states the possibility to exert power on the media and force them to distort the content of their paper.
By distorting its content, a media risks losing its reputation of integrity and quality of news coverage. Allegations of media bias can cause long-term damage to a company.
Relying on advertisers isn’t what a newspaper wants and it’s also not what its readers want. As a reaction to this situation and in the Era of transparancy, we observe more and more « watchdog journalism » and even « citizen journalism », which is « based upon public citizens « playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. » » (Wikipedia, citizen journalism).
For example, on fairspin.org members of the community work together and have a critical view on many stories found in the political views. They do so by voting to determine whether a particular story leans left or right.
Google’s new project, Contributor, could also be considered as a plausible solution to this problem for online newspapers. If online readers agree to pay a monthly fee to be free of advertising on their newspaper website, the revenues would go to the media and Google. The media would probably take the majority of the revenues, while Google would take a small cut of the proceeds. By doing so, we create a new source of funding thtn allows the media to decrease its reliance on advertising, which benefits the company’s integrity and hence benefits its readers. However, I do have some doubts about this experiment. Most internet media get the biggest part of their funding from advertisement and only a small part from its subscriptions. Will a 1-3$ monthly fee from probably only a part of the website’s readers be enough to cover the whole funding and put an end to the website’s reliance on advertisers ? Probably not. But in that case, will the website still be able to send a credible signal to its readers ? Paywalls are another example of recent experiments made by newspapers to try to change the polarization between the readers’ subsidy side and advertisers’ paying side. The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the Times are currently using such paywalls, but are also still showing advertising (The Guardian).
Finally, I would just add that this new experiment makes sense from Google’s perspective. Although the company gets 89% of its revenue from advertising (23% of ad revenue comes from placing ads on partner sites in its ad network), the online advertising market is becoming a competitive space. Newcomers like Facebook, Amazon and Twitter are now competing against eachother and Google’s revenues are bound to decrease. The company is thus looking for alternative sources of revenue.
-http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1468-0297.2009.02218.x?r3_referer=wol&tracking_action=preview_click&show_checkout=1&purchase_referrer=onlinelibrary.wiley.com&purchase_site_license=LICENSE_DENIED
-http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2015/01/15/comment-the-myth-of-muslim-no-go-areas-is-being-used-to-turn
-http://pha-media.com/blog/telegraph-allegations-and-the-art-of-reputation-management/
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism
-http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/google-contributor-pay-remove-ads
-http://amigobulls.com/articles/google-could-gain-by-not-serving-ads
-https://gigaom.com/2014/11/20/google-launches-contributor-a-crowdfunding-tool-for-publishers/
Read more
Media bias is a perceived notion that the press has and is pushing a specific viewpoint, instead of reporting news or airing programs in an objective way. Such bias often refers to media as a whole, such as a newspaper chain, or a given television or radio network, instead of individual reporters or writers of television shows. There are several kinds of media biases, such as commercial bias, fairness bias, glory bias, etc.
From the article, one of the biggest reasons why media bias exists is that the advertisers side contributes the largest part, if not all, of the revenues, to the media platform. The audience, readers, listeners, viewers, percept the contents from the media differently. As a result, the advertisers willing to pay money to the media platform to reinforce a positive feeling among the audience.
There are some solutions that could help to avoid two-sided media bias. First, the media platform should not use wrongful attribution or testimonial technique—in which a journalist may attribute a statement to a veiled or vague authority to gain credence for an incorrect statement. Second, the media platform should not use any censorship, which is a selective control of information so as to favor a particular viewpoint or editorial position and deliberate doctoring of information or totally disbarring certain undesirable information are certain forms of censorship to create a desired effect. In the article, Telegraph website conducted a censorship on Peter Osborne, when he tried to cover the story of some Muslims got mistreated by HSBC. Since HSBC is a big contributor to Telegraph website, it did not want to lose it’s revenue but decided to not publishing Peter Osborne’s story.
Sources:
http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-media-bias-and-where-does-it-come-from.htm
http://rhetorica.net/bias.htm
http://www.opinion-maker.org/2013/09/avoiding-media-biases
Read more
This post talked about the advertising that can create a media bias by influencing the media coverage. Different examples such as “biased cars reviews” have been developed and I would add another example of media bias in a multi-sided market. I have chosen the example of Google, given that search engines are mass media that shape our opinions and appreciation of the world and in which media biases are an important issue. Google can be seen as a three-sided platform:
1) The users: ask the search engine to find relevant information
2) The content providers: want a sufficient level of traffic on their websites
3) The advertisers: want to attract traffic in order to promote their products
In two-sided platform, we have seen that a solution to avoid the chicken and egg problem and bring all the side together was to subsidize one side and charge a higher price on the other side in order to compensate the subsidization. Regarding Google, it subsidizes the content providers and the users while charging a high price for the advertisers, who finance the platform.
Google developed a system that matches search and advertising that one can summarize like that: on the left side, the links related to the search appear (which are called the organic results) and on the right side a list of ads appears. Moreover, to keep the current advertisers and attract new one, Google has developed an algorithm that puts ads with the most compatible query. Thanks to this algorithm, Google can maximize its revenue, since better fit with the queries lead to more clicks. It’s a good strategy to finance the platform but a mainstream critic is that media can have problem of integrity when the content is adapted to please the advertisers. According to the paper of Rieder and Sire, it’s not really the case for Google. Indeed, the problem of bias doesn’t come from the advert side (because Google have enough advertisers and can take the freedom of choose and refuse advertisers) but rather from the content provider’s side.
These content providers are at the origin of two distinct media biases that affect the users of Google:
1) First, by buying to put adverts related to similar content on their website, the content providers induce a media bias. The underlying reason is that the adverts and the actual content are not always clearly divided on the search engine. The left and right columns on the result’s page are sometimes ambiguous. Therefore, a searcher that will not be cautious to that may be led to a website that is way less pertinent for him than the real content just beside the adverts.
2) Second, following Reader and Sire, we can identify 2 types of bias related to search engine in their paper: the systematic and the selective bias.
o Systematic bias occurs when engine favors certain types of sites by dedicated mechanisms.
o Selective bias occurs when engine promote or penalize individual like competitors’ site such Yahoo!
The second bias I am going to explain is a systematic one and is linked to the functioning of Google algorithm. Indeed, one of the variable that Google’s page rank algorithm takes as input is based on the number of keywords in your search that appear on the websites. As a consequence, content providers have an incentive to organize their site in such a way that as much pertinent keywords as possible will appear on their site. This introduces a media bias since the websites that will appear in the first ranks are not especially the ones that match your search the most, but rather the ones that have the most keywords related to your original search. Moreover, content providers are ready to modify content in order to fit with Google’s algorithm, which induces also a bias.
Now that I have developed an additional example of media bias, I would like to conclude with one general solution to cope with problems of bias in multi-sided market. Regulators may impose quota of advertising but such a solution tend to propose homogeneous content media even though a maximum differentiation between content is economically preferable.
References :
• Burguet, R., Caminal, R., & Ellman, M. (2013). In Google we trust? (Available at https://www.law.northwestern.edu/research-faculty/searlecenter/events/internet/documents/burguet-caminal-ellman-Google.pdf )
• Rieder, B., & Sire, G. (2013). Conflicts of interest and incentives to bias: A microeconomic critique of Google’s tangled position on the Web. New Media Society. (Available at https://guillaumesire.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/new-media-society-2013-rieder-sire-google-microeconomics.pdf )
• Lindstädt, N., (2009). Multisided Media Markets: Applying the Theory of Multisided Markets to Media Markets. (Available at http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Om_SDU/Institutter/Miljo/ime/wp/lindstaedt96.pdf )
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank (more information about Google’s algorithm).
Excellent analysis!
Read more
As we have seen during the lectures, firms can make money online by selling the right to advertise on their site. The question here is : what is the independence of media regarding to their sources of income, namely their audiences, their advertisers, their shareholders, those who subsidize them, etc ? What can be highlighted is that the quality of media will always rely on their independence.
Firstly, some media are dependent on their sources of income. In Belgium some newspapers have a limited number of prints and the more these prints are limited, the more they will be dependent. Moreover, some newspapers are owned by financial groups and in this case it is more difficult to write totally objective articles. Journalists of that kind of newspapers do not publish wrong articles but they could avoid talking about some topics that would harm their advertisers, their readers, etc.
For example, in 2012, the journalist Deborsu (from La RTBF) had been discarded because he had written a critical book about the Royal Family. By doing this, La RTBF wanted to assert the independence of its journalists.
Another example are the Sotchi games of last year. Media talked a lot about it and it is only a few months later that suddenly they started to criticize it while everybody knew the excesses there had been in Russia : costs were much higher than other winter games, work was done in spite of the people and respect for the environment, etc. It is a usual phenomenon which is not specific to the Olympic Games. Indeed, when there is such a big event, the advertising revenues for the media are so huge that it is impossible for them to talk about it with a critical mind.
More generally, if we take the case of major Belgian banks, some are sources of income to L’Echo or The Tijd for example. This mitigates critical mind of media with regard to the banks they rely on as a necessary income. If we take the case of specialized newspapers in a particular sector (automotive, IT, etc) there can be conflicts of interest between the independence of journalists and invitations they receive, products they can test, etc. For example, some journalists are financed by laboratories and therefore they boast some medicines they are convinced they should not boast them.
Secondly and inversely, some media are less dependent on their sources of income, such as major newspapers that have a large number of prints or such as Le Monde for example, which creates its brand image thanks to its independence in so far as its journalists do not hesitate to criticize financial groups, political parties, companies, etc. Being independent, assume it and enhance it in its articles will attract some customers who will appreciate to read information that are as critical and objective as possible. However, over the years, more and more newspapers are facing an increasingly fragile financial situation ; the number of readers is decreasing because they can easily find information on the Internet, they can read articles for free, etc. Therefore, there is a risk that even major newspapers become too dependent on their sources of income.
For all the reasons mentioned above, readers should be critical when reading an article. Every day we form opinions and many of them come from our indirect experience, that is to say from other people and in most cases from media. As we cannot experiment everything and we cannot check by ourselves whether what is reported corresponds to the reality, we take the experimentation of media as ours. Let’s recall that media do not exist only to inform their audiences but also to be profitable to their owners. As most media are given us for free, we are the “product” that is sold to the advertisers. The information related by journalists is subjective because before writing about an event they already have an opinion about it, consciously or unconsciously. Therefore it is impossible to reach a perfect objectivity.
To take an example, in 2006 “La Une” broadcasted a program about the end of Belgium, called “Bye bye Belgium”, and this created confusion in people’s minds. Viewers trust journalists and when media give us information it is difficult to know whether what they are talking about is reliable.
To conclude, this problem of media bias has been present since the media exist but it is probably even more delicate today because of their fragile financial situation. Moreover, this problem is not only a financial issue but media are also under pressure from politics, associations, etc. Therefore, media will be qualified as being of good quality as long as they are able to face all the pressures they undergo.
– http://www.7sur7.be/7s7/fr/1502/Belgique/article/detail/1524700/2012/10/27/La-RTBF-reaffirme-l-independance-de-ses-journalistes-suite-a-l-affaire-Deborsu.dhtml
– http://www.rfi.fr/sports/20140223-jeux-olympiques-hiver-bilan-contraste-sotchi-2014-russie-vladimir-poutine-droits-homme/
– http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/2011/02/02/ces-medecins-journalistes-clients-des-laboratoires-188616
– http://mobile.agoravox.fr/actualites/medias/article/comment-les-medias-forment-et-44958
– http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2010/09/06/01003-20100906ARTFIG00717–bye-bye-belgium-a-fait-emerger-le-debat.php
Interesting angle!
Read more
The Google Contributor-case inspired me and I made some research about it. I discovered that there existed another application blocking advertisement you can download, that works for all typed of web browser, namely AdBlockPlus (ABP). This website proposes to download an extension that has the capacity to block easily a wide range of advertisings. Users can choose lists of advertisement they don’t want to see and can accept the one he values to be not too intrusive. Furthermore, it seems useful to boost your computer, since the application is freeing the broadband from the advertisement.
In the beginning, the application was only available for Firefox since it is free. But now, you can find it for many others web browsers.
This application has many impacts and I wanted to highlight some of them and eventually make a link with media bias.
First of all, ABP proposes not to block acceptable advertisement. But how can we define what is acceptable advertisement? With the information on the website, it looks like the users are in charge of defining what is acceptable and what is not. Then, on website, they explain what advertisement must look like, for its admission as an “acceptable advertisement”.
How can the user be sure of what has been blocked and what not? A derive could be that some companies could be willing to pay for being rated as an acceptable advertisement.
Second, this tool seems to be harmful for websites that only lives of advertisement. Does the risk exist that because of this tool, many of free websites will be unable to survive because of the fact that many company don’t ask them anymore to advertise on their website? Even more: do those websites will be obliged to become chargeable? Another possibility is that the website will just have to sack some of their employees. This would have a negative impact on the content of the websites, namely, the expected effect could be that the content begins to be of lower quality.
A solution that some websites are already using is to propose premium services. If we take the users point of view, the risk is that, in the end, the access to quality content will only be chargeable.
According to many website creators, the reaction of users against advertisement is the result of the abuse of some other web creators. Indeed, some of them just accept every advertisement proposal with the result that the website is overloaded by ads, that the users get tired of the advertisement and the willingness of some users to eradicate this advertisement.
But, one the question might be: in which extend do authors of articles on websites earn their lives with the writing of those articles? According to Forbes article about the topic, in the case of game writers, the trend is a ridiculous law salary. This makes them more disposed to fraudulent actions.
This is another issue tackled in the article above. In the UK, the Doritos-gate has been part of the headlines for a while. What happens is that the columnist Robert Florence disclosed in an article written for Eurogamer how video game journalists are corrupted by big video game company, so that they will be more disposed to write about their products. The journalist Lauren Wainwright, which felt directly attacked by the article, made a scandal and asked to delete her name from the article. The site decided to self-censor and to remove the name of the journalist in the article. This has lead to the resignation of Robert Florence, who deplores the lack of neutrality and objectivity of the journal.
Apparently, it is not a rarity when we discover that a video game journalist has written extensively about product of a company he is working for.
Another example of media bias is the story of video game critic Jeff Gerstmann, who got sacked from his job at Gamespot, a website that delivers news about video games. He wrote a negative comment about a video game produced by a company that advertised on the website. Indeed, the company threated Gamespot to remove his advertisement from the site.
Thinking about it, I think there are no easy solutions to those issues. However, the only thing we can expect from journalist is to stay neutral in all situations.
https://adblockplus.org/fr/acceptable-ads
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25219922
http://www.nextinpact.com/news/78873-adblock-utilisation-plus-en-plus-massive-qui-fait-reagir.htm
http://www.lesnumeriques.com/doritos-gate-scandale-qui-frappe-presse-britannique-n27258.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/10/26/all-the-pretty-doritos-how-video-game-journalism-went-off-the-rails/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/10/25/video-game-journalist-robert-florence-leaves-eurogamer-after-libel-complaints/
http://ecrans.liberation.fr/ecrans/2012/11/28/doritosgate-crispation-autour-des-jeux-video_959743
Read more
his article tackles the issue of media bias, more precisely advertising bias. This phenomenon occurs when avoiding some pieces of information in order to please advertisers. Nevertheless, there are different forms of bias, such as political bias, corporate bias, mainstream bias, sensationalism bias and concision bias.
Information is central in our society. It should be neutral and respected by the medias that disseminate information. However, this is not the case. For instance, it can be shown by many facts that TV news Fox News tends to have a conservative point of view.
A very common media bias is the sensationalism bias. Indeed, it is quite frequent to see on the new that the priority is given to exceptional information that is rare and impressive rather than ordinary events. For instance, you will have flash news about airplane crash whereas car crashes will shortly be discussed as it is more common.
I was quite surprised to learn about media bias. I never realize how the medias can manipulate information and turn it to their advantage. From my point of view, the medias should be neutral and should not insert their ideology and opinions in the news.
References:
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-bias.html
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-most-biased-name-in-news/
http://phsponyexpress.org/2014/05/20/bias-and-sensationalism-erode-media-integrity/
Read more
The first question we can ask ourselves is what is the objective of the media we are talking about? If we think about newspaper, their primary objective is to inform people about the news. If we talk about scientific magazines, the objective is to inform about scientific discoveries. We can also talk about people magazines, blogs… I think that those different magazines shouldn’t be treated the same way.
First, I will talk about newspapers. An example that comes into my mind and which had made important “discoveries” is Mediapart [1], a French newspaper which proclaimed itself “independent” because they have absolutely no advertising in. At first, that seems to be a good idea because there can be no influence of huge companies or lobbying about any subject. But this newspaper has other troubles like the partiality of his journalists. They use the idea of being independent to prove that they are independent and in the same time they can give their own opinion or pretend that the information they have found is proven when it is not or unclear [2].
Today, a lot of different press agencies exist. There a few that are really big and none of them is protected against false information as we have seen with the AFP agency which declared the death of the director of Bouygues Telecom, Martin Bouygues [3]. A problem that can be seen is that a lot of Medias use the same sources of information. For example, personally, I read “La Libre Belgique”, “Le soir” and “L’Echo”. I know that despite the multiple newspapers, a lot of their information comes from the same press agencies.
We can also see two different kind of bias. First, there is the economic bias that that leads companies to give information that can be slightly wrong about products in order to raise sales. Whether it can be seen as a problem because it forces a journalist to not being completely objective, this is not a danger to society. Another bias which I consider much more dangerous is propaganda. Whether it is used to spread ideas or ideologies, propaganda has already proved in history that misinformation can lead to chaos as we have seen during the forties. Of course this is a strong example and there are others like “nuclear energies is dirty”, “renewable energies are not clean”, “electronic cigarettes are more dangerous than classic cigarettes” [4]. All those ideas are the results of unclear “scientific studies” that can be easily criticized.
So, whether or not advertising, we know that we can find bias in the Medias. Thus, isn’t the right answer to those problems to be able for a reader to use different sources of information? We are lucky enough to live in a world and a country where the Internet offers us the possibility to receive tons of information from all over the world, information that can be fuzzy, true or firmly false. It is always important to check sources wherever the information comes from, even if the media is known to be serious as we have seen with the recent case I have talked about earlier.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2hORPasGF4
[2] http://www.lepoint.fr/medias/a-t-on-le-droit-de-critiquer-mediapart-27-09-2014-1867246_260.php
[3] http://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2015/03/03/l-afp-en-mode-defense_4586690_3236.html
[4] http://www.lemonde.fr/sante/article/2015/01/22/une-nouvelle-etude-accable-la-cigarette-electronique_4560905_1651302.html
Read more
Media bias is a well-know issue, and a lot has been written about the subject. An interesting paper was published in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2012 as “The Impact of Advertising on Media Bias”. They make several points which are economically very insightful.
First, in the case of media financed through subscription fees, it has been shown that, giving that readers often prefer contents which are consistent with their political views, it can be a good strategy to “polarize” or in other words to widen the content differentiation as much as possible to relax price competition between competing media.
Second, most of the media now find their revenues in advertising, and it appears that “the effectiveness of advertising may depend on the political opinions of readers of the advertisements”. In fact, it is more likely that a reader will want to buy a product which he feels is consistent with his political views.
Hence, adversting in the media has actually two strategic effects which are conflicting. First, the media has a clear incentive to increase it’s audience (or “readership effect”). Simply put: the bigger the audience, the higher the advertising fee (as the advertisers will be willing to pay more if they can reach a wider audience). As a consequence, any media would have an incentive to eliminiate any bias, in order to provide the most “neutral” product to attract the wider audience (it’s the same logic as the “median-voter theorem”). Second, there’s the “incremental pricing effect”, which comes from the fact that, just as for subscribers, advertisers may prefer some political orientation, which means they will be more willing to pay for a media which publishes some particular contents. This means that there’s an incentive for media to “polarize” in order to alleviate the price competition between them and be able to charge higher fees to advertisers.
Now what’s important is to be able to measure what effect dominates and it actually all depends on the heterogeneity of the audience and of the advertisers. If the advertisers are only willing to put ads in a very particular sort of media (case of “singlehoming”, heterogeneity is very high) then the “pricing effect” dominates and it is more profitable for media to polarize as much as possible (to increase horizontal differentiation). If this heterogeneity is low, then advertisers will be willing to put ads in different types of content (which tend to be as much neutral as possible) and will therefore be multihoming. Here, the “audience effect” dominates and it’s more profitable to reduce polarization as much as possible.
A global conclusion would be that media bias is more likely to take place when users and advertisers are very heterogeneous in their political opinions. If readers, users and all subscribers were homogeneous in their views, and it was the same for advertisers, there would probably be no bias. Nonetheless it’s clear that a lot of advertisers are very likely to introduce a bias in media as they are very heterogeneous.
Sources :
https://archive.ama.org/archive/AboutAMA/Pages/AMA%20Publications/AMA%20Journals/Journal%20of%20Marketing%20Research/TOCs/SUM_2012.1/impact_advertising_media_bias.aspx
https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/files/?whdmsaction=public:main.file&fileID=5594
Thanks for the reference.
Read more
Another example of medias bias can be the following: according to the BBC, the attacks on the Charlies Hebdo offices and kosher supermarket in Paris were not clearly cases of terrorism. The head of BBC Arabic, Tarik Kafala, said: “We try to avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being terrorist. What we try to do is to say that ‘two men killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine’. That’s enough, we know what that means and what it is. »[1] It is a spin bias because he does not speak about terrorism, what leaves the readers misinformed. This was an attack of Al-Qaïda, so talk about terrorism was correct [2].
From a theoretical point of view, some argues that a differentiation in the placement of advertising can soften the price competition, on the one hand. If there is a high positive correlation between the customers’ preference and their political views, media have incentives to select the advertisings they will publish (single-homing). In this case, media bias exists and the media can have monopoly power over the advertisers. For example, if I run a republican magazine and I know that the republicans buy more likely Dell computers, I will chose to publish in priority advertising over Dell.
On the other hand, if the correlation is negligible, there is no incentive to differentiate the advertising: the ads of the firms will appear is all media (multi-homing).
The underlying assumption is that the advertising represents a huge part of the media revenue [3].
From my personal point of view, I find it normal that some biases appear in media’s advertising. When I buy a type of magazine, I make a personal choice, and I have some expectations about the content. The ads have to be chosen in order to meet my expectations. About the bias in the newspapers, it is more like manipulation. All readers need to be critics in regard of what they read.
[1] Margolin, A. (2015). Paris Attacks Terror? Not According to BBC. Online on the website Student News Daly http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/example-of-media-bias/paris-attacks-terror-not-according-to-bbc/
[2] Rédaction en ligne (2015). Yémen: Al-Qaïda cite Charlie Hebdo dans la liste de ses operations. Online on the website Le Soir http://www.lesoir.be/768963/article/actualite/fil-info/fil-info-monde/2015-01-27/yemen-al-qaida-cite-charlie-hebdo-dans-liste-ses-operations
[3] Sarvary, M. (2012). Media Bias and Advertising. Onlie on the website Knowledge insead blog http://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/media-bias-and-advertising-2824
Show lessRead more
The media bias is the perception that the media are reporting the facts, the ideas subjectively. It occurs when the media give information with a specific point of view, pay attention to the choice of words, make selective omissions or make silence about subjects such as a negative economic report. As we can read in the article, we can represent the media like a platform. There exist two sides, the readers and the advertisers. The payoffs of the readers depend on the quality of the newspapers and the volume of publicity. The payoffs of advertisers depend on the size and the quality of the audience.
The media have to deal with both sides. Advertisers are the paying side and the readers are the subsidy side. The aim for the media is to increase its revenues, thus, to attract more readers and more advertisers. The media need to attract this people but the public has heterogeneous preferences in a political way or economic way.
So, in the multi-sided platform, the content can be influenced by the need of the media to provide a product that will interact a large audience but also advertisers. This need and the competition between the media can generate a bias.
Some products seems not have any correlation with the political/economic opinions of a person but others products have a link. The question of hybrid vehicles or cosmetic products may have a political and an economic side. The importance of the two sides can generate a bias and push the newspaper to make the choice of supporting, relating the subject and publishing it. It will also determine to accept or not the publicity of the company.
In the traditional market, the customer has the power because he is the one who chose the products but in our case, it is (mostly) the advertiser who is deciding to put the product in the newspaper because he is paying for the advertising.
Steiner (1952) studied the link between the publicity and the content of media. He compared the diversity of content between a company with a monopoly situation and a firm in competition situation. The respond should be: more diversity in competition because the firms would specialize in a niche of consumers. But, he proved that it is the inverse effect. The firms in competition prefer to capture the segment of customers of the more important size than diversify their programs. Indeed, if we have three kinds of programs : cultural (1000 views), sport (5000 views) and entertainment (2500 views) programs. If there exists a monopoly with three channels, the monopoly broadcasting company products the three kinds of programs and attracts most of the audience. If there exist three different firms, each firm wants more views and it prefers to broadcast the sport and share the audience than broadcast the cultural programs with few viewers. This example shows the economic issue and the need of a large audience to attract the advertisers.
An example of bias is the case of the candidate of PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico. The scandal was revealed by the Guardian after the reactions of students of the University Ibericoamericana. The candidate seemed to have a link with the main television channel, Televisa. The Guardian has the evidence that a contract (Handcock) was concluded in 2009 between Nieto and Televisa. The channel led an internet campaign for Nieto, with videos on youtube, mails and social networks. Other videos were targeting opponents of Mr. Nieto and the current President Felipe Calderon. But it was not the first time that Nieto was accused to buy the channel. In 2005, the channel led a campaign against Lopez Obrador, the opposite of Nieto but the case was hushed up by Televisa.
This case shows the power of a political party on the media. The operation is the same with advertisers. Indeed, the government gives subsidies to public television stations and so it is better for television channels to follow/report the ideas of the government in order to be sure to keep the subsidies because in case of change of government, subsidies could change. Again, we find the same logic of funds as in the case of advertisers, the need of money to ensure the future of the company
A solution should be more transparency of the funding of the media. Indeed, the readers should be informed about the funders and make their own opinions. The media should be obliged to relate information objectively for its name and today the reputation is very important. A scandal can destroy the reputation of the media forever. This technique allows relating information objectively but does not oblige the newspaper to speak about difficult subjects.
The new system of Google Contributor could support the objectivity of media. Indeed, this project shows the sites that are ready to be independent of all advertisers. They want to convince the audience that they are immune to media bias and give a positive signal for objectivity. Moreover, this project gives the opportunity to know the potential consumers.
Thanks to their independence, the media could speak about all the subjects they want. This freedom could attract news readers because the media could explain the problem without censorship and everyone knows that the readers are attracting with scandalous subjects.
• http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/upset-about-political-bias-in-the-media-blame-economics/
• http://www.secure-finance.com/analyses/1279.pdf
• http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/AEJ_Govt%20advertising%20and%20media%20coverage%20of%20corruption%20scandals_cbb969cd-4266-4818-8656-8d751e9b5b28.pdf
• http://econoclaste.org.free.fr/econoclaste/?p=6906
• http://www.cairn.info/zen.php?ID_ARTICLE=TDM_006_0049
Read more
Media bias is a huge problem worldwide. Lot of media bias can take place such as political bias, advertising bias, corporate bias, religious bias… But let’s stay in advertising bias which is the main purpose of this article. An advertising bias can be define as “the existence of an implicit or explicit bundle of advertisement and favorable coverage.” (De Smet & Vanormelingen 2011)
According to a study of Soley & Craig (1992) 90% of the US editors have been pressured by advertisers. That shows the importance of the phenomenon. If we focus on our Belgian country we can see that this is also true. In Belgium a survey of Belgian journalists, conducted by De Smet and Vanormelingen (2011), shows that a minority of journalists (36%) is asked at least once a month to write an article about an advertiser by the advertiser itself, the marketing department or his chief.
Nowadays information is, I think, not the main concern of media anymore but profit is. Companies are indispensable for newspapers. Indeed advertisers are those who pay the most and satisfy them is important for media companies.
If companies were not there, some media will not exist anymore. A paper named « État des lieux des médias d’information en Belgique francophone » reveals that in 2009 the resources from the advertising sector represent a little bit more than 74.000.000 euros. Approximately 40% of the total revenues of the French-language Belgian press.
Furthermore, the ethics obviously takes a hit because the consumer is misled. And that is unacceptable when you know that consumption or investment, is sometimes based on information retrieved from newspapers.
I also think that advertising bias occurs more frequently when publishers covers only few specifics topics such as cars magazine because media will have in that case less flexibility because of its dependence to the advertising revenues.
I think one solution would be putting between the advertiser and the media a firm. That firm will regulate the influence advertisers can exert and providing a kind of label. But it is still important that the incentives for the owner of the media remain. And that will be difficult.
The google solution is for that reason also a good one. But will the readers really prefer to pay for the service provided knowing that it is without any bias and be as profitable as companies?
Source:
-Rinallo,D.,& Basuroy,S. (2009).Does Advertising Spending Influence Media Coverage of the Advertiser? Journal of Marketing, 73 (November), 33–46. (http://business.utsa.edu/marketing/files/Basuroy_Journal_of_Marketing_2009.pdf )
-De Smet,D.,&Vanormelingen,S.,(2011). The advertiser is mentionned twice. Media bias in belgian newspaper. HUB research paper, (januari), 30 (https://lirias.hubrussel.be/bitstream/123456789/5850/1/12HRP05.pdf)
– http://egmedia.pcf.be/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/EGMI_EDL_fullv6_5.pdf
Read more
Firstly we can present media bias with 2 different approach: The first one is to say that a media bias is a tendency of the media to present the information in a way that is intentionally impaired by a belief.
the second way is to say that a media bias can occur when the article is about a organization or person that is so powerful that it could have some negative on the journal if the article is published without any change.
The first approach is quite normal nowadays, the better example is that everybody knows that all the journals have their own political orientation and that they will present the information in a way that will improve the credibility of the party(s) that they defend.
For the economical point of view, it is clear that a client want to be satisfied when they read the articles so the journalist will have to present the information in a way that will satisfy a socialist or a capitalist (depending the orientation of the journal. If those persons are satisfy with the way of how is presented the information they will still buy the same journal and become a loyal customer.
The second is way more ancient and easy to understand. In a political point of view media are a great way of propaganda ( Hitler, North Korea…) and if the media follow the the guidelines of those dictators they will have the necessary funds to continue their activity.
We can go much further in the past to explain this. For instance in 1274 BC (approximately) we know that to win approval from the crowds and continue his campaign Ramses II used his scribes to present and turn the battle of Kadesh to his advantage which was false because the battle ended to a small avantage for the Hittite empire.
This “modification” of the reality was and still is a way to win the approval of the crowd in order to have the necessary found for the future project.
In conclusion we can say that media bias are mainly here in order to finance the organisations, countries and even the journals themselves. The cost of those bias are then the modification of the information.
sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias
http://www.integrersciencespo.fr/index.php?article15/orientations-politiques-de-la-presse-etrangere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kadesh
Read more
Regarding this article, the situation of the media seems uncomfortable. They always have to jungle between the two indirect effects. On the one side, the audience, in most of the cases does not want to be flooded by advertising. On the other side, advertisers representing a greater financial source for the media wants to access the readers. Knowing that medias need to satisfy the advertiser, or at least does not have to criticise them. It thus seems media can’t avoid some bias.
But is that truly negative ? The audience of one particular media is certainly interested by the content and surely approves it. In presence of bias the advertising will look less “intrusive.” Economically, the indirect effects of the advertising on the consumer will not be as negative as it must, and could even be positive. If we start from this point of view, bias can be profitable for the two sides and thus for the media.
Media without bias are extremely rare. The first reason is that media needs the advertisers to exists and their influence is great. Secondly, despite the fact that every reporter has to be objective, they remain human with their own opinion and tastes.
In our globalized world, media has taken such power. Some media are able to influence peoples votes (DellaVigna, S. and E. Kaplan (2007)). In this situation, the influence advertisers has on media is to be watched and maybe controlled.
Read more
Great post, makes me think also of NGOs and think thanks.
In regard to the latter, competition by reputation is a way of decreasing potential biases. With transparency regarding funding and potential conflicts of interest, readers are asked to judge on how independent one can be, baring in mind one cannot be isolated in a ivory tower and produce ideas that work.
Reputation attracts readers and thus further members, allowing to diversify the source of funding – a virtuous circle. Lack of transparency and lack of diversified funding does the opposite.
Thank you Diogo for this interesting parallel (it feels good to see that former students are still willing to comment on the blog!).
Read more
Media bias is a well-known issue and has been subject to a multitude of studies these last few years. In the US, for example, most citizens know that MSNBC has a strong liberal bias in comparison with Fox News, which is strongly oriented towards conservatism. Besides, a scientific paper, written by Milyo & Groseclose (1), has scientifically proven that there were, indeed, political biases in the different news channel.
However, even if almost all the people are aware of the existence of media bias, some are not conscious of the effect of its consequences. Indeed, a study by Kaplan & DellaVigna (2) has shown that media bias could have an impact on voting by analyzing the effect of the conservative Fox news channel on its viewers. The paper estimated that it managed to convince from 3 to 8% of them to vote Republican. Whether it was due to ‘’a temporary effect for rational voters or a permanent effect for voters subject to non-rational persuasion’’ the conclusion prove well that medias bias could have a significant influence on its viewers opinion and beliefs.
In parallel, Shapiro and Gentzkow have worked on the incentive for the media to be biased or not (3). They have concluded that ‘’firms will tend to distort information to make it conform to make it conform to consumers’ prior beliefs’’. For example, Fox news knows that most of its viewers are Republicans; it will thus distort the information in order to please them and their opinion. But if the consumers have an easy access to a source which could easily prove ex-post that the information was wrong, then the incentive to be biased will be weakened for the media channel because this could potentially damage its reputation. This explain why there are more biased observed in coverage of foreign war, tax policies or global warming than they are in concrete subjects which outcome are immediately observable such as forecasting weathers, sport etc. The third and final observation is that competition in the news market can lower the bias. This is not really surprising given that they are threatened by the facts that other news channel can at any moment expose their inaccuracy and thus, damage their credibility.
In conclusion, media bias do not only exist, but it has also an effect on the viewer and can influence their opinion. The incentives for the media channels to be biased can be affected by the viewer’s prior opinion, their access to information ex-post the facts and the competition in the news market.
(1) http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/groseclose/pdfs/MediaBias.pdf
Show less(2) http://www.nber.org/papers/w12169.pdf
(3) http://www.nber.org/papers/w11664.pdf