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Political news can cause strong emotions in readers, like feelings of frustration, relief, worry, or pride. While part of this has to do with the reader’s own investment in politics, the other part is intentional on the reporting side. Words, quotes, and details within a certain news story can all intentionally cause the reader to draw a certain conclusion. When this happens, the cause comes down to bias.
Bias takes many forms in news coverage. The good news is that it always leaves clues of its presence. Once you know what to look out for, it becomes easier to identify over time.
Why Political Coverage Tends to Lean a Certain Way
Bias does not necessarily mean that the reporter is lying. More often than not, it’s so subtle it can be hard to detect. For example, a writer can decide which facts to highlight in a new story, and which facts to downplay. It can give more focus on certain perspectives, rather than giving an even amount of coverage to all perspectives involved in a story.
There’s a reason bias often exists in political coverage. A headline may get more clicks if it’s intentionally vague or shock-provoking. An article may get more engagement if it provokes anger in its readers, causing them to have further discussions about the story or spend more time consuming the news coverage of that story. But, this isn’t always in the reader’s best interest. It can actually cause the reader to lose trust in the news or even experience news fatigue trying to decipher fact from opinion.
Signs a Political Story is Bias
There are a few signs that a story may be biased:
● Loaded language: Also considered to be emotionally-charged language, it carries strong feelings or tries to push those feelings on the reader. For example, news coverage on a court trial may choose to say “the plaintiff boasted” rather than “the plaintiff said”.
● Emotional adjectives: Adjectives may be included in the coverage that pushes the coverage away from being neutral. For example, rather than saying “The new vaccine causes X side effect in X amount of people”, it may describe “the devastating side effects of the vaccine”.
● One-sided perspectives: If only one side of a story is covered, it becomes biased by intentionally leaving out the other side. A fair story covers all the main views of an issue, rather than holding the microphone only to one side.
● Missing context: Alongside one-sided perspectives, intentionally leaving out context that may change the reader’s perspective of a news story is biased.
● Opinion posing as fact: Watch out for phrases like “obviously” or “definitely” in news coverage. These are simple indicators that a reporter may be writing with a persuasive tone, rather than a factual one.
While recognizing these signs are helpful when consuming a political story, it can also be a lot to ask of a reader who simply wants to stay up-to-date while sipping on their morning coffee. That’s where a tool built for identifying bias can help.
Using AI to review existing news articles, Echo Harbor News can identify bias and remove it, so what reaches the readers is the reporting itself. If you’re looking for unbiased political news, it’s a simple way of following government and policy without having to filter out the bias yourself.
