media bias is a real thing

Hello all!

For today’s post I wanted to have a conversation with you about something that is discussed mostly by the right wing folks in our country, namely that there is a media bias.

My personal credibility in discussing this issue comes primarily from the fact that for nearly a decade as a professional investor my primary job was to read, process and act on news. At the end of my career I was reading 17 newspapers, all of the major news and business wires, and company published SEC documents each and every single day. Yikes! Additionally, I read several weekly business magazines as well as an occasional source of analysis by a third party (usually Grant’s Interest Rate Observer).

Over those years of reading I have to tell you that I discovered that there is definitely bias in the media. In fact, there are many biases.

• Bias 1 – Liberal
  To some degree the conservatives are right about the bias in the media. And I say this as a person who was formerly registered as a Green Party candidate (I switched to the Democrats so that I could vote in the New Mexico Primaries). I know this to be the case because working for Davis Selected Advisers, one of the nation’s largest mutual fund firms, we were frequently among the largest shareholders of businesses that were making news headlines. What that means is that I was sometimes a part of a news story and I then got to see the news coverage of that event. Inevitably, there was an anti-big business, pro-“the little guy” slant to the news. Think: “Joe-the-Plumber.” Generally, this seems to be done to appeal to a bigger, wider readership. In other words, they were trying to sell advertising to the vast Middle Class. Because the stories were written as polemics they also energized the audience and kept stories in the public eye for longer than the actual relevancy of the “news.” I think that the “cause” of the bias was a predilection toward a liberal take with regard to business news, in part because of individual reporter’s bias, but also because news editors know that their viewership, by and large, hates their jobs and big business. The “effect” was that stories were very distorted, and bordered on outright lies.

Now before my Liberal friends jump in and hammer me – which they are of course welcome to do, as this is an open forum – there are several other biases that I recognize, too.

• Bias 2: Only America Counts
  The next one that I want to talk about is the “pro-America” or “America-centric” bias that is pervasive and strong. Among the many newspapers that I read were several that were foreign news sources. I can say with absolutely FIRM conviction that American newspapers do not report the rest of the world…at all! There were frequently major news stories from important countries or regions of the world that would not even receive a single blurb from all of the American newspapers. Apparently editors at American newspapers don’t feel that we are interested in such news. And based on the lack of curiosity or interest of most Americans for what happens outside of our country, I would have to say that the editors are in accord with the citizenry. We Americans pretty much figure that if “the news” didn’t happen here, or “the news” wasn’t caused by us, then it doesn’t matter. This is despicable in my opinion. There is no question that we are the most powerful nation on earth at the moment. More importantly, there is no doubt that as a nation we like to exercise that power as we believe we should. That means that the power should be applied in a responsible fashion, otherwise resentment will build. To wield the power responsibly requires that we all have good information. And we absolutely do not. This is the fault of both the media and the citizenry.

If you don’t believe me on the one above then check out the list of websites that I relied on to make multi-million dollar decisions at the end of this post. Check those websites out and tell me if you still feel as if you are getting the full picture on stories.

• Bias 3: Gossip Goooood
  The next bias that I wanted to talk about is the bias toward “gossipy” bull shit types of news. Yes, you read that correctly – I cussed on the blog. Yikes! However, there are times when it is required. I made an earlier post that said, “there is no news on cnn.” Ironically, the day that I chose to “send up” CNN actually had a higher amount of what I would consider to be “newsworthy” stories that day. However, I had the integrity to make the post anyway rather than wait for a day when there is literally no news actually being published; which frequently occurs. In that post I issued a challenge that I want to repeat here, next time you read the news do so with the following mental filter:

Which of these stories actually directly affects me?

I am fairly certain that you will discover that most of the news has nothing to do with you at all. Most news, overwhelmingly, falls into the gossipy categories of:

• “interesting” – e.g. the dude who lost his finger to a Chihuahua who was trying to steal his Chalupa
• “celebrity” – e.g. Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix are pretty, let’s find an excuse to look at, and talk about, them – woohoo!!! : (
• “human interest” – e.g. someone in Des Moines jumped into a river and saved a cross-eyed squirrel – isn’t she great? I know, I know. We all want to see something positive in the news, but this kind of stuff usually pushes out the story about the thousands of people that are being systematically raped, tortured, mutilated and killed in Central Africa
• “economic gossip” – e.g. the stock market was up today 14 points and investors are…blah, blah, blah. Or another example, “pork belly futures stink…no, I mean really, they smell bad.” After having worked in investing since my early 20s I still can’t understand why this stuff qualifies as news. Even when there is a huge movement up or down, this kind of news really just doesn’t affect most of us. However, because there is a daily movement of the stock market, and people generally view it as a barometer of the economy (thanks to irresponsible and ignorant reporting), we tune into this junk.
• “scandal” – e.g. some evangelist somewhere is corrupt ; or some football player smacked his girlfriend ; or some politician somewhere did something for money. All of which is: shocking!

Bias 4: Self-Serving Promotion
The last bias that I wanted to talk about is that gigantic, multi-media companies, Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom and General Electric are the primary owners of news reporting in the Western World. Their ownership of these institutions has an insidious affect on the overall content of the news. For example, the above listed biases are generally the result of an effort to appeal to a broad audience in order to sell the most advertising dollars and to drive viewership to the company’s other properties. I was an Entertainment & Media analyst at one point in my career and I can tell you that the execs who head these businesses talk about this stuff on their conference calls. The euphemism is that they want to drive “interest across their platform.” So what you see is an interview on Larry King with an actor whose movie is about to come out. What you don’t understand maybe is that Larry King works for CNN which is owned by Time Warner and Time Warner made the movie in question. Or you will see an author quoted in a story who is there to talk about how she opposes something, but she has a new book out, and you guessed it, the book was published by the same parent company. Despicable!!!!!

C’mon folks, we have to demand better than this crap.

Here is a list of the websites that I relied upon to make my decisions for many years, and as my bio demonstrates, successfully, too:

Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/

CNN, http://www.cnn.com/

New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/

Financial Times, http://www.ft.com/

Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com/

Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/

Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/

The Economist, http://www.economist.com/

BBC News, http://www.bbcnews.com/

International Herald Tribune, http://www.iht.com/

Al Bawaba, http://www.albawaba.com/

Fact Check, http://www.factcheck.org/

CJR Campaign Desk, http://www.cjr.org/

Citizens Against Government Waste, http://www.cagw.org/

New Scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/

Disinformation, http://www.disinfo.com/

Of the above sources, I consider the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Christian Science Monitor and the Los Angeles Times to be the finest sources of information. Though, the WSJ’s Opinion page is a mess of Republican polemic propaganda. By the way Al Bawaba, a middle eastern news source has excellent middle eastern business news. The worst source of news up there is either CNN or the Chicago Tribune. CNN because it’s schlocky and the Tribune because they really are interested primarily in Chicago-land.

Thanks for reading! I am getting strong indications from folks that they are digging this stuff. Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming, both negative and positive!

Enjoy your Sun Day!

Jason