Streamline Training & Documentation: The Hostile Media Phenomenon

Monday, July 24, 2006

The Hostile Media Phenomenon

Show two people the same TV newsclip, and you can get very different evaluations of its fairness, and very different recollection of just what it reported.

In an article in yesterday's Washington Post, Shankar Vedantam reports on a 1985 study (pdf) that has continuing relevance as partisans involved in issues like war in the Middle East, regulation of energy plants, net neutrality, etc., quarrel over whether media treatment of these issues is fair.

"Hostile media phenomenon" is the name Stanford researchers Robert P. Vallone, Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper gave to the tendency of partisans to believe that media reports are placing their side of a contested issue in a bad light.

Tellingly, the more informed a partisan, the harsher his/her view of the media coverage. Ross suggests that this correlation between knowledgeability and perception of bias is due to better-informed partisans being especially concerned about lack of context in a report. They want extenuating circumstances to be explained.

The question is: How can people reach very different conclusions about the same media reports? Two cognitive mechanisms appear to be involved:

Partisans evaluate "the fairness of the media's sample of facts and arguments differently." Partisans choose and apply standards and criteria "in light of their own divergent views about the objective merits of each side's case and their corresponding views about the nature of unbiased coverage."

Partisans perceive and recall the content of media reports differently. Specifically, both groups in a controversy recall more negative than positive references to their side of the story.

What can someone do to step back from an emotional reaction to a report dealing with an issue (e.g., a labor-management issue, or an engineering-manufacturing issue) on which he/she has a strong opinion? How can someone acting as a mediator counteract the tendency of both sides to perceive bias, even when the mediator is being scrupulously neutral?

In an earlier post I listed questions a person can ask to counteract the tendency to perceive a situation through a distorting lens of bias. Some of these questions, in slightly modified form, can help counteract the hostile media phenomenon. For example:

How did the report's authors reach their conclusions? What exactly is the evidence they cite? (Note that the report can be either written or oral.)

What are the sources of the information in the report? What are the contending parties' sources? Are any of the sources less than reliable?

Why do I believe that I'm right? What is my evidence? Where and why is it different from the evidence in the report? (Or, if a mediator is asking the questions: Why do you believe you're right? What is your evidence? Etc.)

Some additional suggestions for applying critical thinking that you can adapt to help in countering the hostile media phenomenon are summarized in this post.

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Labels: Critical thinking

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