The Echo Chamber & Media Bias

As much as our society values diversity, we have increasingly little exposure to diversity of thought, opinion, and news because we spend so much time in our own “echo chambers.” In an echo chamber, we insulate ourselves from alternative thoughts, exposing ourselves only to information that reinforces our existing views, while avoiding information that challenges or refutes our beliefs. This leads to confirmation bias and makes us dig in our heels and become more politically and socially polarized. That’s bad for democracy! And it perpetuates political tribalism. 

Of course, our social media feeds are the ultimate echo chamber and the epitome of manipulated information flow as we are constantly fed stories and propaganda that support and further narrow our increasingly narrow perspectives. Below we show examples of the problem and present an option for taking personal control over the issue.

Ground.News
Where media and political communications are concerned, acts of omission can be more impactful and dangerous than acts of commission. Indeed, one of the most powerful tools the media possess is the ability to not cover a given story. As we consume carefully curated information, therefore, we develop blind spots.

We can’t change the algorithms, of course, but we can be more aware of the bias and find out what we’re missing. A great tool for this is Ground.News, a website and app that daily processes 60,000 news articles from 50,000 different sources and categorizes them by the Bias score (Left, Center, or Right) of the media outlets. Each outlet is also rated on a Factuality score of either Low, Mixed, or High, and the ownership of the media source is provided.

A sampling of the bias categories follows:

• Far Left: The Independent Left, World Socialist Web Site

• Left: CNN, Huffpost, Daily Kos

• Lean Left: Washington Post, CBS News, Bloomberg, Politico, New York Times

• Center: The Hill, Political Wire, Forbes, The Globe and Mail, Reuters

• Lean Right: Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, New York Post

• Right: Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, National Review

• Far Right: Info Wars, Red Voice Media

Spend some time on Ground.News and explore the level of research and documentation of their approach. It is impressive and valuable if you want to keep your bias in check. The site also produces a handy weekly email called the Blindspot Report that highlights a handful of stories and their respective coverage by bias category.

The following examples show stories from the past couple of weeks (at the time of this writing) and the percentage of Left, Center, or Right media sources that covered them.

Examples
Judge orders Fauci, Psaki deposed in social media censorship lawsuit. 25 media sources.

• 100% Right, 0% Center, 0% Left

Adolescent incest survivor had to leave Florida for abortion, says Jacksonville Planned Parenthood doctor. 11 media sources.

• 73% Left, 27% Center, 0% Right

More than 6 in 10 Americans favor leaving race out of college admissions. 6 media sources.

• 50% Right, 33% Center, 17% Left

California poised to overtake Germany as world’s #4 economy. 10 media sources.

• 70% Left, 20% Center, 10% Right

Officials traded pandemic stocks with exquisite timing. 7 media sources.

• 57% Right, 29% Center, 14% Left

Trump made Secret Service pay up to $1,100 per night at his hotels: House panel. 110 media sources.

• 38% Left, 59% Center, 5% Right

100% probability of a U.S. recession in next 12 months, according to Bloomberg. 11 media sources.

• 55% Right, 27% Center, 18% Left

Blindspot
Each weekly Blindspot Report also includes the headlines for one specific story to demonstrate the bias of the various media outlets. In the most recent example, look at the dramatically different headlines of the Left and Right, and consider the Center version to be the most accurate:

• “LGBT+ advocates condemn ‘heinous’ House Republican ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill,” The Independent Left, LEFT

• “House GOP introduces bill cutting federal funds for ‘sexually oriented’ events for kids,” The Hill, CENTER

• “House GOP bill would ban federally funded drag queen shows for kids,” The New York Post, RIGHT

None of us wants to admit that we are biased, but there is no escaping the fact that most of our news sources most certainly are. While the last few years have brought increased concerns about dangers to our democracy, willful ignorance and the intentional squelching of debate and discussion among people with differing views might constitute the worst such threat.

Although it takes a little more work than mindlessly scrolling through our feeds, we’re fortunate that there are steps we can all take to broaden our perspectives. I95 Content Marketing

Duane Carey is a small business owner and President of the Maryland Free Enterprise Foundation (Maryland Free), a 39-year-old non-partisan, non-profit organization focused on improving Maryland’s business climate and economic health.

Connect: www.MarylandFree.org