Media bias in the 2016 election? Professors, media professionals discuss

By Joel Delgado ’12 MS ’17 

In recent weeks, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the news media have been working against him, bringing concerns about media bias back to the forefront of the national conversation.

And according to recent polls and surveys, many Americans agree with him. A national Quinnipiac University poll released last month revealed that 55 percent of likely voters said the media are biased against Trump.

Another poll conducted by Suffolk University and USA Today asked respondents “Who do you think the media, including major newspapers and TV stations, would like to see elected president: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?” A vast majority – 75.9 percent – answered Clinton.

But is the public’s perception of media bias accurate? Is the media actively showing preference for one candidate over another in the 2016 election?

This was the main question posed at a Media Bias Panel hosted by the School of Communication + Journalism, featuring Terence Shepherd, news director at WLRN-Miami Herald News, and FIU professors Alejandro Alvarado, Fred Blevens and Aileen Izquierdo.

Attended by approximately 100 communication students and moderated by College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts Dean Brian Schriner, the discussion went straight to the main question at hand: Is the media biased?

“I don’t believe the media are generally biased in the way that the term is used by some of our politicians and critics of the news media,” Blevens said. “I still think the news media consider their first obligation to be truth telling. And if you are engaged in truth telling, it’s very difficult to be biased in any way except to your audience – your readers or viewers. And that bias is very good.”

Blevens then expressed his confusion over Trump’s claims of bias against him, pointing out that Trump has reaped the benefits of millions of dollars in free media coverage since he announced his campaign and how news outlets, such as CNN, have hired a number of former Trump campaign operatives as commentators.

The New York Times reported in March that Trump had received close to $2 billion worth of free media coverage, more than twice that of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The model used by the newspaper collected positive, neutral and negative media mentions alike; negative media mentions were given somewhat less weight. By the end of July, however, Clinton had nearly caught up to Trump in terms of media coverage.

“I think the idea that the media is biased or favor a candidate over another is simply not true,” Blevens concluded.

Alvarado, who specializes in studying Hispanic media, countered that there is a pro-Democratic Party bias among Hispanic media outlets, particularly the main networks: Univision and Telemundo.

He pointed to several factors that have caused this bias to exist in Hispanic media, including the makeup of their audience, the left-leaning ideology of many producers and editors at these networks and the employment of advocacy journalism as a response to a lack of Hispanic representation at all levels of government.

“Their main audience is immigrants. They give life to Univision and Telemundo. Cut that off and those networks would die,” Alvarado said. “They have developed an advocacy for key issues that affect Hispanics, especially immigration, health care and education. They see a need to editorialize the news in order to make it more attractive to their audience.”

Izquierdo took a different angle on the question, focusing on why the average American feels that there is a bias in media coverage.

She states that the perception of bias has lived inside all of us since we were children. And in the context of political elections, that bias can become attached to the candidates we support, making perceived attacks against a particular candidate seem personal.

“If you walk outside these doors and asked that same question to the general population, the response would be something very different. This concept of bias is a perception that is personal, real and visceral,” she said. “So when we wrap ourselves around a political candidate in any election, that candidate represents me, what I believe, what I feel, and what I think needs to happen next. When we hear somebody say something that’s not so positive about our candidate, are they not in essence saying it about me?”

Shepherd said that one of the biggest problems facing media organizations like WLRN, and a major factor for feeding into the notion of media bias, is that the average media consumer can no longer distinguish between authentic journalism and opinion disguised as news.

“Just because you have a website, microphone or printing press doesn’t mean that you are practicing the standards of journalism,” Shepherd said.

Building on what Blevens said earlier in the conversation, Shepherd explains why Trump has received so much coverage and attention from the news media.

“I would argue that news media and people who practice journalism are drawn to what is new, novel, and hasn’t been done before. And Donald Trump’s candidacy is all of that,” Shepherd. “They want to know more about him. What is he saying? What is he thinking? If you want to say there is bias, it’s bias toward the news and what’s new – and that’s Donald Trump.”