As we find out more about the motivations and planning behind the riot on Capitol Hill that occurred on January 6th, 2021, it is unsurprising that an FBI report on the rioter’s plans obtained by the Washington Post contained multiple references to BLM and Antifa. While it can be easy to blame Trump for the actions of his supporters, I feel it is only appropriate to also call out the conservative news media that propagated and elevated his false messages throughout his presidency.
My thesis examined the mass media coverage of the protests in Portland following the murder of George Floyd. Using Media Cloud, an open-source platform for studying media ecosystems, I examined the ways different news outlets framed the protests during two time periods. The first period begins the day George Floyd was murdered, 5/25/20–6/27/20, and the second starts the Monday after the “Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence” and ends the Sunday after federal troops were withdrawn to standby locations, 6/28/20–8/3/20.
In order to quantify the existence of partisan media bias, I selected three news media outlets from newspapers and television news to provide a total of six outlets. The New York Times and MSNBC were selected to represent “left” media, USA Today and CBS News were selected to represent the “neutral” media, and the New York Post and Fox News were selected to represent the “right” media. The “left”, “neutral”, and “right” media designations were determined based on the “Interactive Media Bias Chart®” by Ad Fontes Media and the levels of trust and distrust in each media source based on research by Pew Research Center. The “Mainstream Media” source on Media Cloud was also used as a frame of reference for the general media as it comprised the top 22 sources based on “Google Ad Planner’s measure of unique monthly users”. All six of the selected sources were contained within the “Mainstream Media” source.
The protest paradigm attempts to explain the interactions between news media and protests as a “set of news coverage patterns that typifies mainstream media coverage. This coverage generally disparages protestors and hinders their role as vital actors on the political stage” (McLeod, 2007, p. 185). Considering this, I created three different search operations “positive”, “neutral”, and “negative”.
Due to Media Cloud utilizing boolean search operators for its explorer tool, I was able to search with a relatively high level of granularity. The relative slant of an article was determined through the use of the AND and NOT functions. The entire group of articles related to the portland protests was found through the “catch-all” search:
{portland AND (protest* OR riot*) NOT “st louis” NOT “Maine”}
This returned all results that mentioned portland as well as either protest* or riot*. The * meant that protest* would return results for “protested”, “protestors”, “protests”, etc. The NOT “st louis” and “Maine” were included due to cities of the same name returning results due to protest-related events.
( I encourage interested readers to look through my entire thesis here for complete data, explanations, and literature review)
The “Positive” and “Neutral” frames encompass the Protest Paradigm as it has been understood, with the “Neutral” category encompassing articles that mention riot* as the distinction between a protest and a riot is usually one of lawlessness and/or violence. The “Neutral” categorization is still a form of bias -the protest paradigm- but one that is within the bounds of editorial norms. The “Negative” frame references the mention of antifa*, understood to be the most negative portrayal of protestors and an association with protests supported by almost no evidence. This claim originates from an antisemitic Q-anon conspiracy theory that Antifa and BLM are domestic terrorist organizations funded by George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist who is a common target of conspiracy theorists. The “violent far-left” narrative has been one that the far-right has been pushing since at least 2016, but with little mainstream success until now.
Assuming that the news production cycle is fairly standardized and that similar editorial standards are enforced throughout the industry, we would expect fairly similar coverage of the same topic. However, when there is a significant and consistent difference across outlets based on their ideological position, we can assume that partisan media bias is occurring. Therefore, when considering partisan media bias, it is important to recognize that bias is relative to who is reporting the news, what is being reported on, and when the reporting is taking place as new information can come to light over time.
Most relevant to the riots on January 6th is the distribution of the “neutral” and “negative” frames. Of the 6 outlets I focused on, I found that conservative news outlets were responsible for over 77% of articles mentioning Antifa involvement from 6/28/20 to 8/3/20. Conservative outlets also produced over 75% of the articles that framed the protests as a riot.
Media Cloud also has a Top Words tool that enables the creation of ordered word clouds based on a sample of the stories. Instead of indicating whether each passage or article was positive or negative, I instead looked at the general word use and frequency according to ideological slant. Frequent use over time implies the dominance of that narrative frame, and the differences between the left and right are obvious.
It is important to note that differences are more pronounced for words ranked higher up in the list. While “riots’’ ranks 21st in the left-wing media, it is third in the right-wing media. This 18 rank difference translates into a count of 87 for the left and 378 for the right. The word “moms” on the other hand, has a similar rank difference of 19, but has a count of 50 and 40 respectively.
Distinct differences in ranking and/or count can indicate partisan media bias and should be analyzed accordingly. The determination of whether a word qualifies as “positive” or “negative” requires an intimate understanding of how the word is used both historically and in the context of the media piece. For example, I coded the words “violent” and “violence” as negative in this study as they have been used in the past to delegitimize protests through the protest paradigm. However, this is not to say that the use of the word “violent” should always be considered a negative. The use of the word in the context of “systemic violence against protestors” means something very different from “antifa violence continues.” The nuances of language make it difficult to determine clear cut lines for coding different words as always positive or negative, but their usage in the journalistic context is driven by clear patterns and standards. While it may be difficult to determine a metric for measuring the degree to which a network exhibits bias as a whole, ideological network bias in a partisan protest paradigm can be seen through a comparison of the language used within the context of the topic.
In order to restore faith in news media, journalists, editors, and owners must take it upon themselves to improve. Instead of offering oppositional messaging, outlets should work to offer complete thematic coverage of issues. While this is a higher standard than the current norm of episodic reporting, it is what has to be done. Take for example protest coverage. While it may be easy to disparage the tea party as a “left-wing” news outlet, it does little to provide greater context nor does it do anything to inspire trust in reporting for conservative viewers. The answer to Fox News and its partisan media bias is not more biased reporting from the opposite side, but rather adherence to higher standards of reporting. Partisan media bias has resulted in partisan news realities, and the worst is yet to come.
While a difference of opinion is healthy and vital for a Democracy, not all topics or issues need to be situated along a “Right-Left” binary. The right to protest is an American one, the fight for universal healthcare is also non-partisan, and the environment is lived in by everyone, not just those in your political party. Stopping a global pandemic is a matter of public health, not patriotism. Thematic framing must be done sooner rather than later, as current developments in politics indicate that not only is partisan media consumption is on the rise but so is the continued breakdown of trust in institutions like the media and science on the right. In 2020, everything from the existence of the pandemic, to the details of the pandemic bills, to wearing a mask, and even the supposed legality of public health mandates has become political. Conspiracy theories like Qanon continue to rise in popularity on Twitter and Facebook with a Qanon Republican candidate even winning a House seat in Georgia this past election. As more Americans lose trust in the media and turn to alternative sources of news or just stop paying attention to the news altogether, these partisan divisions can only grow wider.
One final thing to consider is the monetary barrier to the news. While many news sites are supported by ads, many others are supported through subscriptions. Of the 6 news media sites, I looked at for this study, only the New York Times had a subscription block to their content. All other sites had either free access supported by ads or an ad-free subscription available for purchase. This is an important distinction as one of the important features of television news was its accessibility. With the proliferation of online news and alternative media like blogs and social networking sites, the lines between types of media are becoming less important and many only turn to sources of information that reinforce what they believe in. Access to quality news reporting needs to be provided for free as well, the BBC is a great example of this.
Partisan media bias is a serious concern, but other framing issues will continue to persist under the current norms of episodic framing. Universal healthcare is still generally lampooned by the mainstream media and the political elite as costly and choice removing, despite popular approval among the general population and research showing its cost-saving benefits. Note that approval for single-payer varied among partisans, with only 34% of Republicans supporting either a single-payer or mixed program as opposed to 88% of Democrats. Despite this partisan gap, popular approval still saw an increase from 59% to 63% overall from 2019 to 2020. Even among Republicans, there was a 4% increase in approval for either a single-payer or mixed program.
In an ideal and healthy news media environment, issues need to be framed thematically. Instead of presenting universal healthcare as a loss of choice in healthcare options, or a loss to insurance companies, it should be instead situated within the complex sociopolitical climate that it resides in. Instead of framing protesters in a negative fashion depending on whether or not they are on “our side”, all protests should be framed within the context of what they are protesting against. No issue should be simplified to a false left-right dichotomy, and nothing should be beyond scrutiny.
Non-linked References
McLeod, D. M. (2007). News Coverage and Social Protest: How the Media’s Protect Paradigm Exacerbates Social Conflict Symposium. Journal of Dispute Resolution, 2007(1), 185–194.
Key Words
Partisan Media Bias, Framing Theory, Protest Paradigm, Episodic Framing, Thematic Framing, Media Cloud
