Many people believe that the news is biased in favor of one point of view. During the 1996 presidential campaign, Bob Dole often

Many people believe that the news is biased in favor of one point of view. During the 1996 presidential campaign, Bob Dole often charged that the press was against him. "Annoy the Media-Elect Dole" became one of his favorite lines. The charge that the media have a liberal bias has become a familiar one in American politics, and there is some limited evidence to support it. A lengthy study by the Los Angeles Times in the mid-1980s found that reporters were twice as likely to call themselves liberal as the general public. A 1992 survey of 1,400 journalists found that 44 percent identified themselves as Democrats, compared to just 16 percent who said they were Republicans.
    However, there is little reason to believe that journalists’ personal attitudes sway their reporting of the news. The vast majority of social science studies have found that reporting is not systematically biased toward a particular ideology or party. Most stories are presented in a "point/counterpoint" format in which two opposing points of view (such as liberal versus conservative) are presented, and the audience is left to draw its own conclusions. A number of factors explain why the news is typically characterized by such political neutrality. Most reporters strongly believe in journalistic objectivity, and those who practice it best are usually rewarded by their editors. In addition, media outlets have a direct financial stake in attracting viewers and subscribers and do not want to lose their audience by appearing biased—especially when multiple versions of the same story are readily available. It seems paradoxical to say the competition produces uniformity, but this often happens in the news business.
    To conclude that the news contains little explicit partisan or ideological bias is not to argue that it does not distort reality in its coverage. Ideally, the news should mirror reality; in practice there are far too many possible stories for this to be the case. Journalists must choose which stories to cover and to what degree. The overriding bias is toward stories that will draw the largest audience. Surveys show that people are most fascinated by stories with conflict, violence, disaster, or scandal. Good news is unexciting; bad news has the drama that brings in big audiences.
    Television is particularly biased toward stories that generate good pictures. Seeing a talking head (a shot of a person’s face talking directly to the camera) is boring; viewers will switch channels in search of more interesting visual stimulation. For example, during an unusually contentious and lengthy interview of George Bush by Dan Rather concerning the Iran-Contra scandal, CBS’s ratings actually went down as people tired of watching two talking heads argue for an extended period of time. A shot of ambassadors squaring off in a fistfight at the United Nations, on the other hand, will increase the ratings. Such a scene was shown three times in one day on CBS. Not once, though, was the cause of the fight discussed. Network practices like these have led observers such as Lance Bennett to write that "the public is exposed to a world driven into chaos by seemingly arbitrary and mysterious forces."