BLOG CABIN --- Four Information Biases (That matter)...

In News: The Politics of Illusion, W. Lance Bennet identifies four information biases inherent in the news. They are: personalization, dramatization, fragmentation, and the authority-disorder bias.

Personalization examines the media's tendency to "downplay the big social, economic, or political picture in favor of human trials, tragedies, and triumphs..."

A good example of this type of bias can be seen in this story about Tulane students returning to their school after Hurricane Katrina. The story doesn't mention government actions or dollars committed to the clean-up; however this is not what appalled me after a closer inspection of the Web site of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. On the right, there lists the most e-mailed (ostensibly the most popular) stories from the day. Among those (excluding the sports stories--hell, I'd be emailing the heck out of what Pujols did the other night too) the second highest rated story is about diet do's and don't's during pregnancy, a story about an apparent plagiarism, and a mention of the Supreme Court decision to deny an abortion (personalization of the case and story).

Dramatization can be tough to analyze since journalism schools require students to learn to write stories and tell stories in their articles. It is the accepted form of communicating news. This BBC editorial--which ironically starts out criticizing reporters--is actually broken down into "chapters" about the Iraq war and referrendum situation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4349248.stm

Fragmentation shows that over time, stories aren't interrelated enough to show the big picture. Because of this, finding meaning in lone stories is near impossible. Almost as impossible as finding a link to support this.

The Authority-Disorder Bias is perhaps the most obvious bias in our news media to see. Because official sources are quoted and followed for stories, their arrival at places of "disorder" is treated "objectively" as authority saving the day.

Look at this link. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/national/19flood.html.

Later gator.