How Fox News, MSNBC and others present the news.
To the Editor:
An autobiography gives an intimate account of a life, but to get the larger picture, you also need the biography.
The same goes for news. Relying on one source, or even on several sources with the same bias, will leave you with only part of the story.
That's why the much maligned right-wing media is just as important as the so-called mainstream press. Fox News and others on the right certainly have a deeply embedded conservative bias, but the liberal bias on the other side is just as pervasive. Taken together, they roughly fill each other's omissions.
Fox, for example, spent a good part of the past year digging into the Benghazi attack and I.R.S. tax-exempt status stories and talking hopefully about smoking guns, while the mainstream press was determined to take the Obama administration's word for it that it did nothing wrong in either case.
More recently, when the president's pronouncement about keeping your health insurance proved false, it was reported as a lie by the right and as a simple misstatement by the left.
And when the Obamacare website failed so miserably that not even the mainstream press could cover for it, the networks were obliged to sound like Fox for a while, although noticeably lacking was the appetite for pursuit that characterizes their coverage of Republicans.
Fairness in journalism requires not that every story or point of view receive equal weight but that every valid position receive equal respect. Thus the pro-life position should be treated with the same validity as pro-choice; small-government conservatives with the same respect as tax-and-spend liberals; Republicans as more compassionate than they sound and Democrats as less omniscient than they think.
But since journalists and news organizations are partisan at heart, one must sift through the best reporting and punditry from each side of the journalistic divide and take all the biases and agendas into account to arrive at an informed understanding of any story.
MARK R. GODBURN
North Canaan, Conn., Dec. 2, 2013
The writer is an antiquarian bookseller.
Readers React
In an ideal world, graced by Enlightenment ideals, Mr. Godburn's recommendation that citizens sift through biases of diverse news media outlets to form a complete perspective would be warmly endorsed. However, in this far-from-ideal world, individuals live in media echo chambers, selecting out viewpoints that agree with their own and sometimes avoiding conflicting ones.
Research finds that conservatives gravitate to Fox News and liberals to MSNBC — as well as to like-minded websites. A Pew Research Center study reported that from August to October of 2012, just 6 percent of Fox News's election stories about President Obama were positive, while only 3 percent of MSNBC stories about the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney were positive.
Exposure to biased media strengthens partisan biases, exacerbating political polarization rather than producing the more informed understanding that Mr. Godburn desires.
RICHARD M. PERLOFF
Cleveland, Dec. 4, 2013
The writer is a professor of communication at Cleveland State University.
I read The New York Times every morning. I also watch more MSNBC than I like to admit. Occasionally, for entertainment, I'll wander to Fox for a Bill O'Reilly moment or two.
Mr. Godburn's thesis is an example of false equivalence. The Times is real journalism. But even The Times sometimes stretches too far in the service of "journalistic objectivity." When one perspective is true and the other is propaganda, they should not be presented as equally valid.
As to MSNBC and Fox: The MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, for example, is surely dramatic. But I have never encountered an instance in which she was fundamentally dishonest. On the other hand, Fox is frequently and outrageously untethered from the truth, and its talking heads are attack dogs. Anyone consuming equal doses of this "news" will have intellectual indigestion.
If you bend over too far in the effort to be balanced, you'll fall flat on your face.
STEVE NELSON
New York, Dec. 4, 2013
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