Media Matters, Now and Later: Cynicism Not Enough to Overcome Slanted News

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

Cynicism often prevails as a weapon against ignorance, but even that may not be enough to undo the effects of Fox News.  The power of Fox’s pen, or Glenn Beck's and Sean Hannity's voices, may simply have a delayed effect over that particular sword, at least according to the findings of a European study.

Michael Bruter of the London School of Economics and Political Science did a study over two years where he sent out intentionally biased news, some very pro Europe, some very opposed to European camaraderie, out to 1,200 citizens from a range of six European countries.  Europeans, as it turns out, claim an even greater suspicion of media bias than Americans generally do.  Once Bruter ceased sending the newsletters out and asked people to fill out a survey measuring their attitudes toward their European identities, the same kind of survey he sent out before the newsletters, he recorded no significant change.  Conscious of the bias presented to them, people appeared ready to combat it.

Bruter sent out the same kind of survey to those people six months after he stopped sending the newsletters, though, and he recorded a marked increase in susceptibility to the media bias they endured.  Months after people had quit guarding themselves against the allotted media bias they knew was coming, the subversive effects of it took hold, keying people in on news and images that supported the slant they had been subjected to earlier now coming from different sources.  Cynical news gathering, it seems, only briefly impedes the inevitable effect that frequently biased news creates.

Really, the study just supports what everyone already suspected--Fox News effectively alters its viewers into a right-wing mindset.  Another study published two years ago by Harvard and MIT also found that the availability of Fox News increased Republican presence and voting in an area, putting more Republicans in the Senate and getting more of their votes out for the presidential election.  Bias does matter, whether it's explicit or not, and whether it's effects are immediately noticeable or subversive over the long term.

Claiming to be too intelligent for biased reporting to work is simply no longer a valid argument.  Fox News, if it truly wants to consider itself a member of the press, has a responsibility to rein in its bias and push for journalistic integrity.  That would, at least, be the reasonable way to proceed for the sake of a better-educated United States.  Reason, unfortunately, does not appear to always be enough to overcome a media juggernaut.

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BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

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