Bias

The core notion of bias is a force drawing a process off course

Table of Contents

  1. Abstract
  2. Outline
  3. Person Bias
    1. A Case of Cognitive Bias: the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate
    2. A Probable Case of Ideological Bias: Cannon’s Appointment of a Special Master
    3. An Instance of Disproven Bias
  4. Statistical Bias
    1. First Example: Sampling Bias
    2. Second Example: Immortal Time Bias
  5. Core Notion of Bias
  6. Media Bias Rating Sites
    1. AllSides
    2. Ad Fontes Media
    3. Media Bias / Fact Check
    4. The Factual
  7. Media Bias
    1. Is Media Bias a Bad Thing?
    2. Bias in Editorials
    3. Bias in the Amount of News Coverage
    4. Bias in News Stories
      1. Omitting Pertinent Facts
      2. Misleading Citations of Expert Sources
      3. Biased Context
      4. False Balance
      5. Problems with Tone
      6. Reporters’ Liberal Views
      7. News Reports of Bias
  8. Bias as Ad Hominem
  9. Addenda
    1. Logic, Evidence, and Journalistic Standards
    2. Studies of Bias
    3. Problems with Tone as Evidence of Bias
    4. Other Media Sites
    5. Email Exchange with Allsides
    6. Email Exchange with Media Bias / Fact Check
    7. More on Cannon’s Ruling
    8. Tucker Carlson Jumping to Conclusions
    9. Kobach’s Biased ‘Proof’ of Illegal Voting
    10. More Examples of Disproven Bias
      1. Crossfire Hurricane
      2. Georgia Investigation of Trump’s Interference in Election
    11. Bias of Lawn Bowls
    12. Cognitive Bias
    13. Implicit Bias
    14. Dictionary Definitions
      1. Bias (noun)
      2. Bias (verb)
      3. Biased (adjective)
      4. Prejudice
      5. Objective
      6. One-sided
      7. Impartial
      8. Partial
      9. Synonym Discussion for Predilection from Merriam-Webster Unabridged
    15. Is the news media politically biased: Quick Take

Abstract

  • The core notion of bias is a force drawing a process off course. The notion underlies prejudicial bias, cognitive bias, statistical bias, and even the bias of a lawn bowl.
  • A key distinction is between bias and an instance of bias, between a person’s bias and a biased investigation, for example.
  • Media Bias:
    • Is media bias a bad thing?
      • Is media bias merely a news outlet’s point of view?
      • Or are news outlets biased in the same way a biased criminal investigation is biased?
    • Bias in editorials:
      • An editorial is not biased merely because it expresses an editorial viewpoint. But it may be biased for other reasons.
    • Bias in the amount of coverage devoted to a news story:
      • An editor’s decision about how much coverage a story gets is a value judgment about newsworthiness. Editors at different news outlets make different judgments.
    • Bias in new stories:
      • A news story is biased only if it violates the principles of logic, rules of evidence, or journalistic standards because of a reporter’s or editor’s bias.
  • Finally, “bias” and “biased” are sometimes used as a way of dismissing an opponent’s argument, proposal, or claim without addressing its substance.

Outline

Person Bias

Here’s what bias looks like:

  • A person’s bias biases a process of reasoning or judgment, resulting in a biased conclusion.
    • For example, a judge’s conservative or liberal bias may bias a course of legal reasoning, resulting in a biased judicial opinion.
  • The components of an instance of person bias are thus
    • a person’s bias
    • biased reasoning
    • biased product of the reasoning.

Here’s how the diagram matches up with Merriam-Webster’s definition of “bias” in the unabridged edition:

  • Biased Reasoning
    • A course of reasoning or judgment is biased if it has errors that tend to favor one outcome over others because of a person’s bias.  The errors are thus systematic rather than random. 
    • Examples of processes of reasoning:
      • Criminal investigations, congressional investigations, appellate opinions, reports by government agencies (e.g. CBO), news stories, the judging of competitions, audits, clinical trials, forensic analyses, scientific experiments, research polls, fact-checks, autopsies, arbitrations, attorneys’ closing arguments, editorials, op-eds, columns, debater’s speeches, mathematical proofs, legal motions, criminal and civil trials.
  • Two Senses of Person “Bias”: Inclining and Inhibiting
    • MW’s sense 1a(1) defines two senses of person bias:
      • an inclination of temperament or outlook
      • such prepossession with some object or point of view that the mind does not respond impartially to anything related to this object or point of view
    • The first sense is used when people say things such as:
      • Everyone has biases.
      • People can overcome their biases
      • Bias isn’t necessarily a bad thing
    • In the second sense “bias” inhibits impartial reasoning rather than merely inclining.
  • Two Kinds of Person Bias
    • Bias skews reasoning in a fixed direction.
    • But the direction of some biases is inherent in the bias itself. For other biases, the direction depends on external factors.
    • Inherent Bias:
      • Conservative bias skews reasoning only in a conservative direction. Liberal bias skews reasoning only in a liberal direction.
    • Externally-directed Bias:
      • The direction of the skew of cognitive biases depends on external facts.
        • The direction of confirmation bias, for example, depends on a person’s deeply-held beliefs.
          • Confirmation bias is the tendency to recognize, accept, and remember information supporting an existing belief while ignoring, rejecting and forgetting information that casts doubt on it.
        • The direction of groupthink depends on the beliefs of a group.
          • Groupthink is the tendency to adopt beliefs of a group you identify with
        • The direction of post hoc ergo propter hoc depends on the sequence of events.
          • Post hoc ergo propter hoc bias is the tendency to believe that an event is caused by what preceded it.

View Cognitive Bias

A Case of Cognitive Bias: the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate
  • National Intelligence Estimate 2002
    • We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these Key Judgments.)
  • Report On the U.S. Intelligence Community’s  Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, by the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence, 2004
    • Conclusion 1. Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. 
    • Conclusion 3. The Intelligence Community (IC) suffered from a collective presumption that Iraq had an active and growing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. This “groupthink” dynamic led Intelligence Community analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs.
  • The analysts, collectors, and managers were biased toward thinking that Iraq had WMDs
  • The cause of the bias was the “collective presumption that Iraq had an active and growing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program,” which led “analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs.”
  • In a word, the members of the IC succumbed to confirmation bias based on their pre-analytic certainty that Iraq had WMD’s
A Probable Case of Ideological Bias: Cannon’s Appointment of a Special Master
  • It’s likely that Judge Cannon’s ruling appointing a special master in the Trump documents case was biased.
  • The argument:
    • The ruling is riddled with legal errors
    • The legal errors favor Trump’s side of the lawsuit.
    • The only plausible explanation of the one-sided errors is that Judge Cannon had a bias toward Trump’s side.
    • Moreover, Cannon has a conservative bent:
      • She was appointed to the federal bench by Trump
      • She’s been a member of the conservative Federalist Society since 2005.
    • Therefore it’s likely her ruling was biased.
  • Appeals Court Scraps Special Master Review in Trump Documents Case NYT
    • In a unanimous but unsigned 21-page ruling, a three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta shut down a lawsuit brought by Mr. Trump that has, for nearly three months, slowed the inquiry into whether he illegally kept national security records at his Mar-a-Lago residence and obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them.
    • The appeals court was sharply critical of the decision in September by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee who sits in the Southern District of Florida, to intervene in the case. The court said Judge Cannon never had legitimate jurisdiction to order the review or bar investigators from using the files, and that there was no justification for treating Mr. Trump differently from any other target of a search warrant.
    • “The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote on Thursday. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”
  • Supreme Court
    • Supreme Court Rejects Trump Request to Intervene in Documents Case NYT

View More on Cannon’s Ruling

View Another Case of Ideological Bias

An Instance of Disproven Bias
  • Report Criticizes Comey but Finds No Bias in F.B.I. Decision on Clinton
    • “The Justice Department’s inspector general on Thursday painted a harsh portrait of the F.B.I. during the 2016 presidential election
    • The 500-page report criticized Mr. Comey for breaking with longstanding policy and publicly discussing an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server in handling classified information.
    • Nevertheless, the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, did not challenge the conclusion that Mrs. Clinton should not be prosecuted.
    • “We found no evidence that the conclusions by department prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations,” he wrote. “Rather, we concluded that they were based on the prosecutor’s assessment of facts, the law and past department practice.”
    • Mr. Horowitz repeatedly said he found no evidence that the F.B.I. rigged the outcome. “Our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific investigative decisions we reviewed,” the report said.”
  • Horowitz found that the investigation of Hilary Clinton was not biased by the investigators’ political views.

View More Examples of Disproven Bias

Statistical Bias

  • Statistical bias is a flaw in the methodology of a study that skews the data or its analysis toward one outcome.
  • Here’s what it looks like:
First Example: Sampling Bias
  • In compiling a random sample for estimating the percentage of the population with property P, the probability of selecting an entity with property P should depend only on the percentage of the population that have property P and the laws of probability.
  • Sampling Bias is a flaw in the procedure for data selection that skews that probability in a certain direction.
  • The classic example of sampling bias is the Literary Digest presidential poll of 1936 that predicted Alf Landon would beat FDR in a landslide.
  • The Literary Digest magazine conducted a poll to determine the likely winner of the 1936 presidential election between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Alf Landon, Governor of Kansas.  Questionnaires were mailed to 10 million people, the names obtained from telephone books, automobile registrations, and the magazine’s readership.  2.4 million people responded. (The number of respondents in a typical national election poll is in the thousands.)   43% said they planned to vote for Roosevelt.  The magazine predicted a landslide for Landon.
  • Roosevelt won all but two states.
  • The poll was biased against those without phones and automobiles, mostly Democrats. 
  • It is also thought that anti-Roosevelt sentiment was stronger among Landon supporters, making it more likely they would take the time to mail back a response
  • The bias was the selection of the sample from lists of names from telephone books, automobile registrations, and the magazine’s readership, resulting in a sample that did not include voters without phones and automobiles, mostly Democrats.
  • The bias, the selection procedure, thus biased the sample, making the resulting estimate and prediction biased.
Second Example: Immortal Time Bias
  • A study was conducted to see if actors (and actresses) nominated for an Oscar live longer than actors who are never nominated.
  • All Oscar nominees were identified, 762 of them.  For each actor, nominated for their role in a given film, another actor in the same film, of the same gender and age, was identified. The nominees lived an average 4 years longer, a statistically significant result.
  • The flaw in the study is that the Oscar nominees are “immortal” from birth to nomination.
  • It would be silly to test the hypothesis that:
    • People who have reached the age of 70 live longer, on average, than other people.
  • It would silly because people who’ve reached 70, unlike others, are guaranteed to have lived 70 years, that is, compared to others they are effectively “immortal” from birth to age 70.
  • For the same reason, it would be silly to test the hypothesis that
    • People who have reached the age of 35 live longer, on average, than other people.
  • If the average age of an actor first receiving an Oscar nomination is 35, say, we have the same exactly the same problem. Oscar nominees are “immortal” from birth to their nomination.

Core Notion of Bias

Person Bias, Statistical Bias, and the Bias of Lawn Bowls share the same underlying idea, that of a force drawing a process off course.

  • A person’s bias produces errors in a course reasoning that favor an outcome.
  • A flaw in the methodology of a study skews the data or its analysis.
  • The flattened side of a lawn bowl makes its path curve

Media Bias Rating Sites

AllSides

Ad Fontes Media

  • adfontesmedia.com/
  • Founded 2018
  • Rates both bias and reliability
  • Evaluates news, opinion, and analysis 
  • Ratings Scales
    • Political Bias -42 to +42 (left to right)
    • Reliability 0-64 (low to high)
  • Media Bias Charts
  • Examples
    • adfontesmedia.com/new-york-times-bias-and-reliability/
      • Reliability: 42.68
      • Bias: -7.74
      • Example of an article rating
        • A State Scientist Questioned Florida’s Virus Data. Now Her Home’s Been Raided. NYT
          • “Two months in, Ms. Jones was sidelined and then fired for insubordination, a conflict that she said came to a head when she refused to manipulate data to show that rural counties were ready to reopen from coronavirus lockdowns.”
        • Published Dec. 11, 2020, Updated April 9, 2021
        • Reliability 20.44
        • Bias -17.33
    • adfontesmedia.com/fox-news-bias-and-reliability/
      • Reliability: 36.10
      • Bias: 13.13
      • Example of an article rating
        • Arizona Republic editor recalls another time Biden mishandled classified documents: ‘Someone screwed up’  FoxNews
        • Reliability 40
        • Bias 17.33
  • Methodology
    • adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sources/
    • Articles are rated by three people representing left, center, right for reliability and bias.  The scores are averaged.
    • In determining the bias of an articles, Ad Fontes considers its language, its political position, and how it compares to other reporting or analysis from other sources on the same topic.

Media Bias / Fact Check

  • mediabiasfactcheck.com/
  • Founded in 2015
  • Rates both bias and reliability
  • Evaluates news, opinion, and analysis 
  • Rating Scales
    • Factual Reporting: Very High, High, Mostly Factual, Mixed, Low, Very Low
    • Bias: Extreme, Left, Left-Center, Least Biased, Right-Center, Right, Extreme
    • Credibility Rating: 0-10, based on Factual Reporting (weighed the most), Bias, and Traffic/Longevity (weighed the least). 
  • Charts
    • None
  • Examples
    • mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/
      • Overall, we rate the New York Times Left-Center biased based on wording and story selection that moderately favors the left. They are considered one of the most reliable sources for news information due to proper sourcing and well-respected journalists/editors. The failed fact checks were on Op-Eds and not straight news reporting.
    • mediabiasfactcheck.com/fox-news-bias/
      • Overall, we rate Fox News right biased based on editorial positions that align with the right and Questionable due to the promotion of propaganda, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, the use of poor sources, and numerous false claims and failed fact checks. Straight news reporting from beat reporters is generally fact-based and accurate, which earns them a Mixed factual rating.
  • Methodology
    • The bias rating is based on the following, each scored from 0 to 10 (no bias to max bias)
      • Biased Wording/Headlines– Does the source use loaded words to convey emotion to sway the reader. Do headlines match the story?
      • Factual/Sourcing– Does the source report factually and back up claims with well-sourced evidence.
      • Story Choices: Does the source report news from both sides, or do they only publish one side.
      • Political Affiliation: How strongly does the source endorse a particular political ideology? Who do the owners support or donate to?
    • Left-Right editorial bias is determined by a news source’s positions on
      • General Philosophy, Abortion, Economic Policy, Education Policy, Environmental Policy, Gay Rights, Gun Rights, Health Care, Immigration, Military, Personal Responsibility, Regulation, Social Values, Taxes, Voter ID, Worker’s/Business Rights
    • Credibility Ratings are from 0 to 10 (low to high), where
  • Quote from an email from Dave Van Zandt, Founder/Editor in Chief
    • “Yes, I would say the left-right rating is more of a political perspective. It is not a bad thing at all. This is why we have the Factual Reporting and Credibility rating. Those are more important as they look at how factual the sources are.”
    • View Email Exchange with Media Bias / Fact Check

The Factual

  • thefactual.com
  • Founded 2019, Acquired by Yahoo 2022
  • The Factual uses a computer program to evaluate articles
  • An article gets a grade between 1-100% based on four metrics:
    • Site quality: Does this site have a history of producing well-sourced, highly-informative articles?
    • Author’s expertise: Does the author have a track record of writing well-researched, informative articles on the topic? Does the author focus on the topic and hence may have some expertise?
    • Quality and diversity of sources: How many unique sources and direct quotes were used in the article? What is the site rating of those sources?
    • Article’s tone: Was the article written in a neutral, non-opinionated tone or was it opinionated with emotional language?
  • The percentage grade represents the probability the article is informative.
  • See thefactual.com/how-it-works

Examples, using isthiscredible.com/

Media Bias

Is Media Bias a Bad Thing?

  • Media bias rating sites rate news outlets on a left-right political spectrum.
    • “A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different political positions in relation to one another”
    • There are similar rating systems in other areas, e.g. the Martin-Quinn scores for Supreme Court justices.
      • “Martin-Quinn scores or M-Q scores are dynamic metrics used to gauge the ideology of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice based on their voting record.”
  • Do media bias ratings merely reflect an outlet’s viewpoint on a left-right political spectrum?
    • “While bias is often characterized as a bad thing (something that inhibits impartial judgment), we don’t necessarily share that view.”
    • “I would say the left-right rating is more of a political perspective. It is not a bad thing at all.”
  • Or do the ratings indicate that news outlets are biased in the same way a biased criminal investigation is biased?

Bias in Editorials

  • An editorial is biased only if it violates the principles of logic, rules of evidence, or journalistic standards due to the bias of members of the editorial board.
  • An editorial is not biased merely because it expresses an editorial viewpoint.
    • An investigation, an appellate opinion, or a medical examiner’s ruling on cause and manner of death is biased only if its reasoning is flawed.  Likewise for editorials. An editorial whose reasoning is sound thus isn’t biased. 
    • Compare
      • Argument from a NYT editorial against capital punishment
        • Fallible governments should refrain from inflicting irreversible punishments
        • Capital punishment is irreversible.
        • Governments are fallible.
        • Therefore, governments should refrain from inflicting capital punishment.
      • A Tucker Carlson argument
        • Mike Pence sent his lawyer to look for classified documents in Pence’s possession
        • Therefore, it’s likely Pence was asked to do so by federal prosecutors who were trying to build a case against Donald Trump.
    • The NYT editorial is not biased, since its argument is deductively valid and its premises plausible.
    • Carlson’s argument, which jumps to its conclusion, is biased if the leap is due Carlson’s bias.
  • Additionally, an editorial is not biased merely because it’s one-sided.
  • A prosecutor’s closing argument is certainly one-sided, presenting only the case against the defendant. But we wouldn’t call it biased, as we would, say, a one-sided investigation.  An editorial is like a prosecutor’s closing argument.

Bias in the Amount of News Coverage

  • Newspapers differ in the amount of coverage they devote to events in the news.  One may have a brief story on the back page.  Another may spend a week on the same event with follow-ups such as updates, analyses, retrospectives, expert interviews, timelines, maps, historical analogs, photos, videos, vignettes, and opinion pieces.
  • The question: is the amount of coverage biased by the paper’s editorial point of view?
  • Here are two arguments for the affirmative.  The first, not so good.  The second, much better.
  • First Argument
    • The argument:
      • The amount of coverage a news outlet devotes to a given story is correlated with the outlet’s editorial viewpoint.
      • Therefore a news outlet’s editorial viewpoint biases the amount of coverage it gives to certain news events.
    • The argument fails because there’s an alternative explanation of the correlation.
      • A newspaper’s decision on what to report, and how much coverage to provide, is a value judgment about newsworthiness. It makes sense, therefore, that a paper that takes a stand against police injustice, for example, regards news stories about instances of such injustice as especially newsworthy and deserving greater coverage.
  • Second Argument
    • The second argument is suggested by a study that found that Democratic-leaning newspapers provided more coverage of scandals involving Republican politicians than scandals involving Democratic politicians; while Republican-leaning newspapers did the opposite.
    • The underlying argument establishes bias where a paper provides more coverage to one of two equally newsworthy events.
      • Two events are equally newsworthy, in this case Democratic and Republican scandals.
      • A newspaper gives more coverage to one than the other.
      • The difference in coverage aligns with the paper’s editorial point of view 
      • Therefore, the difference in coverage is the result of bias.

Bias in News Stories

  • The typical news story reports not only the new news but also provides context.
  • For example, the gist of a NYT article on inflation was:
    • The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index increased 5 percent in the year through December, down from the 5.5 percent increase in November. Excluding food and energy, the PCE increased 4.4 percent in the year through December, less than the 4.7 percent in November.
  • Rather than stopping there, the article goes on to discuss inflation, the Fed’s increase in interest rates, expectations of the Fed and Wall Street for the economy, and a quote by the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
  • This provides plenty of room for bias.
  • Some ways news stories can be misleading because of bias:
    • Omitting Pertinent Facts
    • Misleading Citations of Expert Sources
    • Biased Context
    • False Balance
Omitting Pertinent Facts
  • A common device for misleading people is cherry-picking the evidence: telling the truth, but not the whole truth.
  • A news story can be biased by omitting pertinent facts,
  • Washington Post Policies and Standards
    • “No story is fair if it omits facts of major importance or significance. Fairness includes completeness.”
Misleading Citations of Expert Sources
  • Media Matters in America is a liberal watchdog group that monitors conservative misinformation. Conversely, the Media Research Center is a conservative watchdog group that monitors liberal misinformation.
  • Notice the difference in how these Fox and Times articles cite these groups.
  • Media darling Rebekah Jones’ claims of Florida COVID data manipulation ‘did not occur,’ IG says
  • Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Controversies Are Piling Up. Republicans Are Quiet.
    • nytimes.com/2021/01/29/us/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-republicans.html
    • “The liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America reported last summer on the video in which Ms. Greene questioned a basic fact about the deadliest terrorist attack in history, falsely called Mr. Obama, who is Christian, a Muslim, and hinted that the Clinton family had Mr. Kennedy killed.”
Biased Context
  • News stories typically provide context for the news they report. But the context can be deliberately misleading.   An example:
    • Debt ceiling increase sends Dems into full apocalypse mode: ‘Chaos,’ ‘recession,’ ‘global financial crisis’ FoxNews
      • “The prospect of negotiating a debt ceiling increase with Republicans is prompting warnings of economic ruin and chaos from President Biden’s White House and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate.
      • Democrats for days now have been fixated only on what might happen if there is no agreement to raise the debt ceiling by the summer, and not the far more likely possibility of agreeing to spending cuts at the federal level over the next few months in return for an increase in the government’s borrowing limit.”
    • The second paragraph makes it sound like the Democrats are only concerned about a highly unlikely event rather than a far more likely possibility, like being more concerned about an attack by aliens from outer space than an attack by terrorists
False Balance
Problems with Tone
  • A news story’s tone — how negative or positive it is toward a person or topic — is sometimes taken as evidence of bias.
  • But there are at least three problems with tone as evidence:
    • There are unbiased negative stories about a person, e.g. fact-checks of Trump’s claims.
    • A negative headline may be more objective than a neutral headline
    • Studies of the tone of news stories reach opposite conclusions
  • View Problems with Tone as Evidence of Bias
Reporters’ Liberal Views
  • Do Reporters’ Liberal Views Bias Their Reporting?
  • The Argument:
    • Reporters are more liberal than the population at large and can’t help slanting their reporting.
    • Therefore news stories by liberal reporters tend to be left-biased.
  • Criticisms:
    • Reporters are by and large more liberal than the general population, but people can and do set aside their biases.
    • A recent study provides evidence that reporters’ liberal views don’t affect their reporting.
      • Journalists may be liberal, but this doesn’t affect which candidates they choose to cover.  WaPo
    • The burden of proof is on those who claim liberal reporters produce biased news stories.  A biased news story violates the principles of logic, rules of evidence, or journalistic standards.  So the burden of proof includes proving such violations.
News Reports of Bias
  • ‘New York Times’ stories on trans youth slammed by writers — including some of its own NPR

Bias as Ad Hominem

  • “Bias” and “biased” can be used in an ad hominem attack.
    • “You’re biased”
    • “You have a liberal bias”
    • “The New York Times is biased.”
  • An ad hominem is a remark directed at a person’s character, motives, beliefs, predispositions, biases, or other personal attributes rather than to the substance of their claim, proposal, or argument. It’s a way of dismissing or evading an opponent’s argument, claim, or proposal without addressing its substance.
  • View Ad Hominem

Addenda

Logic, Evidence, and Journalistic Standards

  • Rules of Logic
  • Rules of Evidence
    • Rules of evidence in the law
    • Standards for statistical Inference
    • Standards for mathematical proof
    • Standards of evidence used by the intelligence community
    • Standards for confirmation and refutation of scientific theories

Studies of Bias

  • There is no liberal media bias in which news stories political journalists choose to cover April 2020
    • science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aay9344
    • Is the media biased against conservatives? Although a dominant majority of journalists identify as liberals/Democrats and many Americans and public officials frequently decry supposedly high and increasing levels of media bias, little compelling evidence exists as to (i) the ideological or partisan leanings of the many journalists who fail to answer surveys and/or identify as independents and (ii) whether journalists’ political leanings bleed into the choice of which stories to cover that Americans ultimately consume. Using a unique combination of a large-scale survey of political journalists, data from journalists’ Twitter networks, election returns, a large-scale correspondence experiment, and a conjoint survey experiment, we show definitively that the media exhibits no bias against conservatives (or liberals for that matter) in what news that they choose to cover. This shows that journalists’ individual ideological leanings have unexpectedly little effect on the vitally important, but, up to this point, unexplored, early stage of political news generation.
  • Journalists may be liberal, but this doesn’t affect which candidates they choose to cover.
  • How to measure relative bias in media coverage?  04 October 2019
    • rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2019.01316.x
    • There is no definitive “truth” to measure against in the reporting of news, only different interpretations or presentations of the facts. However, technology today does permit some measurement of writing style, rating text by whether it is written in a favorable or unfavorable way. This is called “sentiment analysis” and it has been used, for example, to select good or bad product reviews or travel reviews, or to count the apparent preferences for one product or another.
    • As news articles can be written to present either a favorable or unfavorable view of an event, we decided to use sentiment analysis to try to judge whether one of the most loudly criticized of news outlets – the New York Times – is offering a biased view in its reporting of stories, especially its stories about Trump.
    • Bias in publishing can take two forms: the selection of stories to show and how such stories are phrased. A site opposing vaccination, for example, may choose to report stories alleging a link between autism and vaccination, and may write those stories with words like “evil” or “danger”. A site in favor of vaccination, meanwhile, might choose to ignore such claims and may describe vaccination using words like “protect” or “safe”.
    • For our research, we sought to separate story selection from writing style by pairing stories from different media in which the same actual event is described. Thus, any perceptual difference is in the presentation of the story rather than the choice of story. Paired stories were also published within the same 24-hour period, alleviating problems that might arise from the choice of time period from which the stories were collected.
    • For each article we calculated the sentiment score, and for each pair of articles we calculated the difference in sentiment scores. To measure sentiment, we used the R package sentimentr, which is designed to quickly calculate text polarity sentiment at the sentence level and optionally aggregate by rows or grouping variable(s). We also experimented with a sentiment package in Python called Vader. The results produced by both packages were similar.
    • Sentiment is evaluated by counting words with a favorable or positive effect, like “happy” and “satisfactory”, as compared with words with an unfavorable or negative effect, like “sad” and “failure”.
    • Our analysis would lead us to conclude that the NYT does not appear biased in its coverage of Trump, or in its reporting of news stories more generally – at least, that is the case when stories are analyzed on the basis of differences in net sentiment scores, and when comparing the NYT’s coverage to that of Reuters.
  • News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days May 18, 2017
    • shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-100-days/
    • Figure 6. Tone of Trump’s Coverage by News Outlet
    • Figure 7. Tone of Trump’s U.S. Coverage by Topic
    • Figure 8. Tone of Trump’s Coverage on Fox News
    • Figure 9. Trump’s “Fitness for Office” Coverage by Outlet
    • Media Tenor’s coding of print and television news stories is conducted by trained full-time employees who visually evaluate the content. Coding of individual actors (in this case, Trump) is done on a comprehensive basis, capturing all mentions of more than five lines (print) or five seconds (TV) of coverage. For each report, coders identify the source(s), topic(s), and tone.
    • Tone is judged from the perspective of the actor. Negative stories include stories where the actor is criticized directly.  An example is a headline story where Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticized Trump when the Labor Department’s April economic report showed that fewer jobs were created than had been predicted.
    • Negative stories also consist of stories where an event, trend, or development reflects unfavorably on the actor. Examples are the stories that appeared under the headlines “President Trump’s approval rating hits a new low”and “GOP withdraws embattled health care bill, handing major setback to Trump, Ryan.
  • What Media Bias? Conservative and Liberal Labeling in Major U.S. Newspapers 2016
    • journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1081180X06297460?journalCode=hija
    • This article tests the hypothesis that major U.S. newspapers disproportionately label conservative politicians. We quantitatively analyze ideological labels of U.S. congresspersons and senators in newspaper articles. We then qualitatively review these articles, seeking to discern if any patterns exist, and if so, why. Disproportionate labeling of conservatives exists but not in a way that constitutes “bias,” as newspapers often label liberals, at times more than they do conservatives. These labeling patterns may be explained by the rise of conservatives who entered Congress in 1994, the political pejorativization of the word liberal, and the increased conservative ideological tenor of the Congress during the past fifteen years. We conclude by discussing possible implications of our findings.
  • Is the media biased toward Clinton or Trump? Here is some actual hard data. 2016
    • washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/09/20/is-the-media-biased-toward-clinton-or-trump-heres-some-actual-hard-data/
    • We compiled a total of 21,981 articles written about the election dating back to July 1, 2015. To be included in our data set, each article had to reference either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in its headline (but not both). The articles came from the websites of eight major media outlets: the New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Slate, Politico, Fox News and the Weekly Standard. We wanted a mixture liberal and conservative outlets, at least according to conventional wisdom.
    • We looked at the number of articles that were published about each candidate over time, which captures their ability to dictate the news cycle. And using the actual text of the articles, we evaluated the tone of the coverage — how positive or negative it was toward each candidate — and how it has shifted throughout the campaign.
    • We did this via a computer algorithm, which is becoming increasingly common as social scientists work with huge data sets of text. There are a variety of approaches to what’s often called sentiment analysis, but our methodology was this: for each article, the algorithm identified every adjective. Then, using a very large word bank, it scored the adjectives on a scale of -1.0 (most negative) to +1.0 (most positive). The computer then averaged those values to generate an overall sentiment score for each article.
    • We found that all of the media outlets that we considered “liberal” treated Clinton more favorably.
    • Trump and the Media: A Text Analysis, Jack Beckwith and Nick Sorscher, 2016
    • public.tableau.com/app/profile/jack.beckwith/viz/SentimentScoresAllArticles/Desktop
  • Newspaper Coverage of Political Scandals, by Riccardo Puglisia and James M. Snyder, The Journal of Politics / Volume 73 / Issue 03 / July 2011, pp 931-950
  • Abstract
    • We study the coverage of U.S. political scandals by U.S. newspapers during the past decade. Using automatic keyword-based searches we collected data on 32 scandals and approximately 200 newspapers. We find that Democratic-leaning newspapers—i.e., those with a higher propensity to endorse Democratic candidates in elections—provide relatively more coverage of scandals involving Republican politicians than scandals involving Democratic politicians, while Republican-leaning newspapers tend to do the opposite. This is true even after controlling for the average partisan leanings of readers.

Problems with Tone as Evidence of Bias

  • Second Problem: A negative headline may be more objective than a neutral headline.
    • 10 ways the media described Trump’s ‘false,’ ‘bogus’ voter fraud ‘lie’ WaPo
      • Fox News: Trump tells Congressional leaders 3-5 million ‘illegals’ cost him popular vote
      • Las Vegas Review-Journal: Trump insists voter fraud cost him popular vote
      • Newsmax: Report: Trump still saying voter fraud robbed him of popular vote
      • New York Times: Trump repeats lie about popular vote in meeting with lawmakers
      • Wall Street Journal: Donald Trump repeats unsupported claim that voter fraud skewed election tally
      • Washington Post: Without evidence, Trump tells lawmakers 3 million to 5 million illegal ballots cost him the popular vote
      • Politico: Trump repeats debunked voter fraud claim at meeting with Hill leaders
      • ABC News: Trump repeats unsubstantiated claim about voter fraud during election
      • CNN: Trump talks replacing Obamacare, reiterates unsubstantiated voter fraud claims
      • USA Today: Trump revives false claim that illegal ballots cost him popular vote
      • Slate: Trump, again, falsely claims he lost the popular vote because of millions of fraudulent votes
      • New York Daily News: President Trump still pushing unconfirmed claims that voter fraud cost him the popular vote
      • Business Insider: Trump repeats debunked claim that voter fraud caused him to lose popular vote to Hillary Clinton
      • New York Post: Donald Trump brings up bogus voter fraud claims — again
      • Associated Press: Trump wrongly blames fraud for loss of popular vote
  • Third Problem: Studies of the tone of news stories reach opposite conclusions.
    • Here are two studies, using computer “sentiment analysis” to measure tone, that reach different conclusions:
      • How to measure relative bias in media coverage?  04 October 2019  Wiley Online Library
        • Our analysis would lead us to conclude that the NYT does not appear biased in its coverage of Trump, or in its reporting of news stories more generally – at least, that is the case when stories are analyzed on the basis of differences in net sentiment scores, and when comparing the NYT’s coverage to that of Reuters.
      • Is the media biased toward Clinton or Trump? Here is some actual hard data.  Washington Post
        • We found that all of the media outlets that we considered “liberal” treated Clinton more favorably.
    • View Studies of Bias for details.

Other Media Sites

  • Reporters Without Borders rsf.org
    • Our goal: to leave no breach of freedom of information unreported. Discover our world press freedom ranking, our latest investigation reports as well as our publications produced every day by our regional offices, in connection with our network of correspondents in 115 countries around the world.
  • Fair fair.org
    • FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information.
  • Media Matters for America mediamatters.org
    • Media Matters for America is a web-based, not-for-profit, 501 (c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.
    • Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation – news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda – every day, in real time.
    • Using the website mediamatters.org as the principal vehicle for disseminating research and information, Media Matters posts rapid-response items as well as longer research and analytic reports documenting conservative misinformation throughout the media. Additionally, Media Matters works daily to notify activists, journalists, pundits, and the general public about instances of misinformation, providing them with the resources to rebut false claims and to take direct action against offending media institutions.
  • Accuracy in Media aim.org
    • Accuracy in Media is on the forefront of the culture wars. Take action now to hold the media – and cultural activists – accountable.
  • Media Research Center mrc.org
    • The mission of The Media Research Center is to document and combat the falsehoods and censorship of the news media, entertainment media and Big Tech in order to defend and preserve America’s founding principles and Judeo-Christian values. 
    • Since 1987, the MRC has worked to expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media. To counter the liberal media’s leftist agenda, the MRC formed seven specific divisions to precisely target egregious bias with comprehensive media analysis and the reporting of facts.

Email Exchange with Allsides

  • My email to allsides.com, March 24, 2022
    • As a philosopher I was surprised at your blanket assertion that everyone is biased.
    • If you mean only that everyone has an outlook or inclination, your claim is true but uninteresting.
    • If you mean that everyone has an outlook or inclination that inhibits impartial judgment, your claim needs evidence.
    • Do you mean to assert the latter claim and, if so, what research supports the claim?
    • Thanks.
  • Response from Julie Mastrine, Director of Marketing and Bias Ratings, March 25, 2022
    • We mean the former claim — everyone has an outlook or inclination. We write at length about our thoughts on bias here. 
    • While bias is often characterized as a bad thing (something that inhibits impartial judgment), we don’t necessarily share that view. While that can certainly be the case, our position as a company is that it’s okay to have a bias, as long as we make bias transparent and get multiple perspectives.
    • Minimizing bias can be a worthy goal for journalists, and AllSides consults with journalists to help them do that. But it’s probably impossible to eliminate bias entirely — and that’s okay. The simple fact that journalists are limited in time, resources, and space means they’ll have to privilege one piece of information, story, or point of view over another sometimes. It’s also okay to have explicitly conservative-biased or liberal-biased media, as long as it is transparent. AllSides exists in part to make those biases transparent.
    • Hope that helps.
  • My follow-up email
    • Julie,
    • Thanks for your kind reply.
    • After reviewing your methodology, I’m inclined to believe:
      • Your methodology (of editorial review, blinded surveys, third party research, and initial Q&D reviews) could be used to rate the left-right leanings of things other than news media, e.g. people (politicians, celebrities), documentaries, and nonfiction books.
      • Your rating system is opinion-based rather than criteria-based. For example if you rated Supreme Court justices you would ask people (editorial reviewers, survey takers) their opinions rather than, for example, rating the justices based on their decisions per predefined criteria.
      • What your rating system measures is the perceived political perspectives of news media rated on a left-right continuum.
    • Am I right?
    • Thanks.
  • Julie’s reply:
    • Yes, that is correct. As far as criteria, yes, it’s largely opinion based, especially for our Blind surveys. But for Editorial Reviews, our panelists are guided by the Types of Media Bias guide that I wrote to help them know what to look for. So we are rating perceived political perspectives, but we do provide some objective criteria to panelists as to what different types of bias look like.
    • Thanks for your questions!
  • My final email:
    • Actually one last thing.  This is a point rather than a question.
    • In discussing dictionary definitions of bias in allsides.com/blog/what-media-bias you remark that:
      • “You may notice that in some dictionaries, a negative touch is added to definitions of bias.”
    • Which got me thinking about the use of especially in definitions, such as:
      • A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment. 
    • I found the answer at merriam-webster.com/help/explanatory-notes/dict-definitions.
      • “The sense divider especially is used to introduce the most common meaning subsumed in the more general preceding definition.”
    • So for the definition “a preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment”:
      • The most common meaning is:
        •  A preference or an inclination that inhibits impartial judgment. 
      • The less common, more general meaning is:
        •  A preference or an inclination

Email Exchange with Media Bias / Fact Check

My Email of Nov 21, 2022

Dear Editor,

I’m a philosopher (Phd Brown) currently working on the concept of bias.

Some instances of bias are certainly bad things, e.g. a judge’s biased ruling in a criminal trial — where the judge’s bias affects his ruling.

Is the same thing true of left-right editorial bias?

Consider your NY Times bias rating of Left-Center.

Does this mean that the opinions of the NYT editorial board members bias their editorials, like the judge’s bias affecting his ruling. That kind of bias would be a bad thing.

Or does your bias rating mean that a certain number of NYT editorial positions are classified as Left by your categorization scheme in mediabiasfactcheck.com/left-vs-right-bias-how-we-rate-the-bias-of-media-sources/. If so, it seems, a bias rating of Left-Center is not by itself a bad thing like the judge’s ruling. Indeed, it seems, the word “bias” in this case means “point of view.”

Thanks,

Jim Lamb

Reply Nov 22, 2022

Hi Jim,

Yes, I would say the left-right rating is more of a political perspective. It is not a bad thing at all. This is why we have the Factual Reporting and Credibility rating. Those are more important as they look at how factual the sources are. There are many left and right sources that are factual, but simply report from one-side. I think it is important for people to know what side they are on so they can look at counter viewpoints. BTW, I love philosophy, especially the areas of critical thinking and valid arguments. We try to use this when reviewing sources. 

Sincerely,

Dave

Dave Van Zandt
Founder/Editor in Chief
Media Bias Fact Check LLC

More on Cannon’s Ruling

  • From Cannon’s Opinion
    • Four Richey factors:
      • With respect to the first [Richey] factor, the Court agrees with the Government that, at least based on the record to date, there has not been a compelling showing of callous disregard for Plaintiff’s constitutional rights. This factor cuts against the exercise of equitable jurisdiction.
      • The second factor—whether the movant has an individual interest in and need for the seized property—weighs in favor of entertaining Plaintiff’s requests. According to the Privilege Review Team’s Report, the seized materials include medical documents, correspondence related to taxes, and accounting information.
      • The same reasoning contributes to the Court’s determination that the third factor—risk of irreparable injury—likewise supports the exercise of jurisdiction. In addition to being deprived of potentially significant personal documents, which alone creates a real harm, Plaintiff faces an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public. Further, Plaintiff is at risk of suffering injury from the Government’s retention and potential use of privileged materials in the course of a process that, thus far, has been closed off to Plaintiff and that has raised at least some concerns as to its efficacy, even if inadvertently so. Finally, Plaintiff has claimed injury from the threat of future prosecution and the serious, often indelible stigma associated therewith.
      • As to the fourth Richey factor, Plaintiff has persuasively argued that there is no alternative adequate remedy at law. Without Rule 41(g), Plaintiff would have no legal means of seeking the return of his property for the time being and no knowledge of when other relief might become available.
    • Accordingly, it is hereby ORDERED AND ADJUDGED as follows:
      • 1. A special master shall be APPOINTED to review the seized property, manage assertions of privilege and make recommendations thereon, and evaluate claims for return of property. The exact details and mechanics of this review process will be decided expeditiously following receipt of the parties’ proposals as described below.
      • 2. The Government is TEMPORARILY ENJOINED from further review and use of any of the materials seized from Plaintiff’s residence on August 8, 2022, for criminal investigative purposes pending resolution of the special master’s review process as determined by this Court. The Government may continue to review and use the materials seized for purposes of intelligence classification and national security assessments
  • From the Appeals Court Ruling:
    • int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/11th-cir/eb9858de31042399/full.pdf
    • Only the narrowest of circumstances permit a district court to invoke equitable jurisdiction. Such decisions “must be exercised with caution and restraint,” as equitable jurisdiction is appropriate only in “exceptional cases where equity demands intervention.” This is not one of them.
    • It is a familiar rule that courts of equity do not ordinarily restrain criminal prosecutions.” Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 319 U.S. 157, 163 (1943). To avoid unnecessary interference with the executive branch’s criminal enforcement authority—while also offering relief in rare instances where a gross constitutional violation would otherwise leave the subject of a search without recourse—this Circuit has developed an exacting test for exercising equitable jurisdiction over suits flowing from the seizure of property. Richey v. Smith instructs courts to consider four factors:
      • (1) whether the government displayed a “callous disregard” for the plaintiff’s constitutional rights;
      • (2) “whether the plaintiff has an individual interest in and need for the material whose return he seeks”;
      • (3) “whether the plaintiff would be irreparably injured by denial of the return of the property”; and
      • (4) “whether the plaintiff has an adequate remedy at law for the redress of his grievance.” 515 F.2d at 1243–44 (quotation omitted).
    • None of the Richey factors favor exercising equitable jurisdiction over this case. Plaintiff, however, asks us to refashion our analysis in a way that, if consistently applied, would make equitable jurisdiction available for every subject of every search warrant.
      • He asks us to ignore our precedents finding that a callous disregard for constitutional rights is indispensable.
      • He asks us to conclude that a property interest in a seized item is a sufficient “need” for its immediate return.
      • He asks us to treat any stigma arising from the government’s access to sensitive personal information or the threat of potential prosecution as irreparable injuries.
      • And he asks us to find that he has no other remedy apart from equitable jurisdiction, even though he faces no remediable harm.
    • Anyone could make these arguments. And accepting them would upend Richey, requiring federal courts to oversee routine criminal investigations beyond their constitutionally ascribed role of approving a search warrant based on a showing of probable cause. Our precedents do not allow this, and neither does our constitutional structure.
    • Only one possible justification for equitable jurisdiction remains: that Plaintiff is a former President of the United States. It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president—but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation. The Richey test has been in place for nearly fifty years; its limits apply no matter who the government is investigating. To create a special exception here would defy our Nation’s foundational principle that our law applies “to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank.”
    • The district court improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction in this case. For that reason, we VACATE the September 5 order on appeal and REMAND with instructions for the district court to DISMISS the underlying civil action.
  • Supreme Court
    • Supreme Court Rejects Trump Request to Intervene in Documents Case  NYT
  • Appeals Court Ruling on DOJ’s use of sensitive documents
    • Appeals Court’s Opinion
    • Trump’s defeat in the Mar-a-Lago “special master” case, explained  Millhiser Vox
    • Appeals court slams Judge Cannon: No, Trump is not above the law Sargent WaPo
    • A thorough rebuke of Judge Aileen Cannon’s pro-Trump order  Blake  WaPo
    • Appeals Court Frees Justice Dept. to Use Sensitive Files Seized From Trump NYT
    • Appeals court: Justice Dept. can use Mar-a-Lago documents in criminal probe  WaPo
  • On Cannon’s Ruling
    • Everything Wrong With Judge Cannon’s Ruling Lawfare
    • ‘Deeply Problematic’: Experts Question Judge’s Intervention in Trump Inquiry NYT
    • Trump Judge’s Bad Ruling Might Do Some Good WaPo
    • The Mar-a-Lago judge’s latest opinion is as atrocious as legal experts say it is, Harry Litman LAT
    • “She is totally in the tank”: Legal experts rip judge’s “profoundly partisan” pro-Trump ruling Salon

Tucker Carlson Jumping to Conclusions

  • Here are examples of Tucker Carlson jumping to conclusions.
  • On the January 24 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight Tucker Carlson said:
    • “Mike Pence of all people has swooped in to save Joe Biden. … If Mike Pence didn’t think he had classified documents, why would he send his lawyer to go look for classified documents? We can’t say for certain, but it’s entirely possible and in fact it’s likely that Mike Pence was asked to do this by federal prosecutors who were trying to build a case against his old boss, Donald Trump.”
  • Carlson makes a huge leap:
    • Mike Pence sent his lawyer to look for classified documents.
    • Therefore, it’s likely he was asked to do so by federal prosecutors who were trying to build a case against Donald Trump.
  • Another quote from the show:
    • “As someone as unimpeachably holy as Mike Pence had classified documents in his home, that means every person who has ever served in a high level of government also has classified documents at home, and that means by definition that keeping classified documents in your house is not a big deal except when Donald Trump does it.” 
  • And more leaps:
    • Mike Pence, a paragon of honesty, had classified documents in his home.
    • Therefore, every person who has served in a high level of government also has classified documents at home.
    • Therefore, keeping classified documents in your house is not a big deal except when Donald Trump does it.

Kobach’s Biased ‘Proof’ of Illegal Voting

  • Kris Kobach, former Secretary of State of Kansas and former Vice Chair of the defunct Election Integrity Commission, has made debunked claims of voter fraud, supported Trump’s claim that millions voted illegally in the presidential election, and implemented strict Voter ID laws in Kansas.
  • On 9/7/2017 Breitbart published an article by Kobach in which he alleged to have proven that thousands of people voted illegally in New Hampshire. But his “proof” was fallacious, as analysts have pointed out. 
  • Kobach’s argument was thus flawed. Moreover, it’s likely the flaws resulted from Kobach’s bias toward the existence of voter fraud, in light of his debunked claims, other public statements, and his implementation of strict Voter ID laws in Kansas.
  • It’s thus likely that Kobach’s article in Breitbart is biased.
  • View Slides on Kobach’s ‘Proof’

More Examples of Disproven Bias

Crossfire Hurricane
  • Review of FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation by the DOJ IG, Dec 2019
    • “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced Priestap’s decision to open Crossfire Hurricane.”
    • We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to seek FISA authority on Carter Page.
    • “Finally, we also found no documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivations influenced the FBI’s decision to use CHSs or UCEs to interact with Trump campaign officials in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Georgia Investigation of Trump’s Interference in Election
  • Georgia judge skeptical of claims of political bias in 2020 election probe WaPo
    • The judge presiding over the grand jury investigation into possible election interference by Donald Trump and his allies expressed skepticism Thursday over arguments from Republicans that the prosecution, led by a Democratic district attorney, was politically motivated.
    • Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney  issued a decision rejecting a request from 11 of Georgia’s 16 Republican would-be electors who sought to disqualify the prosecution team because of political bias. Prosecutors say these electors may have been part of a plan to try to cast electoral college votes for Trump in Georgia and other states despite Joe Biden’s victory. Lawyers for the electors deny any wrongdoing, citing a pending court case over the Georgia election at the time they were certified.
    • The ongoing inquiry, McBurney wrote, “is inherently ‘political’ in the simple and unremarkable sense that politicians and leaders of a specific political party are alleged to have undertaken efforts to defeat the will of the Georgia electorate.”
    • A prosecutor who takes on such a case, he wrote, “is not automatically biased and partisan — and subject to disqualification — because of the common political affiliations of the subjects (and targets) of the investigation.”

Bias of Lawn Bowls

  • A lawn bowl is biased, i.e. flattened on one side so that its center of gravity is offset. The bias causes the bowl to curve, the greater the bias the greater the curve.

Cognitive Bias

Theory of Cognitive Bias

Examples of Cognitive Bias

  • Confirmation bias
    • Tendency to recognize, accept, and remember information supporting an existing belief while ignoring, rejecting and forgetting information that casts doubt it. 
  • Groupthink
    • Tendency to adopt beliefs of a group you identify with
  • Self-serving bias
    • Tendency to attribute success to your abilities and efforts, and failure to external factors
  • Sunk-Cost Effect
    • Tendency to continue investing in something even though it’s failing
  • Gambler’s Fallacy
    • Tendency to believe that the probability of an upcoming random event is affected by the preceding sequence of random events

Implicit Bias

  • plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicit-bias/
    • “Implicit bias” is a term of art referring to relatively unconscious and relatively automatic features of prejudiced judgment and social behavior. 
    • For example, imagine Frank, who explicitly believes that women and men are equally suited for careers outside the home. Despite his explicitly egalitarian belief, Frank might nevertheless implicitly associate women with the home, and this implicit association might lead him to behave in any number of biased ways, from trusting feedback from female co-workers less to hiring equally qualified men over women.
  • scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/
    • The tendency for stereotype-confirming thoughts to pass spontaneously through our minds is what psychologists call implicit bias. It sets people up to overgeneralize, sometimes leading to discrimination even when people feel they are being fair.
  • kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding-implicit-bias/
    • Also known as implicit social cognition, implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.  These biases, which encompass both favorable and unfavorable assessments, are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or intentional control.  

Dictionary Definitions

Bias (noun)
  • Relevant dictionary meanings of bias:
    • Person bias
    • Instance of person bias
    • Bent, tendency, trend, inclination
    • Statistical bias
  • American Heritage
    • A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment.
    • An unfair act or policy stemming from prejudice.
    • A statistical sampling or testing error caused by systematically favoring some outcomes over others.
  • Merriam-Webster
    • an inclination of temperament or outlook; especially :  a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment :  prejudice
    •  an instance of such prejudice
    • bent, tendency
    • deviation of the expected value of a statistical estimate from the quantity it estimates
    • systematic error introduced into sampling or testing by selecting or encouraging one outcome or answer over others
  • Merriam-Webster Unabridged
    • an inclination of temperament or outlook, often, such prepossession with some object or point of view that the mind does not respond impartially to anything related to this object or point of view; prejudice
      • <a strong liberal bias>
    • an instance of personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment
    • bent, tendency, trend. sometimes :  inclination
    • statistics : a tendency of an estimate to deviate in one direction from a true value (as by reason of nonrandom sampling)
  • Oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/bias
    • prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair
  • Princeton’s WordNet
    • a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation
  • Dictionary.com/browse/bias (Random House Unabridged Dictionary)
    • a particular tendency, trend, inclination, feeling, or opinion, especially one that is preconceived or unreasoned
    • Statistics. a systematic as opposed to a random distortion of a statistic as a result of sampling procedure.
  • Collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/bias (Penguin Random House)
    • a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice
    • Statistics: a systematic as opposed to a random distortion of a statistic as a result of sampling procedure
  • Collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/bias (Webster’s New World College Dictionary,)
    • a mental leaning or inclination; partiality; bent
    • Statistics: any systematic error contributing to the difference between statistical values in a population and a sample drawn from it
  • unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/predilection
    • Synonym Discussion: partiality, prepossession, prejudice, bias, predilection.
      • Predilection indicates a previous liking or temperamental predisposition
      • Partiality indicates a disposition to favor a person or thing, sometimes unfairly or with partisanship or undue fondness
      • Prepossession implies a fixed idea or notion, especially a value judgment, that dominates and is likely to preclude objective judgment of something seeming counter to it
      • Prejudice indicates a preconceived notion, a judgment before evidence is available, or an unreasoned prepossession, often an unfavorable one marked by suspicion, dislike, or antipathy
      • Bias may indicate an imbalance or distortion in judgment with a resulting unreasoned and unfair inclination for or against a person or thing
Bias (verb)
  • Merriam Webster Unabridged
    • : to give a bias to : give a settled and often prejudiced outlook to : influence, prepossess
      • <fixed ideas may bias observation of events>
Biased (adjective)
  • American Heritage
    • Marked by or exhibiting bias; prejudiced: gave a biased account of the trial.
Prejudice
  • unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/prejudice
    • 1a(1) : preconceived judgment or opinion :  leaning toward one side of a question from other considerations than those belonging to it :  unreasonable predilection for or objection against something
      • <showing prejudice for/against one side or another>
    • 1a(2) : an opinion or leaning adverse to anything without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge
    • 1b : an instance of such judgment or opinion :  an unreasonable predilection, inclination, or objection
      • <a prejudice against new methods>
    • 1c : an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics
      • <racial prejudice>
  • ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=prejudice
    • 1.a. The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions:
      •  “This is not actually a volume of the best short stories … These are just the stories that I like best, and I am full of prejudice and strong opinions” (Ann Patchett).
    • 1.b. An adverse judgment or opinion formed unfairly or without knowledge of the facts:
      • a boy with a prejudice against unfamiliar foods.
    • 2. Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular social group, such as a race or the adherents of a religion
  • oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/prejudice
    • Preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience:
      • English prejudice against foreigners
      • ingrained religious prejudices.
    • Dislike, hostility, or unjust behavior deriving from unfounded opinions:
      • accusations of racial prejudice.
Objective
One-sided
Impartial
Partial
Synonym Discussion for Predilection from Merriam-Webster Unabridged
  • Predilection indicates a previous liking or temperamental predisposition 
  • Partiality indicates a disposition to favor a person or thing, sometimes unfairly or with partisanship or undue fondness
  • Prepossession implies a fixed idea or notion, especially a value judgment, that dominates and is likely to preclude objective judgment of something seeming counter to it 
  • Prejudice indicates a preconceived notion, a judgment before evidence is available, or an unreasoned prepossession, often an unfavorable one marked by suspicion, dislike, or antipathy
  • Bias may indicate an imbalance or distortion in judgment with a resulting unreasoned and unfair inclination for or against a person or thing

Is the news media politically biased: Quick Take

  • The core notion of bias is a force drawing a process off course. The notion underlies prejudicial bias, cognitive bias, statistical bias, and even the bias of a lawn bowl.
  • A key distinction is between bias and an instance of bias, between a person’s bias and a biased investigation, for example.
  • Media Bias:
    • Is media bias a bad thing?
      • Is media bias merely a news outlet’s point of view?
      • Or are news outlets biased in the same way a biased criminal investigation is biased?
    • Bias in editorials:
      • An editorial is not biased merely because it expresses an editorial viewpoint. But it may be biased for other reasons.
    • Bias in the amount of coverage devoted to a news story:
      • An editor’s decision about how much coverage a story gets is a value judgment about newsworthiness. Editors at different news outlets make different judgments.
    • Bias in new stories:
      • A news story is biased only if it violates the principles of logic, rules of evidence, or journalistic standards because of a reporter’s or editor’s bias.
  • Finally, “bias” and “biased” are sometimes used as a way of dismissing an opponent’s argument, proposal, or claim without addressing its substance.

View full Bias