Skip to Main Content
Chat With Us

News Know-How

:

Bias: Who is Vetting This?

Do you pause before you share? Sharpen your skills for reading news critically: account for your own biases, and identify poorly supported claims, weak evidence, and bad sources. In other words, avoid "fake news" and less obvious forms of misinformation.

Bias Criteria

Bias: The publication is transparent about its publication and editorial processes: publication, funding, and editorial staff information is easily available, and editorial guidelines are clear and consistent. Biases are openly acknowledged, and retractions or corrections are issued when details are reported inaccurately.

YOU are a source of bias, possibly the most powerful one. It's important to check news for bias, but at least as important to check yourself.

Open Editorial Process

Good news organizations should be open about their editorial and publication staffs. Management & editorial staff listings (called the "masthead") are printed in every print edition of most newspapers. Good web publications are also transparent. To find out who is publishing a news outlet, go to the About page or search in Google. Reputable news organizations should make available:

News organizations should:

  1. be independent,
  2. be accountable, and
  3. work hard to verify facts.

If any one of these three elements is missing, it's simply not journalism. It's something else: advertising, propaganda, entertainment, or just raw information. See this handout (google doc) by the Center for News Literacy for more information.

Minimizing Bias

There is no such thing as "bias free" news. Reporters attempt to be as objective as possible, but bias creeps in: we're humans, not automatons.

News sources can reduce bias by posting and abiding by codes of ethics. These often include statements about:

  • Conflicts of interest
  • Error correction
  • Attribution of sources
  • Plagiarism and credit
  • Fairness

For instance, instead of making a bland statement about objectivity, the Washington Post provides these guidelines for fairness:

No story is fair if it omits facts of major importance or significance. Fairness includes completeness.

No story is fair if it includes essentially irrelevant information at the expense of significant facts. Fairness includes relevance.

No story is fair if it consciously or unconsciously misleads or even deceives the reader. Fairness includes honesty – leveling with the reader.

No story is fair if reporters hide their biases or emotions behind such subtly pejorative words as “refused,” “despite,” “quietly,” “admit” and “massive.” Fairness requires straightforwardness ahead of flashiness.

What will you do?

When I encounter an article that gets me riled up, I will
pause, and read the entire article, then share it if I think it's OK: 2 votes (28.57%)
pause, and then check the article's sources, and share if they're totally unbiased: 3 votes (42.86%)
pause, and then find articles in sources with different biases, and share the best of several: 2 votes (28.57%)
just share it and not worry so much: 0 votes (0%)
Total Votes: 7

Accounting for Bias

One way to account for bias is to make sure you read articles from a broad spectrum of sources.

Verifying Facts

Verifying Science News

Verifying science news is a special case, because you can often go straight to the source: science news articles often link directly to the original scholarly publication on which the story is based. Problem: many science articles are behind paywalls. Solution: Two new tools come to the rescue by directing you to Open Access (OA) versions of articles available elsewhere:

"Fake News" detectors

Screenshot of BS Detector warning in white letters on a red background: Warning: This may not be a reliable source. (Extreme Bias)