Most people think the press is rife with slant

At the heart of the crisis facing journalism — and hence democracy, too — is the question of bias. Can journalists ever really be intellectually independent and open-minded? Take your pick of surveys. Most Americans think the press is rife with slant. According to a 2024 survey by a research centre at the University of Chicago, roughly 7 in 10 Americans think press coverage is biased. People on the political right tend to think the press leans left. People on the political left tend to think the press favours an affluent white establishment.

Journalists, meanwhile, tend to argue they are just doing their job. The whole debate over journalistic bias has the hopeless feel of ships passing in the night. The problem is made more complicated, too, by the flawed term “objectivity.” The word has many meanings. But when it migrated into journalism from social science, it was not intended to mean complete neutrality or objectivity of consciousness. Rather, as in science and social science, it was meant to suggest that journalists had employed some identifiable process or discipline in the way information was gathered and reported — a process they could explain and that others could repeat.

So why is it that people on the left and right both see bias (often opposite ones) while journalists contend they are just doing what they are supposed to? I think the reason is that journalists do operate by an ideology. But it is a professional one, not a partisan one. And it is one, like most professional worldviews, that journalists themselves barely recognise they have.

This ideology of journalism starts with who is attracted to journalism in the first place. They’re often people curious about public life, who are more inclined to observe than be activists themselves, but who want to right wrongs, and keep an eye on the powerful. Then, as occurs in most fields, those instincts are reinforced by a set of professional norms and attitudes that journalists learn in newsrooms about what journalism should be, about what is newsworthy and, implicitly, about the public.

The shared ideology among journalists can be broken down into five key elements. One is the notion that you make society better by pointing out its problems — things that need to be fixed or addressed. Another is that people in power must be watched or they will misbehave. A third is that the more facts we have the better. A fourth is that the more transparent society is, the better. A fifth is that the less powerful in society should have their voices lifted.

These are not the only core values journalists share. But they are bedrock ideas that guide a lot of journalistic work. The problem — at the heart of why the debate is stuck — is that most Americans do not share these values. And when they’re asked about them, or even see them implicitly in the way news is framed, these ideas often make people feel a little uneasy.

Research by the research centre at the University of Chicago, the Associated Press and the American Press Institute first questioned members of the news media to confirm these values and then tested support among non-journalists for those five key journalism values. Only 2 in 10 Americans gave full-throated support for those. And only one of those ideas — the idea that the more facts people have the closer they will come to the truth — has a majority of support among Americans.

Yes, journalists think they are just doing their job. But most Americans are sceptical of the ideas that underlie the prevailing approach to the job, or at least have some reservations. There is good news here. In doing this research, we tested whether there were ways to mitigate the problem. We took stories written using some of the most traditional framing of news and framed slightly differently. No facts were changed. Only the framing was different, often with more empathy for readers who have more sympathy for authority, or put a higher stock on loyalty, or lean more toward the idea that good things in society should be celebrated.

For example, in one story about polluted drinking water, the traditional version bore the headline “At-risk neighbourhood now facing new health threat from toxic drinking water” and the piece emphasised the effects on the less powerful in the community. The second version, headlined “Local community at risk after state officials ignore military study,” focused on the danger to the community more generally. We reframed several stories this way, keeping in mind people more sympathetic to the values of loyalty and authority and wary of negativity.

The result: All audiences, even those sympathetic to journalistic values, found those reframed stories more credible. Journalists need to recognise that what they consider simply good journalism does not come without political values attached, no matter how much they believe they are “just doing their job.” In fact, by taking a moment to consider others’ values, journalists can do their job better. It’s worthwhile — because the journalists are correct that their work is essential.