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Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Media Bias 101: The Difference Between News, Analysis, and Opinion | AllSides or How to Recognize Skewed News

Media Bias 101: The Difference Between News, Analysis, and Opinion | AllSides

I've referred to AllSides before as a source for analyzing bias in news reporting. This article explains the three different aspects of a news story: news, analysis and opinion. Here is how AllSides describes each category.

News: What happened.

Analysis: What happened and why — writer considers facts and draws conclusions.

Opinion: What I think about what happened.

The article provides three examples of a story about a protest with a headline of "violation of human rights."

News: Crackdown "Violation of Human Rights"
  • attributes information to a source
  • uses quotes, cites source
  • describes what is objectively observable (something was said, something happened)
  • to be truly balanced and unbiased, the piece would also include a quote from the other side (in this fictional example, the perspective of law enforcement, or perhaps a bystander or another organization who has a different account of what happened)
Analysis: Crackdown Violation of Human Rights
  • explains what events may mean
  • someone with experience, knowledge, and background considers evidence and interprets events
  • conclusions are drawn based on evidence (they may or may not be accurate conclusions)
Opinion: Crackdown Violation of Human Rights
  • offers judgement, viewpoint, belief, feelings, or statement that is not conclusive (notice the writer does not directly describe what happened)
  • language is colored by subjective spin words and phrases

The AllSides article highlights the problem when all three factors are mixed together in a story. The resulting stew results in what I call "skewed news" which I think is more accurate than Trump's "fake news." I say skewed because most news outlets leave out key information that doesn't support the narrative they want to create. In this case the term "news story" is accurate if we take the word story to mean crafting a narrative or trying to lead the consumer to reach a specific conclusion. We tell stories to influence the listener or reader to agree with us.

For examples check out the weekly Blind Spot report of Ground News. Each week Ground News provides examples of stories that the left will cover much more than the right and vice versa.


 

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