To say that the news is a little bit biased might just be the understatement to end all understatements. The question is how that bias is formed. In Manufacturing the News, Mark Fishman takes a look at the methodology of news reporting.
A newswire is what distributes breaking news to editorial offices and journalists. This is why countless articles on a topic all come out at the exact same time. Then you have “beats,” which tend to inform journalists through specific government or private organisations. Sources on crime come through police agencies, while state and federal politics come through local councils, state governments, federal government offices, and so on. Newswires are about the bigger picture; beats give journalists the details.
Pretty standard, except accounts from “unofficial” sources (i.e. actual people) are ignored, and you’re left with an extremely biased form of reporting. This is most likely because tracking down unconfirmed sources takes time, and journalists are slaves to deadlines. This ties in with Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying, or the works of Edward J. Epstein, which go into the economics of the media. Fishman concludes that the news would look very different if journalists were to use different methods of reporting, but then this would threaten the credibility of existing organisations and power structures.
A Marxist criticism of the media is that journalists do not report to inform and contextualise the public, but to reinforce existing power structures, stifling divergent viewpoints. I don’t know where Fishman sits on the political spectrum, but it’s certainly a valid criticism that aligns with the substance of this text.
It’s not controversial to say that a news organisation is biased. Not these days, at least. It doesn’t cause anyone to bat an eyelash when you say it in public, even in a nanny state like Australia. What makes Fishman’s text worthwhile is his analysis of the methods used to gather the news, rather than any economic structures or incentives.
All in all, Manufacturing the News is pretty solid. But like some of these texts, I would place it in the honourable mentions sections rather than the best overall. Worth a look for any student of journalism.
Lawrence Deveney 