Is the term ‘bias’ useful to understanding the media?

With the precipitous collapse of a prominent Murdoch title and possibly his empire in the UK, a recent extended essay by Robert Manne focusing on the Australian newspaper and the regular accusations of partisanship levelled at the ABC there exists a fertile ground for the hunt for media bias as part of the recently announced government inquiry into the media.

As the government begins to lay out the grounds and remit for the inquiry through various media appearances a summary of an interview with Senator Conroy's on the ABC's AM program said

Some had hoped the recently announced inquiry into the media would look at media bias, concentration of ownership or privacy.

Rather the inquiry will focus on print media regulation, and boosting the independence and effectiveness of the Australian Press Council.

The take home message about the proposed inquiry is that it was not going to look at the things apparently 'some' people deemed important. Front and center is the hunt for 'media bias'.

However to focus on finding media bias is to miss the point. Media 'bias' is obvious, unavoidable and to some extent necessary. Hunting for media bias is then problematic to the focus and scrutiny of the media as it serves to obfuscate the important aspects of contemporary media.

As an exercise in critical literacy the search for bias in media reporting is an important step in being an informed citizen, but it is not hard to find.

Indeed media 'bias' is what many students are taught to find in high school media studies classes. And due to this obviousness is a word banned from my first year university classes where analytic depth is valued.

Look at any news coverage. An event occurs and a story is written or produced to tell or describe what the event was. Decisions around language choice, framing, descriptions, sources and other immediate concerns mingle with taken for granted assumptions about the way the world operates.

This is the very nature of 'story telling'. There are events and there is the work of storying those events. This is news coverage.

Thus the term bias when applied to a serious study of the media needs to be treated with some caution. Here, I am not so much concerned with obvious lies, misrepresentation or even sloppy fact checking as these are reportable to the press complaints body.

Rather, all media necessarily select relevant information for telling stories and this will include some 'bias'.

The real importance of an inquiry would be in examining the depth and extent of involvement and influence of the Australian media in both day-to-day politics and the operation of government and policy.

Moreover the hunt for bias may serve to hide from serious examination the nature of the relationship between media and politics as both become ever more subject to the demands of 24 hour news and tyranny of the 'refresh' button.

With the proliferation of media platforms and demands on content there is, and there looks little doubt that it will become ever more so, a continuing symbiotic relationship between media and politics.

This is described by some as the 'mediatisation of politics' where both need each other, both have become dependent on each other and both are in antagonistic positions with each other.

The problem then might be more usefully framed along the lines of what is the extent and manifestation of this mediatisation of politics?

What are the extent of these relationships in media, economic and political institutions and what are the results of these relationships in political and media discourse?

To answer this question would mean examining the depth of involvement and influence of the Australian media and sections of the Australian media in both day-to-day politics and the operation of government and policy.

One way to approach this is to separate media into the symbolic and the institutional.

In respect to the institutional the inquiry may ask questions about the extent of the relationship between media, politics and business. To what extent are these powerful influential institutions economically and politically entwined?

In respect to the symbolic this would involve examining the nature of news sourcing and coverage. What are the evolving demands of 24 hours news content in multi platform media? What are the media, commercial, political and audience demands and in what forms have these influenced news coverage and news presentation?

For example what do the demands of 24 hour news mean for political news coverage. Clearly while there is humorous truism that there are exactly enough events that happen in a day to fill a daily newspaper the this would seem to have reached its limit.

In broadcast and print news alongside stories of events is an increasing amount of commentary and discussion about what those events mean. Much of this is taken up with speculation, predictions and discussion about what an event might mean for the future. Indeed this forum is a product of that proliferation.

This speculation culture is on an industrial scale especially concerning politics where entire programs and reams of commentaries and websites are devoted to pondering and discussing what the possible implications of an event (or even a possible event) are.

The amount of speculation in news programs and news outlets is vast and all of it has an angle, all has a potential agenda setting role. Agenda setting is not telling people what to think but giving people something to think about. It is the topic of debate for the day that is the agenda, does being in control of setting this agenda obscure other topics.

Again the subtlety and dynamics of agenda setting needs to be examined and understood. All media may legitimately strive to set the days' news agenda. For example, talkback programs in Australia and the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in the UK work hard at this as it promotes their own media capital. Questions around the extent and influence of agenda setting need to take account of market capital both as symbolic and economic.

In the institutional realm the relationship between politics and media a 'free press' is at the heart of a functioning democracy. Owners of media have the right and indeed the duty in many respects to promote their audiences values.

Increasingly understanding a news outlet's niche audience is vital to survival and possibly the only business model in town. A commercial media that losses sight of its audience will not survive long, just as a publicly funded media that loses sight of its public service role will have this quickly pointed out.

So where does this leave the state of the media and its relationship to political process and influence?

Much of the heightened awareness of media influence has come from the recent News of the World revelations and the relationship between Murdoch's news empire and its commercial dominance in Australia. Jumping to conclusions about the nature and extent of the any influence or practice may not be warranted, though I am enjoying the Australian's various but amusingly consistent responses to Robert Manne's essay.

In the end it would seem healthy to examine media and political relationships and hold them up to scrutiny every so often. However, to focus on bias as a major term of reference does not seem to get us further than high school media studies.