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

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.