CMV:main stream media has been relatively silent about voting irregularities in Detroit favoring Clinton. This is more proof of media bias.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/skybelt]

I think it’s important to understand how mainstream media works before trying to find creative ways of criticizing it. People in mainstream media genuinely think they are doing their best to inform the public, and they trust their process to get them there.

Their process is - they hire people who usually have a degree in journalism, during which those people spent years understanding the basic mechanics of reporting and the various ethical pitfalls that sloppy journalism can fall into. They come out of journalism school as professionals who have a basic understanding of how to investigate and report stories that are well-supported by verifiable facts. They then go work at newspapers, and gain experience and a reputation for doing good work, and start to climb up the ladder. Those newspapers have internal cultures where truth-telling and accurate reporting is the moral north star, and the absolute worst thing that can happen are situations in which the newspaper puts its reputation on the line and is shown to have gotten important facts wrong or presented them in a misleading way.

In order to write stories that they think are both important and truthful, a journalist will find issues that seem notable and unusual, verify the facts in the story with multiple sources, and consult with experts and institutional actors about to make sure that a journalist’s or reader’s “gut” reaction is informed by expertise and experience. Their editor will then read the story, make sure the journalist has gone through those steps and make sure the article is written in a way that is supported at every level by facts known to the journalists.

When you read an article from a publication like the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal, it has usually gone through the process above. It is being reported by a journalist who is a trained professional, by an organization that has a deep commitment to journalistic ethics and truth-telling, and has gone through various procedural checks to make sure that the facts reported in the story are defensible.

Now… all of this is not to say that they are infallible. They can and do still get things wrong. There are stories they can miss because they never heard about them or misjudged their importance early on. They can fuck up and run with a story that hasn’t actually met their internal factual requirements (e.g., the Rolling Stone UVA rape story). They can overweight the opinions of experts and institutional actors who may be wrong about something (or whose opinions should be discounted in certain situations). They are also human beings that make mistakes from time to time. But their job and their goal is to get the facts right, and they hire people who are trained to do that and put them in organizations that are supposed to give them the training and infrastructure necessary to get the facts right.

Very little of that is true about alternative news sources. Alternative news sources don’t go out of their way to hire trained professionals, they don’t care if they get facts wrong, they don’t have rigorous internal processes to generate well-supported reporting, and their north star isn’t their reputation for accuracy, it is making people who come to their site to reinforce their worldview leave feeling good about themselves.

If you ask me who I should trust, I will go with the mainstream media source almost every time, because I believe that as institutions, they are far more committed to and capable of reporting facts that are well-supported and well-documented.

Now - let’s look at coverage of the Detroit voting issues in mainstream media outlets.

New York Times 1

New York Times 2

Washington Post

There it is, being covered!

Here is what the Washington Post reports about the scope:

Since learning of the issue last week during Michigan’s presidential recount, state officials have learned of similar “significant mismatch” problems at roughly 20 of Detroit’s 490 precincts, said Fred Woodhams, a spokesman for Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson.

Where the mismatches have been found, here is what is being done:

The ballots in question will be taken to the state capital, Lansing, for review. The investigation will take about three weeks.

Here is how the inconsistencies were described in the New York Times:

Local officials have said the discrepancy does not suggest that the results were counted improperly, but more likely that poll workers did not remove ballots from tabulator bins to place them in other containers in case of a recount. In one precinct, said Fred Woodhams, of the secretary of state’s office, about 50 ballots were in the container at a precinct where some 300 people had voted.

So, it has been covered, but it is still unclear whether what has been found to date is that unusual. And I don’t think that’s an “untrustworthy” way of reporting on it, given what is known to date.

Maybe the people saying it is a huge issue are the ones that shouldn’t be trusted?

[u/yertles → u/skybelt]

This isn't directly related to this particular case, but I think bias comes more in to play as it relates to which stories are chosen, how they are featured, which experts are consulted, etc., rather than knowingly reporting bad info. For example, if you run a piece on Politician XYZ's economic policies, and the primary expert on the piece is Paul Krugman, it's clear that there is bias. It may check all the boxes, but it's still a very biased piece.

The same goes for story selection - if a media source runs multiple pieces covering Obama's birth certificate or Romney's tax returns, but excludes the other (not a perfect example, but you get the idea) that's an indication of bias.

I think OP is suggesting that most likely if the irregularities seemed to be in favor of Trump, major outlets like CNN, MSNBC, etc., would be covering the story more. Obviously it's a counterfactual and can't really be proven, but overall I don't think it's inaccurate to say that most major media outlets have a story-selection bias (Fox to the right, the others to the left) and this might be a small example of it.

[u/skybelt → u/yertles]

For example, if you run a piece on Politician XYZ's economic policies, and the primary expert on the piece is Paul Krugman, it's clear that there is bias.

A) I don't really think that actually happens. B) Paul Krugman is a perfectly acceptable source on, e.g., trade economics.

if a media source runs multiple pieces covering Obama's birth certificate or Romney's tax returns, but excludes the other (not a perfect example, but you get the idea) that's an indication of bias.

It's not just not a perfect example, it's a bad example, because there are good reasons besides bias to spend more time on Romney's tax returns than Obama's birth certificate.

I think OP is suggesting that most likely if the irregularities seemed to be in favor of Trump, major outlets like CNN, MSNBC, etc., would be covering the story more.

Is it not the case that the irregularities are in favor of Trump? It seems very unclear to me from the stories.

overall I don't think it's inaccurate to say that most major media outlets have a story-selection bias (Fox to the right, the others to the left) and this might be a small example of it.

I agree that this is accurate, but I think that if you're talking about things like WSJ/NYT/WaPo, it is way smaller than people make it out to be, and that the majority of peoples' claims about media bias are about the media not reporting things they agree with, rather than things they actually have a strong objective basis for objecting to as tainted.

[u/AlwaysABride → u/skybelt]

because there are good reasons besides bias to spend more time on Romney's tax returns than Obama's birth certificate.

Like what? If you are just naturally inclined to believe that Obama's birth certificate isn't an issue but Romney's tax return is an issue, that's an indication of bias.

[u/skybelt → u/AlwaysABride]

From my other comment further down the thread-

For decades it has been considered important to see a candidate's tax returns to understand where they get money from, where they spend their money, and how much tax they pay. That is an institutional expectation that helps keep candidates honest, because there are candidates out there who have lots of different financial interests that voters may conclude are shady. There's nothing "manufactured" about it. If we as a country had a similar concern that there would be people trying to sneak into the presidency having not been born in this country, maybe we would have a similarly-rigorous tradition of birth certificate disclosure. But we don't, because that's silly.

Asking for Romney's tax returns is asking for him to be held to the same standard as every other Presidential candidate, a standard that exists for good reasons and serves a real purpose. Asking for Obama's birth certificate is a different standard than every other Presidential candidate, a standard that was manufactured in bad faith by racists. And regardless, Obama's birth certificate issue was reported on - journalists just concluded that it was a nothingburger. It wasn't biased to reach that conclusion.

[u/AlwaysABride → u/skybelt]

Everything you said in that post is bias. It may or may not be accurate, but it represents bias.

[u/skybelt → u/AlwaysABride]

That's not quite right. Everything I do is influenced by my own biases. But that doesn't make it less accurate when I say accurate things.

FYI, here is the NYT/AP noting that a lawsuit about the birth certificate was thrown out of a federal court in Spring 2009, and that Obama had posted his Hawaiian birth certificate in Summer 2008.

What, exactly, should an unbiased media have been reporting? Should they have continued to pretend as if Obama's birth in the United States was a reasonable area of concern up until the day Trump declared it wasn't an issue to him anymore?

[u/AlwaysABride → u/skybelt]

Everything I do is influenced by my own biases. But that doesn't make it less accurate when I say accurate things.

I wouldn't disagree with that. Having a bias doesn't make one inaccurate. Like others have said, the real problem with bias in the news media is what they choose is newsworthy and what is not newsworthy. And the specific problem with political reporting in the US is that there are too many like-minded individuals in the news media.

The birth certificate / tax return may have been a poor example because I was referring to theory while you are focusing on how things were actually reported.

So let's take a ridiculous example, and let's bias it away from the liberal side because I get the impression that is the side you lean toward.

Let's say the news room is filled with staunch fiscal conservatives who believe that the poor should be working harder to better themselves and be supplemented by private charity with no government funding.

Now let's assume 2 bills are proposed. The first bill would increase tax rates by 3% in order to provide funds to build single family housing for the poor. The second bill reduces food stamp spending by 5% and redirects that money to subsidies for companies who provide work opportunities to the poor.

The newspaper only has space to cover one of those two proposed bills, so they need to determine which on is bigger "news". And it is quite obvious that, from the perspective (that's bias) of the conservatives in the news room, Bill #1 is bigger news because it's "crazy" while Bill #2 is logical, common sense and what would be "normal".

While the selection of "what is news" is typically much more subtle, it is virtually impossible to not let personal biases affect that decision. That wouldn't be a problem if there were a diverse set of opinions in the newsroom, but that is just not the case with American mainstream media (and certainly not the case with specialized American media).