May 18, 2020
Article
Medium

Media Bias? But Not What You Think It Is

Format:Electronic

Abstract

The media are often accused of political bias. But news outlets reflect many political beliefs in a fragmented media environment. However, an almost across-the-board bias is how news media talk about digital business, and the pandemic has exacerbated that bias, which is not supported by the data. “Retail apocalypse” is a standard trope in news reports, for instance, but the number of malls in the U.S. went from about 300 in 1970, to 1,000 by the year 2000, and 1200 by 2019, while the biggest retail trend before the pandemic was the opening of brick-and-mortar stores by once pure-play ecommerce firms like Casper, Warby Parker, Wayfair, Amazon, and others. One reason for this gap may be that employment decline for journalists in the 21st century was deeper than job losses over the past three decades in the coal mining, iron, steel, or fishing industries. Journalists have seen their industry and livelihoods negatively disrupted by technology, and may assume this is happening everywhere. That’s understandable, but it’s still a bias and leads to publishing stories that fit an assumed narrative.