Introduction

In the past few decades, media has been an important tool effects greatly on the society.
It’s the way by which the political news is set, how agendas and sources are managed, and how
the information is controlled. The media helps greatly in shaping the knowledge in a way that
suits the public; it has the ability to affect the voting and attitude behavior by using a certain
content that is targeting what they would like to achieve. The pew research center(2012) claimed
that approximately 71% of the audience in United States of America are getting their information
and news from television, whether national or international news. Despite that the media is
always criticized more than any other institution in the United States, it is the first source of
information so far. That dominance of media gives a reason for all the controversial debate about
media bias. Former President Barack H. Obama mentioned in his elections campaign “I’m
convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three percentage points higher in
the polls.” Another controversial issue that comes to the surface as well is how the ideologies as
well as partisanship of politicians, journalists, and critics have a great influence in shaping the
public knowledge. That brings some important questions such as is there a real thing called
media bias? And if so, does it have an effect on individuals’ attitudes and point of views? The
has been a debate between liberal and conservative critics in which one of them media favor, the
liberals proclaimed that media prefers conservatives over liberals because they benefit from them
and on the other hand, conservatives accuse media of favoring liberals and report their thematic
inclined news because they are a majority. (Niven, 2002) has given another perception of media
bias stands upon the differences among people according to their beliefs. He explained that if a
person agrees with some article, that seems to be unbiased for him because there are some
factors that supports this point of view such as religious attitude, background, and the person’s
partisanship. So, in this paper we will be discussing the influence of the politically biased news
upon individuals’ perception and whether they are able to process this political information or
not and what’s the impact of ideological bias on individuals’ opinions on news stories. (Smith,
2010) provides some insights regarding how the perception of ideological bias influences the
way in which individuals process political information, the study assumes that if an article is
previously attacked by the elite, when reading, the individual feel that it was biased on the same
direction of the attack, so he formed a prior opinion towards it because of the attack. He stated
“elite attacks work on their own –independent of any actual slant in the news – providing cues to
the public from political elites” (Smith, p. 322). Another example of how individuals put in their
consideration the source of the information when they are forming their opinion about any news
content. (Vallone, Ross and Lepper, 1985) deducted that in any controversial issue, individuals
see that any bias means that it’s against their ideology which means that the individuals own
partisanships and ideologies are influencing their perception of media bias.
Literature review

The charges that media is biased is widely spreading nowadays and you can’t find an
American who didn’t hear such a word, according to pew research center, 2012. About 68% of
the audience thinks that media is politically biased, in addition to that, the partisan lines are
biased the media content provided by news channels like fox news and MSNBC. Republicans
watch fox news, about 52% of them, while 16% of democrats watch MSNBC, 58% of them;
percentages are reversed to be only 22% of democrats watch fox news compared to 16% of
republicans watch MSNBC. In this paper we will be discussing two main points which are: how
public is affected by the politically biased news and how is the ideological bias perception
effects on the process of information introduced to the masses. The conservatives and liberals,
republicans and democrats, will be the main points used to clarify the idea of ideological or
partisan bias effect and how the public deal with it. ( Schneider & Lewis, 1985) stated that
people working in journalism are calling themselves more liberals in political matters, and
as the nature of their work requires, they select some specific information from all the news
item they got, that brings the fact that reporters and editors choose those news on a biased
way, their political beliefs interferes in their choices for the stories (Levite, 1996). In white’s
study conducted in 1950, he has given an example of bias from a New York Times report of
Nixon’s concession conference in 1962.the news reporter didn’t mention the concession
incident itself or the attack made by the press alongside some other points leaving only some
points for the audience to focus on and be aware of. The New York Times Journalist and
editor Lester Markle summed up the issue of selected information to be published that the
editor chooses about 50 facts and selects only 12 of them to use in his story which means that
he sets aside 38 of facts, then chooses which fact out of the 12 should be in the first
paragraph, focusing on one fact of 12 and finally decides which page should the story be on
the first, which will bring the most attention, or in page 12 for instance. The study which
white made, observed that some of the judgements made by journalists, editors, or reporters
are subjected to personal ideological bias. (e.g., Agnew, 1969a, 1969b; Efron, 1971; Keely,
1971; Bozell & Baker, 1990; Bozell, 1992) findings accuse media of being bias to convince
the public to choose the liberal democrats over the conservative republicans and how harmful
and damaging their beliefs and positions as well, so the media tries to drag the public to
prefer the liberal and supports their way of thinking and their causes and vote for them in
elections. Otherwise some liberal critics (Liebling, 1964/1975; Cooper & Soley, 1990; Lee &
Solomon, 1991) are accusing media of being biased to the conservatives, this accusation
based on the business nature of media in the United States of America, according to their
point of view, it is the main element determining the side to which media is biased. , Franklin
Roosevelt’s campaign manager (Farley, 1938) and presidential candidates Stevenson and
Clinton (Dennis, 1996) with others stated that although editors, publishers and reporters
might have some liberal concepts, they are controlled by publishers and owners who are
employing them, and that refers directly for the conservative. So the content has to be biased
to them and if they refused, they will be replaced by someone who will do.
The gate keeping term was coined by white (1950) to describe the selective choice of content
to be introduced to the media based upon personal ideological bias. Farley(1938) mentioned
about his concerned of what later called by gate keeping “in some sections of the country the
entire press was hostile to the Roosevelt administration” he continued saying that they
received many complaints from habitants of this area about how it’s impossible to ( get out
of the story) due to the hostile attack of press upon Roosevelt. Although gatekeeping happens
and it’s necessary safety to presume that it exists, it is hard to determine its extent, as there is
no database for such thing, if we took all the stories in the universe as the population and the
covered ones list as a sample, the selection will be biased because it’s made by individual
judgments and personal opinion. Another type of bias will be discussed is the “coverage
bias”, some studies was made (e.g., Stempel, 1969; Stempel & Windhauser, 1989; Stovall,
1985) (Batlin, 1954; Klein & Maccoby, 1954) (e.g., Doll & Bradley, 1974) in all sorts of
media; newspapers, magazines, photographs, headlines, and television, there has been
measurements made to measure time devoted on T.v or specify the inches space in the
newspaper’s column for that matter. Most of these studies were dealing with ideological bias
in politics. It is assumed that if there an electoral system of two parties, the coverage will be
fairly divided between them and anything but that will be considered as bias.

One of the approaches that give an extra emphasis on the analysis of media bias, especially
the campaigns for presidential elections is electoral coverage. The period of presidential
elections short and small but enough to have a close look on the percentage of population
through events and activities and from this statistic the content of media derived from it will
be known. We are taking Stovall (1985, 1988) technique as an example which he made to do
so. He uses a set of media outlet as a sample for stories in an event, if this succeeded in
achieving the significance of mentioning of the sample, so a search is made again on the
sample and the number of articles that has been generated is counted. That shows systematic
bias which means that if we have two-party elections the more focused on campaign will be
the one that generates larger number of story and thus, the media will be biased according to
the number of stories. Two parties introduce two qualified candidates with almost the same
level for both campaigns, the two campaigns are working hard to introduce stories, activities,
and make discussion at the exact level, there should be the same level of coverage for both
campaign and any deviation would be considered as a kind of bias. The existence of a third
party with a candidate is dealt with according to the expenses which the party pays on
campaigns to be in picture. If the media want to be unbiased, this is not likely to happen
100%, there should be public statement from both side and both should be covered equally.
Kobre (1953), Stempel (1991), and Debenport (1992), among others argued that fairly
dividing coverage between campaigns might not always be the right thing, as sometimes so
campaigns are more worthy of focusing on their news than others. Myers (1993) mentioned
that the effort made in electoral campaigns in response for each action made by the opponent
adds some kind of evenness to the activities of campaign. Moreover, Patterson (1993) said
that focusing news not issues a mark of campaign failure. In conclusion, it is so inevitable
that making fair 50-50 campaign coverage is crucial to show candidates very clearly,
elections are so important in determining the fate of a nation. Who wins the elections
becomes more powerful and brings power to his party, on the contrary, the one that loses
stays away from media and political life for a while. A study case was made by Stempel
(1991) concerning the presidential race between Eisenhower and Stevenson in 1952.
Stevenson accused media of being biased to one party, and since then, there has been
different ways for covering a campaign in many studies most of it looks at only one
campaign and one medium which made it necessary to use meta-analysis.