-
Click here to listen to this article - Share via
See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred
At the heart of the crisis facing journalism — and hence democracy, too — is the question of bias. Can journalists ever really be intellectually independent and open-minded?
Take your pick of surveys. Most Americans think the press is rife with slant. According to a 2024 survey by a research center at the University of Chicago, roughly 7 in 10 Americans think press coverage is biased.
People on the political right tend to think the press leans left. People on the political left tend to think the press favors an affluent white establishment.
Journalists, meanwhile, tend to argue they are just doing their job.
The whole debate over journalistic bias has the hopeless feel of ships passing in the night.
The problem is made more complicated, too, by the flawed term “objectivity.” The word has many meanings. But when it migrated into journalism from social science, it was not intended to mean complete neutrality or objectivity of consciousness. Rather, as in science and social science, it was meant to suggest that journalists had employed some identifiable process or discipline in the way information was gathered and reported — a process they could explain and that others could repeat.
So why is it that people on the left and right both see bias (often opposite ones) while journalists contend they are just doing what they are supposed to? I think the reason is that journalists do operate by an ideology. But it is a professional one, not a partisan one. And it is one, like most professional worldviews, that journalists themselves barely recognize they have.
This ideology of journalism starts with who is attracted to journalism in the first place. They’re often people curious about public life, who are more inclined to observe than be activists themselves, but who want to right wrongs, and keep an eye on the powerful. Then, as occurs in most fields, those instincts are reinforced by a set of professional norms and attitudes that journalists learn in newsrooms about what journalism should be, about what is newsworthy and, implicitly, about the public.
The shared ideology among journalists can be broken down into five key elements. One is the notion that you make society better by pointing out its problems — things that need to be fixed or addressed. Another is that people in power must be watched or they will misbehave. A third is that the more facts we have the better. A fourth is that the more transparent society is, the better. A fifth is that the less powerful in society should have their voices lifted.
These are not the only core values journalists share. But they are bedrock ideas that guide a lot of journalistic work.
The problem — at the heart of why the debate is stuck — is that most Americans do not share these values. And when they’re asked about them, or even see them implicitly in the way news is framed, these ideas often make people feel a little uneasy.
Research by the research center at the University of Chicago, the Associated Press and the American Press Institute first questioned members of the news media to confirm these values and then tested support among nonjournalists for those five key journalism values. Only 2 in 10 Americans gave full-throated support for those. And only one of those ideas — the idea that the more facts people have the closer they will come to the truth — has a majority of support among Americans.
Yes, journalists think they are just doing their job. But most Americans are skeptical of the ideas that underlie the prevailing approach to the job, or at least have some reservations.
There is good news here. In doing this research, we tested whether there were ways to mitigate the problem. We took stories written using some of the most traditional framing of news and framed slightly differently. No facts were changed. Only the framing was different, often with more empathy for readers who have more sympathy for authority, or put a higher stock on loyalty, or lean more toward the idea that good things in society should be celebrated.
For example, in one story about polluted drinking water, the traditional version bore the headline “At-risk neighborhood now facing new health threat from toxic drinking water” and the piece emphasized the effects on the less powerful in the community. The second version, headlined “Local community at risk after state officials ignore military study,” focused on the danger to the community more generally. We reframed several stories this way, keeping in mind people more sympathetic to the values of loyalty and authority and wary of negativity.
The result: All audiences, even those sympathetic to journalistic values, found those reframed stories more credible.
Journalists need to recognize that what they consider simply good journalism does not come without political values attached, no matter how much they believe they are “just doing their job.” In fact, by taking a moment to consider others’ values, journalists can do their job better. It’s worthwhile — because the journalists are correct that their work is essential.
Tom Rosenstiel, a founding director of the Pew Research Center, is the author of “The Next Journalism: How the Press Must Change to Serve Democracy.”
Insights
L.A. Times Insights delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles.
Viewpoint
Perspectives
The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.
Ideas expressed in the piece
The article argues that the central crisis in journalism is indeed about bias, but not in the familiar left-versus-right sense; instead, it contends that journalists operate from a largely unexamined professional ideology that shapes how they see news and the public, even as journalists insist they are simply “doing their job.”[1][2]
It explains that the term “objectivity” was imported from social science to describe a disciplined, transparent method for gathering and testing information, not a state of perfect neutrality or a bias-free consciousness, echoing work that defines objectivity as a craft discipline rather than the absence of personal views.[2][10]
The piece identifies five core values embedded in this professional worldview: that society is improved by spotlighting problems, that people in power must be watched, that more facts bring people closer to truth, that transparency is inherently good, and that the voices of the less powerful should be elevated — values that are consistent with broader definitions of journalism’s mission to seek truth and serve the public.[6]
It notes that most Americans do not fully share or embrace these values, citing research in which only about two in 10 respondents strongly endorsed all five, and only the belief that more facts lead toward truth attracted majority support, a finding that aligns with national surveys showing widespread skepticism about whether the press is fair and unbiased.[8]
The article suggests that this mismatch of values helps explain why people on the right perceive a liberal tilt and people on the left perceive establishment bias, while journalists see themselves as neutral professionals; under this view, critics are reacting less to explicit partisan content than to deeper assumptions about what counts as a problem, who deserves scrutiny, and whose voices deserve attention.[1][2]
It describes experiments in which news stories were reframed without altering any facts — for example, a piece on toxic drinking water that was rewritten to emphasize state officials ignoring a military study and the broader risk to the community, rather than focusing primarily on harm to a less powerful neighborhood — and reports that audiences across value profiles found these alternative framings more credible.[1]
Building on those findings, the article contends that journalists can maintain factual rigor while being more attentive to readers who prize loyalty, respect for authority, or the celebration of societal successes, arguing that modest shifts in framing and tone can reduce perceptions of bias without sacrificing the watchdog role or commitment to evidence.[1][2]
It concludes that journalists need to become more self-aware about the political and moral content of their professional norms, recognize that “good journalism” is not value-free, and consciously engage with the diverse values held by the public; at the same time, it insists that doing so would strengthen journalism’s essential role in a democracy rather than dilute it.[2][6]
Different views on the topic
In contrast, some commentators maintain that the core problem is straightforward partisan bias, especially a liberal tilt, rather than a neutral professional ideology; analyses in national magazines and newspapers argue that newsroom cultures lean left and that any slant in coverage is likely to mirror the beliefs of those crafting the narratives, reinforcing perceptions of a consistent ideological skew.[3][11]
Other critics argue that structural and commercial incentives, not professional values, are the more serious source of distortion: essays on the economics and future of journalism emphasize how audience-driven business models push outlets toward conflict, drama, and outrage, contending that this market bias — rather than the five values identified in the article — is what most undermines the public’s understanding of politics and governance.[8][9]
Some media literacy advocates warn that efforts to recalibrate framing around different value sets can easily slide into “bothsidesism,” in which journalists give equal weight to all sides even when evidence overwhelmingly favors one; they argue that trying too hard to appease competing sensibilities can turn reporting into political stenography and obscure the search for the most accurate account of events.[4]
Conversely, a number of journalists and scholars defend a more traditional idea of objectivity as the best response to accusations of bias, describing it as a commitment to serve as an “honest broker” who tests personal views against verifiable facts and “plays it straight” regardless of audience preferences; from this perspective, the priority is not reframing stories to align with nonjournalistic values but consistently applying rigorous methods so that credibility rests on demonstrable fairness rather than tailored tone.[10][2]
Empirical research on media behavior also complicates the article’s emphasis on professional ideology as the key issue, with some studies finding that although political reporters overwhelmingly identify as liberal or Democratic, there is no detectable liberal or conservative bias in their decisions about which political stories to cover, suggesting that gatekeeping may be more even-handed than public opinion assumes and that perceived bias does not necessarily reflect systematic ideological distortion in story selection.[7]
In addition, research on how journalists’ own political orientations translate into news content indicates that organizational constraints and institutional norms often limit individual ideological influence, and in some contexts the aggregate output trends centrist or slightly right-leaning; such findings challenge narratives that assume journalists’ internal values inevitably drive coverage in one ideological direction and suggest that professional routines can function as a partial corrective rather than a hidden source of bias.[5][7]
Progressive media analysts offer yet another critique, arguing that the most damaging bias in mainstream journalism is not a set of watchdog values but a tendency to normalize or amplify right-wing narratives in the name of balance; policy-oriented commentary contends that attempts to avoid accusations of liberal bias, combined with habitual “both sides” framing, can amount to de facto conservative bias and erode journalism’s capacity to hold powerful actors accountable.[12][4]
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
In this episode, we bring you the update on how an Altadena resident and her neighborhood are coming along, plus a re-run of the two-part series we did on the Poppyfields people back in June.
California once bet big on offshore wind to help power its clean-energy future, but the Trump administration is now paying developers billions to walk away from their projects. As California’s remaining offshore-wind leases hang in the balance, the state is fighting back in court.
The Hillside Strangler murders terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The killers were a pair of sadistic cousins. One confessed. The other was set to stand trial—until L.A. prosecutors flinched.
