1. News Content: Four Information Biases That Matter
    Madison Papple     Peter Organisciak     CMST 4N03
News Content: Four Information Biases That Matter

2. Introduction
Information Bias: a type of news bias that favours simplified, surface details over more complex realities.
4 Biases
Personalization
Dramatization
Fragmentation
Authority-Disorder Bias

3. Personalization
 Personalized News - “the journalistic bias that gives preference to individual actors and human-interest angles in events over larger insttitutional, social, and political contexts” (Bennett, 2004).

4. Personalization cont.
Downplays the bigger picture, emphasizes key players
Creation of the passive audience
Main Problem: Shallow portrayal of current events
How?  1. The Brand Identity  2. Personal Life
Example: Bill Clinton to aid Hillary's campaign

5. Dramatization
“News dramas emphasize crisis of continuity, the present over the past or future, and the personalities at their center” (Bennett, 2004).
Flashy headlines and shocking photographs
"Live Action"
Serious social problems lost in the drama
Crises
Example: "Tornado cluster kills at least 50 in U.S."

6. The Bet
"In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site."

7. The Result
Wikipedia wins?!
    Why?

8. Fragmentation
the isolation of stories from each other and from their larger contexts (42)
individuals over the broader scope
erases history by making events self-contained
details are brushed aside or retold through archetypal frames

9. Authority Disorder
News is preoccupied with order and how is it challenged
evening news syndrome: death, mayhem, political crisis, failures in the system, doubt...
politicians over policies
Concentration on authority figures
Example: Huckabee's Happy Spears Is Keeping Her Baby

10. Why does it happen? Consider these 3 Propositions
Journalists try to simplify complex stories
Journalists try to be (or appear) objective
Journalists must be able to keep stories alive even when there are no new developments

11. The Future: Is there hope?
    Bennett says it doesn’t look good
    Why not?
    But, what about...
Civic Journalism >> Citizen Journalism >> Pro-Am Journalism

12. Conclusion To Summarize:
News tends to prefer the personalized drama, at the expense of context
These information biases naturally follow current journalistic practices
To change the biases, the method needs to be considered