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The Bias of Network News
January 1974 • Volume 3, Number 1 • Dr Edward J Epstein
Dr Edward J Epstein
Dr. Edward J. Epstein, who
received his Ph.D. in government
from Harvard, is an author and
contributor to many magazines,
including
The New Yorker
. He
participated in the second seminar
of the Center for Constructive Alternatives during the
1973-74 academic year.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Print
E-mail
Download Issue
He delivered this position paper before a group of
Hillsdale College students and faculty.
The discussion of bias in television news almost inevitably
degenerates into assertions about the personal bias or the
personal fairness of newsmen. The assumption is always
that bias is a personal attribute of newsmen, and the
skewering of news in one direction or another can be
analyzed by adding up the personal biases of the
newsmen as if one were adding up the number of black
and white marbles in a collection. For example, recently I
attended a congressional conference on the media which
was intended to give legislators a further insight into the
problems that concern journalists. High on the agenda
was the problem of bias in television news. But when this
subject was finally broached, Theodore Kopp, a CBS News
vice president, defined the issue as follows: “I suggest that
bias lies in the eye of the beholder rather than the
newsman.” His proof was that “Walter Cronkite, and his
opposite numbers, didn’t get where they are by being
biased.” This effectively ended the discussion, since none
of the participants were interested in impeaching the
integrity of Cronkite.
Reducing the issue of bias to a simple question about the
fairness of individual newsmen not only leads to
unproductive and dead-end discussions, but it also tends
to obscure a much more serious form of bias—the bias of
the news organization itself. Just as a roulette wheel which
is mounted on a tilted table would tend to favor some
numbers over others, no matter how impartial the
croupier might be, a television network which is “tilted” in
any consistent direction because of the way it is organized
will tend to favor certain types of stories over others—no
matter how fair the newscaster might be. If one is
interested in the leanings of the table, rather than those of
newsmen, it is unnecessary to get into the bottomless
morass of judgments about personal bias. Through
examining what might be called “organization bias,” or
other contours and tilts that underlie network news, it is
possible to explain in large measure why television news
seems to flow in certain directions.
The New York Fulcrum
One of the main sub-surface features of the national news
which comes from the network is that it is filtered through
and controlled by a group of producers and editors
located in New York City. This is especially true of the
three evening newscasts—the
CBS Evening News with
Walter Cronkite
, the
NBC Nightly News with John
Chanceller
, and the
ABC Reasoner-Smith Report
—which
have a combined audience each night of more than fifty
million viewers. The events to be covered, the story line
which will be followed, the correspondent, and the editing
of the story are all tightly supervised from New York.
Avram Westin, the executive producer of ABC News,
candidly described the degree of control in a
memorandum, stating, “The senior producers decide if the
story has been adequately covered and they also estimate
how long the report should run. In most cases,
correspondents deliberately overwrite their scripts, giving
the producer at home the option of editing it down,
selecting which portions of interviews are to be used and
which elements in the narration are to be kept and which
are to be discarded…In some cases, the senior producer
‘salvages’ a report by assigning the correspondent to redo
his narration or by sending a cameraman to refilm a
sequence.”
From their common vantage point in New York, the
producers and editors at each network receive very similar
sorts of information. Most notably, all the network
decision-makers I interviewed, or observed at work, read
and relied on a single newspaper each morning—
The New
York Times
. Av Westin explained, “Like it or not, the
Times
is our Bible: it tells us what is likely to be considered to be
important by others.” Producers, editors, and
correspondents at all the networks are powerfully aware
of the fact that network executives read the
Times
and use
it as a “scorecard,” as the president of NBC News termed
the practice, in evaluating their performance. Indeed, as
Harry Reasoner wryly pointed out, the most effective way
of legitimizing a story for television is to first leak it to the
Times
—once stories are published in the
Times
, they are
considered fair game. Even though producers and news
editors are generally sophisticated men who read the
Times
with varying degrees of skepticism, almost all of
them use it to orient themselves to the “trends” and issues
in the news. In the sense that it allows them to prejudge
the relative importance of different happenings, it
provides an extremely important perspective in network
news.
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Imprimis from 1974, The Bias of Network News, by Edward J. Epstein, PhD [nc]
Support Imprimis
The Bias of Network News
January 1974 • Volume 3, Number 1 • Dr Edward J Epstein
Dr Edward J Epstein
Dr. Edward J. Epstein, who
received his Ph.D. in government
from Harvard, is an author and
contributor to many magazines,
including
The New Yorker
. He
participated in the second seminar
of the Center for Constructive Alternatives during the
1973-74 academic year.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Print
E-mail
Download Issue
He delivered this position paper before a group of
Hillsdale College students and faculty.
The discussion of bias in television news almost inevitably
degenerates into assertions about the personal bias or the
personal fairness of newsmen. The assumption is always
that bias is a personal attribute of newsmen, and the
skewering of news in one direction or another can be
analyzed by adding up the personal biases of the
newsmen as if one were adding up the number of black
and white marbles in a collection. For example, recently I
attended a congressional conference on the media which
was intended to give legislators a further insight into the
problems that concern journalists. High on the agenda
was the problem of bias in television news. But when this
subject was finally broached, Theodore Kopp, a CBS News
vice president, defined the issue as follows: “I suggest that
bias lies in the eye of the beholder rather than the
newsman.” His proof was that “Walter Cronkite, and his
opposite numbers, didn’t get where they are by being
biased.” This effectively ended the discussion, since none
of the participants were interested in impeaching the
integrity of Cronkite.
Reducing the issue of bias to a simple question about the
fairness of individual newsmen not only leads to
unproductive and dead-end discussions, but it also tends
to obscure a much more serious form of bias—the bias of
the news organization itself. Just as a roulette wheel which
is mounted on a tilted table would tend to favor some
numbers over others, no matter how impartial the
croupier might be, a television network which is “tilted” in
any consistent direction because of the way it is organized
will tend to favor certain types of stories over others—no
matter how fair the newscaster might be. If one is
interested in the leanings of the table, rather than those of
newsmen, it is unnecessary to get into the bottomless
morass of judgments about personal bias. Through
examining what might be called “organization bias,” or
other contours and tilts that underlie network news, it is
possible to explain in large measure why television news
seems to flow in certain directions.
The New York Fulcrum
One of the main sub-surface features of the national news
which comes from the network is that it is filtered through
and controlled by a group of producers and editors
located in New York City. This is especially true of the
three evening newscasts—the
CBS Evening News with
Walter Cronkite
, the
NBC Nightly News with John
Chanceller
, and the
ABC Reasoner-Smith Report
—which
have a combined audience each night of more than fifty
million viewers. The events to be covered, the story line
which will be followed, the correspondent, and the editing
of the story are all tightly supervised from New York.
Avram Westin, the executive producer of ABC News,
candidly described the degree of control in a
memorandum, stating, “The senior producers decide if the
story has been adequately covered and they also estimate
how long the report should run. In most cases,
correspondents deliberately overwrite their scripts, giving
the producer at home the option of editing it down,
selecting which portions of interviews are to be used and
which elements in the narration are to be kept and which
are to be discarded…In some cases, the senior producer
‘salvages’ a report by assigning the correspondent to redo
his narration or by sending a cameraman to refilm a
sequence.”
From their common vantage point in New York, the
producers and editors at each network receive very similar
sorts of information. Most notably, all the network
decision-makers I interviewed, or observed at work, read
and relied on a single newspaper each morning—
The New
York Times
. Av Westin explained, “Like it or not, the
Times
is our Bible: it tells us what is likely to be considered to be
important by others.” Producers, editors, and
correspondents at all the networks are powerfully aware
of the fact that network executives read the
Times
and use
it as a “scorecard,” as the president of NBC News termed
the practice, in evaluating their performance. Indeed, as
Harry Reasoner wryly pointed out, the most effective way
of legitimizing a story for television is to first leak it to the
Times
—once stories are published in the
Times
, they are
considered fair game. Even though producers and news
editors are generally sophisticated men who read the
Times
with varying degrees of skepticism, almost all of
them use it to orient themselves to the “trends” and issues
in the news. In the sense that it allows them to prejudge
the relative importance of different happenings, it
provides an extremely important perspective in network
news.
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