Media Bias

Partisan Bias

News that exhibits a partisan bias favors one political party at the expense of other political parties. In the U.S. political system, partisan bias generally alludes to reporting that unfairly favors one of the major political parties, either Democrats or Republicans. In general, when individuals accuse the media of “biased” coverage, they are usually referring to a partisan bias in political reporting.

Through much of American history, accusations of a partisan bias in the media would have made little sense, because American democracy originally rested upon an explicitly partisan press. In early American journalistic history, papers such as the Gazette of the United States openly promoted the political positions of the Federalist Party. Competitor papers, such as the National Gazette, advanced the views of the Republican Party.

However, from the 1830s to the 1870s the media began adopting nonpartisan, objective news standards. Economic reasons brought on this shift from a partisan to a nonpartisan (objective, nonbiased) style of reporting. Prior to the 1830s, most American newspapers catered to a small, elite audience. Individuals falling below the level of high society could simply not afford these expensive publications; these elite daily newspapers commonly cost 6 cents per issue. In the decade of the 1830s, the penny press arrived in the media marketplace. Penny press papers, such as the New York Herald or the Philadelphia Public Ledger, were inexpensive (a penny per issue) news dailies designed to attract a mass audience. If a newspaper's goal was to attract the largest possible audience, then [Page 434]that paper could not afford to engage in biased, partisan reporting. Such partisan news coverage would ultimately turn away certain readers. Just as a paper favoring the Democratic Party would repel Republican readers, a paper showing undue favoritism toward Republicans would discourage Democratic readers. A nonpartisan newspaper, on the other hand, could attract a larger audience comprised of citizens belonging to both political parties. The highly profitable penny presses soon discovered that less partisanship in a paper's reporting resulted in more revenues for that paper.

While the press initially pursued objectivity for economic reasons, it eventually came to view objectivity as a core journalistic value. As the news media progressed through the 20th century, objective reporting became equated with good reporting. When journalism schools today train future reporters, they place great emphasis on news reports that are objective and free of any partisan bias.

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