Lean Left bias
According to the Pew Research Center’s study of news audiences, 37% of ABC News readers’ political values lean to the left. The remaining 41%, or 26%, hold neutral or right-of-center views. This finding is consistent with other recent studies on media bias.
But the ABC’s corporate responsibility to provide fair, accurate, and impartial news does not stop there. It also has an ethical duty to hold the government to account. However, the company has repeatedly refused to confront its left-wing bias.
Despite being a public broadcaster, the corporation is not free to choose other ethical principles, and there is no way around this. Ultimately, the choice is between protecting the public and promoting the public interest.
In addition to presenting the public with unbiased news, the organization also assesses the political bias of media outlets. According to the Factual, ABC News has a moderate to strong liberal bias.
The Factual’s algorithm looks at selected words and phrases for their emotive value and perceived bias. It assigns a “0” to the most opinionated texts, while a “1” indicates the most neutral.
The right has long sought to privatise the ABC, and has repeatedly called for the government to defund it. In fact, the Liberal Party annual council passed a motion calling for ABC privatisation in 2018.
The right has not waited for the government to take action, and has reacted to the media’s actions by targeting key accounts and promoting their message to the media ecosystem.
The ABC is owned by Walt Disney Television and the Walt Disney Company, so its ownership might not be a factor in ABC’s bias.
But the CEO of Walt Disney, Bob Chapek, has said that Disney stands for values. This is clear from the fact that the corporation has a commitment not to make campaign contributions to politicians who oppose the 2020 presidential election certification process.
The authors of the study used a statistical model to rank news organizations by their partisan leanings. They compared the ad-supported stories with the non-affiliated news outlets.
They found that the news outlets with an advertising relationship with the brand covered negative events less than non-affiliated ones. But the authors stressed that the relationship was modest.
This study also examined the coverage of presidential approval polls on the television networks. The results showed that ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox tended to favor positive news about the Clinton campaign. In contrast, CBS and NBC tended to favor bad news about the Bush administration. Meanwhile, Fox favored reverse news about the Bush presidency.
Center bias
A recent study by AllSides found that ABC news has a lean left bias. The study measured the content of the website and television program.
It found that 37% of ABC News viewers were “leaning left” while 21% were “leaning right.” The authors concluded that, overall, ABC News is a “mixed” news service, and the ratings indicate that many viewers are unaware of their bias.
Despite widespread accusations of left-wing bias, this network is one of the three main legacy networks. The network has a long-standing tradition of nonpartisan reporting.
Although some critics have characterized the network as being biased against conservatives and Democrats, independent studies have shown that ABC is the most balanced among the Big Three networks.
In general, ABC News is considered a reliable source of news. Some of its headlines are moderately loaded, such as President Trump’s praise for Greg Gianforte.
In addition, the bias in story selection skews to the left, and stories that are favorable to the right are underrepresented. However, ABC News has a high level of credibility, and the majority of its journalists use credible sources to gather information.
In a recent study, Gans and Leigh measured the degree of ideological bias in television and newspaper audiences. While the average respondent leans slightly to the left, the audience of ABC News is closer to that of the average survey respondent. On the other hand, the New Yorker has a far more liberal audience.
The media bias narrative is not new, and the study found a wide-spread bias across media. The study examined the coverage of presidential approval polls and the mainstream news programs of ABC, CBS, and NBC. Despite the findings, fact-checking websites are growing in number.
This increase in fact-checking websites is linked to the polarization of news coverage in the United States and the proliferation of disinformation and overt lying by politicians.
Left bias
The left’s attacks on the ABC are no longer a surprise; it has been a trend for several years. Liberals have conditioned ABC news reviewers to confirm their stereotypes, and television reporters rush to use Coalition talking points and facile “both sides” arguments. Nevertheless, the left is not just attacking the ABC; they are also attacking their own journalists, too.
A January 2013 Blind Bias Survey conducted by AllSides found that ABC News had a Lean Left bias based on its website content alone.
The site had a raw score of 1.79 and a normalized score of 1.83. Another study, done at UCLA in 2005, rated ABC News as “Lean Left” based on a combination of its website and television news program.
Another recent Pew Research Study analyzed the political values of news audiences, and found that 37% of the audience of ABC News has a political inclination that is more liberal than its rivals.
A third of the audience is mixed, while a quarter is right-of-center. Despite the biases of ABC News reviewers, the majority of its audience still trusts its coverage.
In terms of credibility, ABC News scores fairly well compared to other mainstream news sources. It has moderately loaded headlines, such as “President Trump praises Greg Gianforte” or “President Trump backs Greg Gianforte.”
Despite the fact that the news organization sources information from trustworthy sources, its reporting is influenced by a left-leaning agenda.
The study’s methodology uses four factors to rank news organizations by their liberal versus conservative values. Some articles scored as high as 80% and others as low as 60 percent.
The first factor is the amount of opinion expressed in an article. The algorithm looks for subjective commentary and emotional nature of selected words. The less opinionated text scores higher, while the most neutral text scores lower.
CBS News and USA Today scored well with Democrats, while the opposite happened for Republicans. While both the Republicans and the Democrats thought the network was trustworthy, they rated the Wall Street Journal as unreliable. However, there was no consensus on whether NBC or USA Today was biased, according to the survey.
For more information on media bias, check out The Media Bias Rating. This will help you determine whether a particular outlet has a conservative, liberal, or moderate leaning. Using this method, you can easily identify the news outlets that are biased in a particular direction.
