News-makers, workers and consumers all have a warm, sometimes
passionate, interest in the accuracy of news. Accusations of bias or inaccuracy
in the news media are so commonplace in the political life of
Western countries that they need little documentation. In Britain, the
tensions have surfaced most recently over the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas war
with Argentina. The government criticized coverage of the war by the BBC
and some newspapers as "over-neutral". The Sun newspaper (editorial of
7 May 1982) accused the BBC, Daily Mirror, and the Guardian of treason.
Simultaneously, the Glasgow University Media Group was documenting the
BBC's coverage as overwhelmingly pro-British (Sunday Times, 16 May
1982).
Internationally, debate on this issue has become increasingly sharp in the
past decade. The nations of the "South" or Third World have accused the
media of the "North" of consistent bias in reporting about their countries.
The question of news accuracy is thus important and salient both within
societies and between nations.
Disputes over news bias are, however, rarely resolved satisfactorily.
Opposing parties bring their overt opinions and unexamined ideologies to
an interpretation of the news. The media traditionally maintain that criticism
by two opposing sides means they must be getting it right in the middle.
The issue in all such debates invariably turns on one point: What is a true
account of the situation? What is the standard against which particular
reports can be measured? Who is to judge what were the real-world facts:
source, reporter, researcher, an independent expert, a neutral panel of
judges?