I know the value of unbiased, honest journalism. It’s something I believe in strongly enough to have made it my career – but it’s getting harder and harder to do in our current political climate. We’ve seen journalists called out for their personal views, we’ve experienced local politicians attempting to influence media coverage and we’ve felt the pressure of being accused of our own “liberal bias” for simply providing both sides to a controversial story. But the issue of media bias isn’t really about left-leaning journalists or companies. It’s about politicians seeking to control the message that is ultimately delivered to voters. In May 2018, a group of more than 60 conservative leaders in the United States issued a joint statement full of unfounded claims of anti-conservative bias and “censorship” from social media companies, including Facebook and Google. According to the statement, the companies had “banned” conservative content from their platforms, or had “skewed search results and adjusted trending topics in ways that have harmed the right.” Though the claims were unsubstantiated, Facebook tried to appease the group by enlisting a former Republican senator and a conservative research institution to conduct a review of its practices. When that wasn’t enough to satisfy its critics, the company organized a meeting between its senior executives and three more high-ranking members of the Republican party. This wasn’t even the first time Facebook has rolled over to placate conservative criticism. CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with right-wing pundits and politicians two years earlier, after similar claims of censorship and suppression of conservative news were made by “unnamed former employees.” It’s disconcerting to see a company yield so readily to political strong-arming – especially since Facebook has such a significant influence on what information its users see and believe. Data released by news analytics company Parse.ly indicates that since February 2019, almost 28 per cent of all traffic referrals to articles about politics, law and government were generated through Facebook – by comparison, only nine per cent were from Google. That’s a substantial number of people accessing news stories through a platform that appears to cater to conservative conspiracy theorists. The claims of Facebook being a “liberal-leaning” company are demonstrably false. An analysis done in 2017 by social media engagement tracking firm NewsWhip indicated no sign of any anti-conservative bias against publishers through Facebook’s algorithm – in fact, conservative publishers actually saw 2.5 times the engagement of their liberal counterparts. And a more recent report from NewsWhip names Fox News as the most popular news outlet on Facebook so far in 2019. The role of a journalist involves holding politicians accountable for what they say and do – and sometimes, they might not like the way they are portrayed. But claiming media is biased in an effort to enforce coverage of specific political viewpoints is not an acceptable response. We need our media outlets – both social media and print media – to be honest. And that can’t happen if they continue allowing politicians to pull their strings.
