I work in an industry where messaging is king of the universe; entire companies' marketing strategies hinge on getting out the right message to the right people at the right time. Consider post-holiday PPC ad copy from BMI Baby (an airline based in the UK). Their audience is largely made up of bargain hunters, so they play to that with compelling ad copy; their offer ends midnight tonight. It's not surprising that media news outlets pioneered the play to your audience model with a bias shaped collaboratively; Fox News appeals to people with a right-leaning persuasion, and people of a right-leaning persuasion flock to Fox News.
Certainly, my own bias informs how I view the world. While most of us would like to be considered open minded, it's difficult to extract your culture, nationality, religion and upbringing when adding perspective to any issue or project. When working in the travel vertical, I found that re-wiring my brain to say "car hire" instead of "car rental" took a bit longer than expected (thank goodness that didn't apply when I had to drive a car on the other side of the road, but that's another post). Of course, I have a uniquely Canadian need to tell anyone who will listen which actor in the movie is Canadian (answer: all the best ones), and I know that my North American-ness can ruffle some more proper British feathers from time to time. So that's a personal leaning, but when do major news outlets shelve bias or bring it out for all to see?
The situation in Israel and Gaza is hard to ignore. It is, with one exception (
CCTV China), the leading story on every news channel I have access to in the United Kingdom. From channel to channel, the message differs significantly. Take Fox News as the first example. Generally perceived to be taking the side of Israel, Fox proclaims that Hamas militants have started firing fresh rockets into southern Israel:
France24 generally seems to be sympathetic towards Israel (I was surprised), with messaging that indicates Israel has strategically targeted Hamas' power base:
Moving a centimeter to the left,
Sky News leads with a banner on UN Secretary-General
Ban Ki-Moon calling for an immediate ceasefire (although the correspondent was speaking live from
Ashkelon):
Several times in the past, the
BBC has been accused of rampant
anti-Israel bias, often drawing fierce condemnation from other media outlets and journalism watch groups who have gone as far as accusing the BBC of a campaign to vilify Israel. Last night, while briefly mentioning verbally that Israeli action was a result of continued rocket fire into Gaza, the news ticker read that Israel was continuing its attacks on the Gaza Strip, suggesting to the casual channel surfer that there wasn't another side to the story:
On the far side of the pro/anti Israel bias,
Al Jazeera was quick in its condemnation of Israeli military action by telling viewers that Israel was continuing its "assault" on Gaza for the third day in a row:
Of course, people don't expect pro-Israel reporting from Al Jazeera. They have sculpted their message for maximum audience outrage factor, and have fed their audience's pre-existing bias. Similarly, audiences don't expect Fox News to be pro-Gaza; they pander to a post-9/11 red, white and blue audience who generally vote Republican and are very tuned in to the perceived threat of terrorism. No news issue seems to polarize more than the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it's a good time to take a reading of the more centric news outlets and our own shaped bias from the news we choose to watch.
This post isn't supposed to be a criticism of Al Jazeera's anti-Israel bias nor is it praise for Fox's pro-Israel bias. It's more to enlighten us to the different ways things can be perceived depending on how our bias dictates our perception. It's something to consider when we shape our own messages, whether that be in business or in casual conversations or even across the blogosphere. I'm interested to see how much of our message is tailored to both medium and audience, and how we perceive to be perceived by the way we make our points.
