Unconscious bias

Unconscious bias is something that happens to all of us live in "cognitive universe" where you make an action without know you are making such actions. The reason what makes all of us biased are, first, speakers in different languages think differently. Second, every group seems to feel discriminated against the media. Once one group thinks differently about the media, that group will interpret the information biased no matter what the actual intention of the writer was. Unconscious bias especially happens to reporters who deal with media often. They write news article everyday which allows them to easily get exposed to biases without them noticing. There are many time when unconscious biases can slip in, and the following examples are: Omission, Selection of sources, Story Selection, Placement, Labeling, Spin, and Linguistic intergroup bias. Starting with Ommission, it is when the reporters not writing certain things. Leaving one side of an article, or a series of articles over a period of time or ignoring facts that tend to disprove one side of the story can be an example of an omission. Second one is selection of sources when reporters choose whose words to highlight. This bias can be seen when a reporter uses phrases such as "experts believe", or "observers says". Third which is story selection is when reporters decide what stories do they deem worthy of. It is a pattern of highlighting news stories that coincide with the agenda of one side, while ignoring stories that coincide with the opposing side. Fourth one is placement which is a measure of how important the editor considers the story. For example, most of the readers only read the headline. Fifth one is spin when reporters choose the connotations of the word. It is a reporter's subjective comments about objective facts, making one side's perspective look better than the other. Final one is linguistic intergroup bias which is the tendency for people to categorize positive things about their group whereas they will use more of abstract expressions or negative connotations for their outgroups.

CITATION: "Scientific rhetoric": Kenneth Burke's The War of words and the detection of the conscious and unconscious biases of the mainstream news media. (n.d.). Retrieved May 2, 2023, from https://kbjournal.org/book/export/html/1181