Training Your Kids About Media Bias

I believe it's important to train your kids about media bias -- the simple truth is that most journalistic media accounts and other presentations they'll see have some bias. Learning to work through the bias is a key aspect of thinking critically and wisely.

One issue is that it's very difficult to present a complete story. On the evening news, a feature story might take 3-4 minutes. How much of a complex issue can you cover in 3-4 minutes? So the format itself creates bias by imposing limitations. Even in very long newspaper articles, you usually find incomplete representation of all perspectives on a story. So training your children to ask the questions "What didn't they include?" and "Is there another perspective?" is helpful.

Journalism is better at presenting the sensational and the different, than the ordinary and the steady. Frankly, most journalism in free countries is really driven by advertisers looking for audience size and attention. Therefore, help your children understand that the news is not representative of the whole. For example, if there is a plane crash, you can remind everyone in your family that tens of thousands of flights didn't crash today. That's ordinary, and therefore not newsworthy. I bring this up because reading the newspaper or watching the evening news can leave people with the feeling that everything is out of control and spinning badly -- which simply is not true.

The people writing or producing a news story have biases and filters (just like you and me -- they're human). Train your children to consider the point of view in a news story. Gene Veith says this well: "Notice the POINT OF VIEW of a story; that is, not just the ideas as such, but, as in literature, the character through whose mind everything is presented. Who is the “us” and who is the “them”?"

And I think you need to be candid about our own biases and filters. It says something that I have to force myself to read NY Times articles and consider the perspectives presented there, but do not have the same difficulty with the WSJ opinion page.

Our kids are going to have a lot of information thrown at them, and demand quick decisions and allegiance. Therefore give them guidance on evaluating information, and you immediately help them make better decisions.

What tips do you have about helping your kids with media bias?