Articles About Internews

Bias in media seen across the globe

February 27, 2008

To simultaneously have a conservative bias and a liberal bias is not an easy task. But ‘the mainstream media’ — whatever that is — apparently manages it since both wings of our nation repeatedly claim media bias against themselves. So what are we to make of it?

A great many of us believe our media sources lack objectivity.  A recent Transparency International survey of the British and American people showed that the only entities we believe to be more corrupt than the media are our political parties.

Yes, the same facts reported with different emphases can make John McCain a patriotic war hero or grumpy old man, Barack Obama an inspirational leader or all pretty words, and immigration the beginning of our nation or the end of it. But if we don’t like the Globe, we can read the Herald, and if we don’t like Limbaugh we can listen to NPR. So choice balances it out and we needn’t fuss too much about impartiality.

Yes, we need fuss. Boston might have the luxury of the language we use on air not meaning literal life and death but, in other parts of the world, compromise of the same principle means exactly that. The buzz is that this week – possibly later today -- some form of peace accord will be reached in Kenya. The way that it is reported will be key.  With more than 1000 people killed, 250,000 displaced, journalists were overwhelmed and underprepared for it.

Radio permitted bitter hate speech from both Luo and Kikuyu which spread panic and anger from airwaves that could have promoted calm and composure. Journalists, tribal like everyone else, came under serious pressure from their home tribe to say what was expected of them. Objectivity was immensely difficult to maintain but was desperately needed.

“Journalists were floundering,” said Ida Joost of Internews, an agency training journalists in developing countries. “We felt a calling to help them, and to have a discussion about the impact of their reporting and of the language used.”

Internews held a roundtable with reporters in January and had a second session yesterday. “Internews helped me to reclaim my profession,” said one radio journalist, acknowledging he had let slip the ethics of fairness and equality.

In the spiraling from election to deeply sectarian violence in Kenya, such slippage is tragic, but maybe understandable. Here it’s just tragic. 

MORE INFORMATION: