The media, a name tag I have to admit to, knows how to slant a story and slanting a story to the way the Editor in Chief, columnist, media owner, etc, wants is now the norm.

One only has to read or view the news coverage given by nearly all the US networks (and even the UK ones) to President Trump is very obvious. Any good piece of news Trump has originated is countered immediately by some outdated negative ‘news’.

Unfortunately, it is not just overseas. Rooster’s coverage of anything the present government does is countered by adverts with soundbites from opposition members casting doubts from over spending, lack of transparency and much gloom and doom.

On a slightly lesser scale I had to wince at another media’s headline that blazed out with “Government earnings up, but immigration fees lag by $2.9 million.” Note a figure is given to the negative but not to the positive. You have to read the story to find “The Cayman Islands government earned $16.3 million more than it expected during the first three months of 2018”.

So, why the emphasis on the negative? ………!!!

When I was brought up facts were the only things reported. Conjecture was left to Editorials or Opinion pieces. One always headlined the greater over the smaller. To slant a story was a no no. Journalists should always be neutral.

That is something I have tried to do here and when I owned CITN/Cayman27. Interestingly, the person who tried to slant a story when I was there, and I overruled him/her, got an award from the very person he/she was negatively aiming at.

What a cruel world.

However, we live in a country where governments don’t influence, including overt and covert censorship, biases.

In the UK, the government own the BBC, here the government owns Radio Cayman, but if any, interference is small. On the other extreme, look at North Korea, China and Russia. And they are just the tip of the iceberg.

Even advertisers exert their punishment on the media houses if they don’t like something.

Some countries have watchdog groups that report on bias in the media. Even there, though, there is bias.

I have always had a problem with media houses openly supporting a political party but this is done all over the world, and executed even when I was a young lad in England.

Apart from this, other forms of media bias according to Wikipedia are:

Coverage bias (also known as visibility bias), when actors or issues are more or less visible in the news.
Gatekeeping bias (also known as selectivity or selection bias), when stories are selected or deselected, sometimes on ideological grounds. It is sometimes also referred to as agenda bias, when the focus is on political actors and whether they are covered based on their preferred policy issues.
Statement bias (also known as tonality bias or presentation bias), when media coverage is slanted towards or against particular actors or issues.
Other common forms of political and non-political media bias include:

Advertising bias, when stories are selected or slanted to please advertisers.
Concision bias, a tendency to report views that can be summarized succinctly, crowding out more unconventional views that take time to explain.
Corporate bias, when stories are selected or slanted to please corporate owners of media.
Mainstream bias, a tendency to report what everyone else is reporting, and to avoid stories that will offend anyone.
Sensationalism, bias in favor of the exceptional over the ordinary, giving the impression that rare events, such as airplane crashes, are more common than common events, such as automobile crashes.
Structural bias, when an actor or issue receives more or less favorable coverage as a result of newsworthiness and media routines, not as the result of ideological decisions (e.g., incumbency bonus).
False balance, when an issue is presented as even sided, despite disproportionate amounts of evidence.
Other forms of bias include reporting that favors or attacks a particular race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnic group, or even person.

I have my own bias, however, when it comes to news reporting I strive to show all sides. If you can point anywhere over the twenty-five years I have been involved in the media here I have slanted stories (excluding editorials) I would like to know.