ABSTRACT
This chapter describes confirmation bias, and aims to understand how confirmation bias and deadline pressure affect the information-gathering process. Confirmation bias is the tendency people have to seek, interpret and remember information that reinforces their preconceptions. The gasoline additive story is useful in illustrating the effects of the confirmation bias. It shows how the actions resulting from confirmation bias can lead a reporter to unfairly portray a person or group of people in the news. Once a news event is slotted into a category in a journalist’s mind, ideas take shape about story angles and story focus. Confirmation bias is one of the more prevalent biases in human judgment. People judge the probability of an event by the ease in which instances of it can be brought to mind. The chapter discusses both the desire to be accurate as well as the expectation of accountability can improve decision-making and keep reporters from falling into the bias traps.
