ABSTRACT
Media consumers seem inherently inclined to attribute bias to the news media, regardless of whether it exists. During presidential campaigns, for example, Republicans invariably perceive the news media to possess a liberal bias, whereas Democrats reading the same newspapers tend to say that the coverage is much more favorable to the Republican candidate. This phenomenon is well known as selective perception. Davison (1983) noted the role of our tendency to believe the media are biased against our side of an issue or campaign, explaining that a “balanced media presentation would require a sharp tilt toward the ‘correct’ side of the issue,” which might allow us to presume that even “the intellectual frailty of third persons” could manage to develop the right cognitions about the issue (p. 11).
