How Media Bias Works

Many people who follow news sources other than the mainstream media have been appalled by the recent Planned Parenthood videos. The videos are edited, but it has been acknowledged that the unedited versions confirm that Planned Parenthood is selling aborted baby body parts. So why hasn’t there been outrage? Have we become that calloused? Well, maybe, maybe not. It seems that people who depend on the mainstream media for their news sources may not be aware of the videos.

On Wednesday, The Daily Signal posted an article about a CNN interview about an abortion poll taken in America.

The article reports:

A May 2015 Gallup poll asked, “Should abortion be legal?” Here’s how the numbers broke down:

Twenty-nine percent said abortion should be legal under any circumstances.

Fifty-one percent said abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances.

Nineteen percent said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.

Here’s what Camerota (CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota) said:

“That’s 80 percent of respondents who believe abortion should be kept legal.” (She added together the 29 percent who said abortion should be legal in any circumstance and 51 percent who said it should be allowed only in certain circumstances.)

Here’s what Camerota could have said:

“That’s 70 percent of Americans who believe there should be limits on abortion.” (Adding together the 51 percent who said it should be legal only in certain circumstances and the 19 percent who said it should not be legal under any circumstances.)

Those who identify as pro-choice are more inclined to report the poll the way CNN did, and those who identify as pro-life are likely to use the latter number—the point being, in this particular poll and many others, you can “interpret the data” to get the spin you want.

The article further noted that CNN had omitted the answers to the following poll question:

Have you seen or heard recent news about videos that supposedly show Planned Parenthood employees discussing the sale of aborted fetus tissue, or not?”

Here were the responses:

Only 27 percent said they had heard a lot.

Only 21 percent said they had heard a little.

But 53 percent of respondents said they had not heard about the story at all.

I wonder how different the other answers in the poll about fetal tissue research and defunding Planned Parenthood would have been if the 74 percent of people who had heard or seen little to nothing had indeed seen the videos.

This is how media bias works.