The Bias of Media Exhaustion and the death of the Queen
Media bias comes in a variety of forms. The most recognizable is political media bias. But there are several kinds of media bias that are not so obvious or do not appear to be as important than political media bias. But over time, these more subtle forms of bias have a dramatic impact on how we perceive the media and the world they present to us.
One bias is the medium itself: a newspaper, a 30-minute network TV newscast, the radio, or a newsfeed on your phone. Depending on how we consume information impacts how we interpret the information we receive. The classic example is the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy debate in which radio listeners perceived Richard Nixon the winner and TV viewers “saw” Kennedy as the winner. The visual bias of TV contrasted a vibrant Kennedy with a flu-stricken Nixon and influenced how voters felt about the candidates. Radio creates a “theater of the mind” that let people imagine what is behind the voices and sounds they hear. Print requires more attention (work) for the reader to comprehend a subject but allows for a deeper examination of the subject. Whereas, TV combines the “sight, sound, and motion” of human cues into a single information collecting experience.
The biases of each medium dominated particular historical eras and had a subtle, but significant impact on the politics of that age. Print tended to be a medium of the elite. Radio was the first medium to create instant mass-communication, demonstrated by the “fireside chats” FDR used to unite public opinion in support of the New Deal. By the 1960’s, the emotional power of television riveted a country besieged with assassinations, an unpopular war, rioting, and civil rights marches, and brought these images into the living rooms across America for the very first time. The bias of the radio let people feel a personal connection with FDR, just as the horrors of the 1960’s entered our living rooms and shaped the politics of that decade.
With the explosion of new media outlets driven by satellite and digital technology, new biases have emerged, having both a negative impact on our civic discourse and an undermining of public trust in the media. A key attribute of social media (you can decide if it’s a good or bad attribute) is the ability of people to communicate and share information without any media gatekeepers (they called them “editors” in the old days) who would curate and shape the information we consumed. With social media, the interactions are often among strangers who act has their own editor* and comment or post information with little forethought or regard for truth. Inevitably this results in disagreements and hostile interactions the more strangers interacted online (along with algorithms that accelerate this bad behavior.)
Also, the sheer number of media options people have on their many screens--combined with the traditional media values of “breaking news” scoops and market pressures to grow audiences for advertisers—has created an environment of media over saturation that exhausts news consumers. We’ve all experienced it at one time or another. “Breaking news” reports about nothing. Or a dramatic story like mass shooting or a war zone with very limited video footage, so the coverage consists of hours of the same 15-second clip and endless talking-head speculation about nothing.
Moreover, the seemingly infinite amount of traditional and digital news organizations leap into full media blitz mode to provide wall-to-wall coverage for major news event—like Queen Elizabeth II’s passing—where they compete for a finite audience by stretching superlatives that eventually snowball into absurdity. Even if a sane news executive decided to curtail coverage, the competitive pressures compels irrational behavior like producing splashy graphics and music that brand both the tragic and mundane news events
This is not to suggest that the end of Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 year reign is not worthy of momentous media coverage and that in other past eras the media of that time would not have provided “wall-to-wall” coverage. But the shear “anywhere any time” nature of our digital media environment creates a feeling—a bias—of media exhaustion, creating a mental fatigue at the amount of media we are consuming.
But the Queen’s death—and the media coverage—has not been, relatively speaking, a controversial event. Save for a few anti-monarchists pointing out the obsolesce of the institution. So, while the coverage was exhausting (the media would prefer to call it “comprehensive”), it did not spur social media wars on Facebook or Twitter similar to events like the Summer of 2020 rioting or the January 6th Insurrection. It is these events that combine more news value and controversy that produces a perfect storm of ubiquitous media coverage followed by days of intense social media reactions, that ultimately burns itself out until the next perfect media storm hits. It is this cycle that reshapes our perception as to how we see the entire media ecosystem, to the point that some people will avoid media during these periods because it creates anxiety in them.
This new media exhaustion bias continues to widen the divide between we the people and our media institutions. Putting aside the political bias of various media companies, which understandably creates distrust in the media, people are often exhausted by the shear level of media they consume, particularly when the news story generate social media wars.
Therefore, it is difficult to determine if people are dissatisfied with the media because of their media exhaustion or based on a political bias. Often these biases interact and build a deeper intractable distrust between the audience and the messenger. If we are to figure out how to devise a media construct that restores common truths in our democracy, it will be essential to understand where the distrust is coming from—a political bias or an exhaustion bias—and manage both challenges separately.