Hidden Bias: Part 2

There Are Different Kinds of Biases, as The TImes Shows in Its Take on the Border

Immigration is among the most emotional issues we face as a nation, with American attitudes showing an incredible elasticity in their opinions, depending on the words and images used by the media to explain what may be happening at the nation’s borders.

Consider the history of Gallup’s polling on the issue, presented in this graph:

The numbers in recent years swing up and down. During the summer of 2014, as the numbers of unaccompanied minors attempting to enter the country swelled, support for increased immigration fell, while support for immigrants increased during the Trump years. I can only speculate as to what drove these numbers, though the way in which immigrants and immigration were presented in the news media might offer some clues.

During the summer of 2014, the increase in unaccompanied migrant children often was portrayed in military terms — a “surge,” sometimes as an “invasion.” The system was “overwhelmed,” the argument went, and few policy prescriptives when beyond the notion of control.

Simply, immigration was presented as a crisis, as a problem, as something to be contained. Perhaps the polling reflected a public internalizing this language and the arguments the language implied.

The Trump years saw a different approach to coverage. While outlets like Fox joined Republicans in vilifying border crossers, mainstream news agencies focused on the images of kids in cages, on the inhumanity of Trump’s assault on immigrants and the immigration system. The coverage humanized immigrants, and the polling showed an upward spike in support. This may have been more correlation than causation, but I suspect research would show otherwise.

I posted a critique yesterday of a Friday story in The Washington Post. I argued that the Post story was biased in favor of “national security hawks,” and that it “normaliz(ed) the Trump administration’s crackdown on the border.” There were no comments from immigrants or their advocates, and the language itself underscored the argument that immigration must be controlled, that immigrants’ “movement north is a crisis for the United States.”

After posting my annotation of The Post story, I came across a story in The New York Times, which addresses the same issue. The Times story avoids using the kind of damaging language present in the Post story, but its word choice, structure, and choice of sources also betray a bias. In this case, it is a bias toward bureaucracy and political framing, toward making the story about the nuts and bolts of government and elections.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with this framing. We must debate the policies and the systems we put in place. But, as with the Post story, the absence of the immigrants themselves create a void in our understanding. The stories of those making the trip — their descriptions of life in the homes they left, of the difficulties they faced in making their decision to leave and that they met on the route north, of what they hope to find in the United States — are integral to our understanding of how the current system works (and doesn’t), and what changes might mean.

I’m not arguing that every story has to focus on individual immigrants, but we should find ways to get them or their advocates into these stories because they are major stakeholders in the issue. This is about more than just Biden, his administration, the Republicans, and the elections. It is about the immigrants themselves, the communities at the border, the impact that immigration may have on jobs and workers, etc.

I teach my students to answer the five Ws — who, what, where, when, and why — by first considering the audience for and the purpose of their stories. Who are they writing for? What does the audience need from the story? And so on. I sometimes think the major news outlets, the national reporters, because of their distance from readers and viewers, have forgotten this.

Here is my annotation of The Times story. Compare it to The Post’s. Make up your own minds.