Journalistic Bias in a Free Society
ABSTRACT
This conference looked at the role of journalistic bias in the media, including both its positive and negative aspects. Readings included classic texts on journalism as well as contemporary social science and neuroscience literature on how humans perceive and use bias.
READING LIST
From Liberty Fund
The State of the Union
by
By Albert Jay Nock
Edited and with a Foreword by Charles H. Hamilton
This collection is the first chosen from Albert Jay Nock’s entire work and the first new collection in nearly thirty-five years. It includes his best-known essays, some outstanding but neglected articles, and previously unpublished material.
Additional Readings
Beato, Greg. "The Spin We Love to Hate: Do we really want news without a point of view?" Reason (December 2008): 2. http://reason.com/archives/2008/11/11/the-spin-we-love-to-hate (accessed January 22, 2010).
Caplan, Bryan. The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Ehrlinger, Joyce, Thomas Gilovich, and Lee Ross. "Peering Into the Bias Blind Spot: People's Assessments of Bias in Themselves and Others." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31, no. 5 (2005): 680-692.
Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. New York: Dover, 2004 [1922].
Patterson, Thomas E. "Doing Well and Doing Good: How Soft News and Critical Journalism Are Shrinking the News Audience and Weakening Democracy—And What News Outlets Can Do About It." KSG Working Paper No. 01-001 (December 2000): 1-28. http://ssrn.com/abstract=257395 (accessed January 22, 2010).
Sunstein, Cass R. “Private Broadcasters and the Public Interest: Notes Toward a "Third Way".” Chicago Law & Economics Working Paper No. 65 (April 1999): 1-71. http://ssrn.com/abstract=143174 (accessed January 22, 2010).
Westen, Drew, Pavel S. Blagov, Keith Harenski, Clint Kilts, and Stephan Hamann. "Neural Bases of Motivated Reasoning: An fMRI Study of Emotional Constraints on Partisan Political Judgment in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 18, no. 11 (2005): 1947-1958.
Wilson, Timothy D. and Nancy Brekke. "Mental Contamination and Mental Correction: Unwanted Influences on Judgments and Evaluations." Psychological Bulletin 116 (1994): 117-142.
Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. New York: Vintage, 1995.