The Rise of Advocacy Journalism

The media has increasingly engaged in advocacy journalism. Advocacy journalism is now the norm in Australia. Its principle is that it should report in a way which helps certain groups, especially minority groups. This is the new media bias. The Australian Broadcasting Channel would be the leader of the new media bias. It makes it look not only normal, but fashionable to engage in advocacy journalism. Leigh Sales and Chris Uhlmann should win the Logies for Advocacy Journalism. I will analyse an interview between Uhlmann and Opposition Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison in a later post. 

The media uses 7 main techniques to paint a picture that makes certain groups look like they are suffering or more oppressed  than others. What if they are, you may ask. While it may be true, it is important to very carefully analyse any media report that seems factual. 

These 7 techniques are:

1. Deliberate propaganda - distortion of facts, statistic
2. Institutional bias - reporting of events based on the ideological framework of the media organisation. The media organisation is too arrogant to accept that the views of others may also be legitimate. 
3. Sensationalism - appeal to the emotion rather than reason. These reports tend to use dramatic sound and visual effects to make people feel more emotional towards the people. They tend to make the audience either feel disdain towards the archtypical criminal and sympathy towards young attractive women who behave inappropriately.
4. Omission - leaving out facts or phrases made by interviewees that would distort the picture. Look very carefully whenever a news show like 7:30 report presents a taped interview
5. Political correctness or sensitivity - fear of offending certain racial, cultural, religious groups. They tend to downplay the unacceptable actions of people of minorities while thinking it is acceptable to blame the dominant groups for the problems and struggles faced by minorities. Totally unacceptable in the eyes of anti-minoritarians.
6. Confirmation bias - facts are presented in way that represents different groups in the light that the majority thinks they are. It reinforces negative stereotypes of dominant groups and positive (erroneous) stereotypes of "minority" groups
7. Audience bias - the media organisation knows that most of its audience have a certain ideology and hence, present stories that only present facts from its framework. This is why some media websites ask its viewers about their age, gender, residence, political parties, views about certain issues, etc. These factors influence a person's views.