By Conor Kilgore, Project on Ethics in Political Communication
Americans across the political spectrum criticize the news media’s performance. You can find Republicans who believe that CNN, MSNBC, or the Washington Post are wholly owned propaganda arms of the Democratic Party. You can find Democrats who believe the same for Fox News or the Wall Street Journal and the Republican Party. These views may, or may not, match what independent observers find about media bias.
People concerned about bias agree the core mission of news organizations should be to pass along relevant information in as non-partisan and complete a way as possible. A 2018 Pew Research Center study found that 78 percent of Americans believed it was “never acceptable” for news organizations to “favor one political party over others when reporting the news.”
A media ethics case study from the University of Texas at Austin quotes media ethicist Stephen J.A. Ward, who said, “Journalists are engaged and advocates for what? For dialogic democracy….” If Ward is right, a journalist’s agenda is not political – the agenda is providing information to help people make informed political decisions. Given this, when a partisan political organization launches a purportedly objective news website ethical questions arise.
This is exactly what happened when Facebook shut down a political news site, Courier Newsroom. According to Axios, Courier Newsroom is an apparent news website funded by ACRONYM, a progressive political organization. Courier Newsroom ran stories appearing to be “hard news” with favorable portrayals of vulnerable Democratic members of Congress. As POLITICO’s Alex Thompson reported, an April 2020 headline read “Rep. Max Rose Deploys With National Guard to Get Hospital Ready For Coronavirus Patients.” Thompson wrote: “The article — boosted into circulation in New York by thousands of dollars in targeted Facebook ads — was mostly a rewrite of the congressman’s press release from the previous day.”
As Axios’ Sara Fischer reported in August 2020, Facebook announced a policy that would revoke the “news site” status of publishers with “direct, meaningful ties” to political organizations.” Facebook’s main distinction between news and political content, as Fischer wrote, was that outlets are marked as “political persuasion operations” if they are “owned by a political entity or a political person.” The “news site” designation allowed content like Courier Newsroom’s to appear alongside standard news stories.
According to Axios, Facebook, under the new advertising policy, defined a “political person” as "a candidate for elected office, a person who holds elected office, a person whose job is subject to legislative confirmation, or a person employed by and/or vested with decision-making authority by a political person or at a political entity." A “political entity” is “an organization, company, or other group whose predominant purpose is to influence politics and elections."
ACRONYM’s operation of Courier Newsroom raises ethical questions. While it is not untruthful to publish a story about Rep. Rose’s National Guard duty, the objective is to bolster Rep. Rose’s credentials. For “hard news” reporters, however imperfect they are, their goal is to gather and deliver relevant information to the public, not to elect a Republican or Democrat.
The imperfect nature of the news media makes websites like Courier Newsroom especially ethically murky. While voters will mistrust CNN or Fox News, it does little good for the political process for organizations to pass themselves off as having the editorial standards of hard news organizations when their parent organization’s core mission indicates something else entirely.
For those who want to learn more about media bias, the Pew Research Center has a number of resources on how people feel about the media, and the impact of those feelings.