BIAS isn’t necessarily a negative idea, it depends on what you’re biased towards, but most people throw the branding of biasedness as a negative idea. Whenever the BBC are accused of being biased, it is specifically bias towards either left or right-wing but the truth of it is that they tend to be biased against the whole truth and story, it is often that they only tend to report on half the story and it does sway slightly more right-wing.
But then there are the online new media outlets, such as Evolve Politics and The Canary. They are openly left-wing biased but again this is not necessarily negative.
Positive and negative biases
There is Positive And Negative bias, lets take the recent reports that Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic. The notion itself is absurd, he has been an ardent anti-racist campaigner and has signed many bills to support the Jewish community. But the row comes after keen Corbyn opponent, Luciana Berger, sought clarification over a comment on a post in 2012 of a mural by the street artist Mear One, the artist themselves have even clarified that the mural is about class and privilege. This comes just before local elections, which have the Conservatives set to be wiped out in London. The problem here is that a lot of anti-Semitism has been conflated with anti-Israeli government, they are different.
This is negative bias because whilst there is anti-Semitism, the problem stretches throughout society itself. It must be noted that Jewish Labour and Jewish Voice have come out in support of Corbyn, the Jewish Leadership Council have condemned him, however, in 2016, Sir Mick Davis stood down as chair to take a job as treasurer in the Conservative Party, he was also alleged to participate in a cover-up in 2013 of alleged financial impropriety at the Jewish Leadership Council charity where he was Chair.
There are also other significant connections between the Conservatives and the JLC.
The problem with the biases like the above is that they focus solely on the negative and paint a picture for the public that has only half the information. The likes of the BBC should be biased but towards the whole truth rather than emotive nonsense that often benefits Conservative ideology.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being biased, it is where that bias is focused, that’s when the problems arise. The far-right are often able to gain momentum due to emotional bias, the use of emotive subjects to garner support at the expense of being factually correct or are often misleading and the left often struggle because of an inability to utilise emotional bias.
Everyone is biased and anyone claims that they are unbiased, is lying or doesn’t fully grasp the concept. But it isn’t necessarily a negative idea, it just depends on where it is focused. For example, you could show preferentialism towards humanitarian ideals over economic and so forth.
