ck? Bias of placement can occur with television or radio news-making a story the lead versus running it 25 minutes into an hour-long newscast. However, it is a lot easier to identify this kind of bias in a newspaper where placing a story on page one versus on the bottom of an inside page makes for a dramatic contrast. An example of bias by placement is: In 1993 “The Washington Post” ran a front page story focusing on a Fairfax County, Virginia Republican Party roast where Oliver North imitated a homosexual calling the White House, complete with lisp. The story focused on how the incident showed Republican “insensitivity” toward a minority group. Condemnation quickly followed, much of it from Virginia Governor Doug Wilder, a Democrat. Yet two months later, “Post” staff writer Donald Baker reported that Wilder donned his own lisp. Responding to a reporter’s question concerning his future marital plans, “the Governor feigned a lisp and a limp wrist in replying, ‘Oh Don, you shouldn’t have.’” While North made Page 1, the “Post” revealed the Wilder incident at the end of Baker’s story on page 7 of the Metro section.7 Another example was a front page headline which read “Quayle’s ‘potatoe’ kid deals with fleeting fame.” This article appeared on the front page (8/8/97) of the Courier Post. It contained information about the sixth grader who was involved in the Dan Quayle potatoe episode on June 1992. It referred to the fact that the boy became a father at the age of 16 and had a 14-month-old daughter who lives with her dad’s family.8 This was not current news, yet it found its way on the front page. It appears to have been done as a further put down of Republicans, at a time when the Republican governor of the state was running for a second term.Bias by spin is emphasizing aspects of a policy favorable to one...
