Examples of Distortion Theory

There's more to the picture than meets the eye
Hey, hey, my, my
--Neil Young

It is easy to find examples of the distortion theory of media bias in the everyday press. About a month ago outlets like the New York Times and LA Times ran pieces on drug shortages. The NYT and LAT articles both focus on what government is doing to stem shortages and suggests the cause of shortages relate to greedy health care providers. There is also innuendo that those providers require even more oversight.

Neither piece remotely considers the government's role in causing the shortage. When health care becomes socialized, consumption of health care goods becomes subsidized. A basic axiom in economics is that, when you subsidize behavior, you get more of it. Consumption of onco drugs et al therefore goes up. At the same time, government reimbursement policies place a ceiling on how much providers can charge for those drugs. Place a ceiling on price of a good and you'll get less of that good.

So, government policies have stimulated demand and curtailed supply. Shortages in such situations are not only predictable but inevitable. Yet, journalists in both the NYT and LAT pieces fail to touch this side of the story.

Then there is this recent CBS report on positive thinking and disease. The piece suggests that there is no valid scientific evidence between positive attitudes and outcomes for people with cancer. One immediate problem is that the report does not clearly define what is meant by 'positive thinking,' 'survival,' et al although there are surely many ways that these terms could be defined and measured. Thus you wind up with people discussing/debating different concepts as if they are equivalent.

The report cites a UPenn researcher who has found no relationship between positive thinking and survival (again, however defined). The researcher dismisses other studies contradicting his as 'bad science.' Yet, the CBS report does not investigate or clarify why other studies should be considered 'bad science' while the UPenn study should be considered valid.

Further, a variety of 'positive thinking/positive outcome' cases are cited in the report. Are these cases to be considered random events/flukes? Or might they suggest variables or special subgroupings that the UPenn study is missing. The Yale research cited near the end of the report suggests perhaps the latter, but the reporter does not make a connection.

Consistent with Groseclose's (2011) distortion theory, neither of these examples appear to report incorrect 'facts.' But both examples omit important facts and perspectives.

By omitting these facts and perspectives, both examples are slanted toward certain conclusions. In the first example, a reader is tempted to conclude that health care providers are the problem and government is necessary to make things better. In the second example, the reader is tempted to conclude that individual attitudes and initiative do little to alter acute illness.

Such conclusions are consistent with favorite protagonist/antagonist pairs of the Left: pro government/anti business; pro victim/anti individual initiative.
Because they may not know better, dull minds are liable to slurp the messages up. Thus, as Groseclose (2011) proposes, liberal media bias is likely to distort the American mind.