Political Bias Takes Many Forms

Political bias in news reporting can take a variety of forms – as today’s Herald demonstrates.

The front page headline over an article written by an Auckland university economics professor reads, “Don’t Buy the Baloney Over Unemployment Insurance”. The headline appears with a large photograph of Grant Robertson, the Minister of Finance, who has recently introduced a new unemployment insurance scheme.

Many readers who don’t want to plough through an academic article on unemployment insurance will see only the headline; they will, not unnaturally, get the impression that the article is critical of the Minister’s proposal.

In fact, the article commends the proposal and rebuts the criticisms that the National party and others have made of it. The Herald’s readers have been poorly served, do you not think?