BIASED NEWS OR BIASED PUBLIC?

Abstract

This study investigated the causes of individuals’ perceived news bias in an authoritarian press system—Singapore. We proposed two explanations for individuals’ perception of news article slant: the judgment-heuristic explanation and the attitude-influenced explanation. The judgment-heuristic explanation suggests that people's perception of media characteristics, rather than the actual news content, would affect their judgment of news bias. The attitude-influenced explanation, on the other hand, suggests that people's issue involvement and attitudes towards the issue may influence how they process news information and ultimately affect their evaluation of news article slant. Both explanations received support in this study. We also found that media source, audiences’ personal opinion, and their issue involvement would interact and produce joint effects on audiences’ judgment of news article slant.

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