Analyzing for Bias Identifying implicit arguments and acknowledging a creator’s background People are Biased Against Bias Bias has a bad reputation, and while there are many good reasons for this, some of them are misguided. How come? Well, we are all biased in one way or another - we all have our own backgrounds, economic, racial, social and so on, and those things make up who we are, influence our preferences, and color how we see the world, which is generally pretty great! If you’re waiting for a “however…” you’re in luck! HOWEVER, the problem with bias is that it involves a prejudice that is usually unfair or skews the truth so that it aligns with a person’s worldview. This isn’t much of a problem if it influences your personal preferences for things like the kinds of fruit you like, your favorite sports team, or music, etc. HOWEVER… The Problem with Bias When it gets applied to concepts like “the truth” or influences someone’s perception of whole groups of people unfairly, that’s prejudice (literally, judging someone in advance, without the facts). Bias is at the root of all kinds of problems: politicians lying to their supporters, journalists skewing facts, police saying someone committed a crime (when they have no proof), redlining, discrimination in hiring – these actions are all influenced by bias. Let’s Focus on Bias in the Media Bias in the media is often (not always!) one of the easier forms of bias to identify. As media outlets become more polarized, they’ve developed biases that let them appeal to certain groups of consumers. This is fairly apparent in news outlets like MSNBC and Fox News. In the following chart, taken from “AllSides Media Bias Ratings,” we see a spectrum from left to right. What’s interesting to note is that even the chart is biased! Why? Because a person or group of people made it. That doesn’t mean we have to toss it out or that it’s “wrong.” It’s a matter of perspective. Have a look: Many people mistakenly read “center” as meaning “no bias.” It’s an easy trap to fall into, but the center also has a point of view it’s championing. It might help to think of it this way: the left and the right are biased in favor of some kind of change, while the center caters to the status quo, or the way things currently are. Where’s the Center? What one person views as “the center” might be the same as another person. For example, someone from Europe, which has a different media ecosystem, might view many of the outlets in “the center” as being further right, ditto the two “left” columns. But for the most part, all of these outlets report more or less “the facts.” It’s actually fairly uncommon to find something totally made up in any of these types of major sources. That doesn’t, however, mean they are always reliable! As we’ll see in the pop quiz in a few pages (ungraded!), bias can usually be found in how an outlet covers a story, and what they choose to cover. Sometimes facts are omitted,.

1. Analyzing for Bias
Identifying implicit arguments and acknowledging a creator’s
background
People are Biased Against Bias
Bias has a bad reputation, and while there are many good
reasons for this, some of them are misguided. How come? Well,
we are all biased in one way or another - we all have our own
backgrounds, economic, racial, social and so on, and those
things make up who we are, influence our preferences, and color
how we see the world, which is generally pretty great!
If you’re waiting for a “however…” you’re in luck!
HOWEVER, the problem with bias is that it involves a
prejudice that is usually unfair or skews the truth so that it
aligns with a person’s worldview. This isn’t much of a problem
if it influences your personal preferences for things like the
kinds of fruit you like, your favorite sports team, or music, etc.
HOWEVER…

2. The Problem with Bias
When it gets applied to concepts like “the truth” or influences
someone’s perception of whole groups of people unfairly, that’s
prejudice (literally, judging someone in advance, without the
facts).
Bias is at the root of all kinds of problems: politicians lying to
their supporters, journalists skewing facts, police saying
someone committed a crime (when they have no proof),
redlining, discrimination in hiring – these actions are all
influenced by bias.
Let’s Focus on Bias in the Media
Bias in the media is often (not always!) one of the easier forms
of bias to identify. As media outlets become more polarized,
they’ve developed biases that let them appeal to certain groups
of consumers. This is fairly apparent in news outlets like
MSNBC and Fox News.
In the following chart, taken from “AllSides Media Bias
Ratings,” we see a spectrum from left to right. What’s
interesting to note is that even the chart is biased! Why?
Because a person or group of people made it. That doesn’t mean
we have to toss it out or that it’s “wrong.” It’s a matter of
perspective. Have a look:

3. Many people mistakenly read “center” as meaning “no bias.”
It’s an easy trap to fall into, but the center also has a point of
view it’s championing.
It might help to think of it this way: the left and the right are
biased in favor of some kind of change, while the center caters
to the status quo, or the way things currently are.
Where’s the Center?
What one person views as “the center” might be the same as
another person. For example, someone from Europe, which has
a different media ecosystem, might view many of the outlets in
“the center” as being further right, ditto the two “left” columns.
But for the most part, all of these outlets report more or less
“the facts.” It’s actually fairly uncommon to find something
totally made up in any of these types of major sources. That
doesn’t, however, mean they are always reliable!
As we’ll see in the pop quiz in a few pages (ungraded!), bias
can usually be found in how an outlet covers a story, and what
they choose to cover. Sometimes facts are omitted, which isn’t
quite the same as lying, but it’s definitely something to watch
out for.
It’s not just limited to news media. We encounter bias in the
movies watch (America: good; whoever we’re fighting: bad),
the books we read, commercials, crazy uncles, video games,
apps, and so on.
That’s all great. How do I identify it in a text / artifact?

4. If you’re lucky, they’ll tell you outright. Find an “about us”
button or a masthead and you’ll usually learn a lot about a
source, whether it’s news media, academic, or otherwise. Be
careful though, some sites and outlets claim to be “fair and
balanced” when they most certainly are not.
Compare. How does a media outlet portray an issue or an event
compared to a sampling of other sources? Is there a consensus?
Are there differences? If so, what do those differences suggest?
What kind of facts and evidence do writers use to back up their
claims? Do they have any at all? If not, that’s a red flag. If a
text includes quotes from a source—is that source reputable?
For instance, are they an expert in their field or just someone
wearing a suit?
It may seem obvious, but if the article is trying to convince you
to think of something in a particular way, it’s biased.
Look up the author / writer / creator. What’s their background
like? Where do they work / where have they worked in the past?
For instance, if someone who worked for Chevron up until a
month ago is writing about how great the oil industry is, you’d
be right to be skeptical or more critical.
How do I identify (part 2)
Look Around! Are there ads on the site or in the pages? What
sort of products are being advertised? For instance, if there are
a bunch of ads for the NFL your source might lean conservative,
because NFL watchers tend to be more conservative. If there are
a bunch of ads for the NBA it might lean more liberal, as NBA
watchers tend to be more liberal.
No ads? Well this is either a good thing or a bad thing. This
could mean that no companies want to do business with this
outlet because they don’t want to be associated with it. OR it
could mean the source is member-supported, or part of an
academic institution.

5. Time for a pop quiz
Let’s say there’s a news story about a farmer who dies when
several crates of oranges fall on him.
Outlet A reports the story like this:
Local farmer, John Appleman, 72, died over the weekend when
a tower of orange crates fell on him. Police have not named any
persons of interest and do not suspect foul play. – By Alex
Newsman
Outlet B reports the story like this:
Local farmer, John Appleman, 72, died a grizzly death when a
tower of orange crates snuffed the life out of him. Untold
numbers of hardworking farmers are dying in orange crate-
related deaths, but Big Orange Industry doesn’t want the painful
truth exposed. Police have not named any persons of interest
and do not suspect foul play but that could change at any time,
if new evidence comes to light. – By John Appleman Jr.
Which one is biased? If you went with “Outlet A” you might
want to re-read this power point! “Outlet B” is definitely the
“biased” one here, and not just because it seems like Mr.
Appleman’s son wrote the article.
Artist’s rendering of the tragedy
What makes “Outlet B” biased?
A) It sensationalizes. By adding adjectives like “grizzly” and
employing metaphors like “snuffed the life out” the goal is no
longer to just provide information, it’s also trying to entertain
readers and appeal to your emotions.
B) It editorializes. The article claims that “hard-working”
farmers are dying because of orange crates. This seems highly
unlikely, and without a source we’d be right to question this

6. claim. Adding that the farmers are “hard-working” is meant to
get us to sympathize more, i.e. the public generally sympathizes
with people who work hard, at least on paper. A farmer’s work
ethic is not relevant to the story here.
C) It’s vague. ”Untold numbers” is an imprecise phrase with
slippery meanings. Taken literally, it means “numbers that are
not told,” taken metaphorically, it means “thousands +.” Many
readers who aren’t careful would default to the more common,
metaphoric, understanding of the phrase instead of the literal
one.
D) It speculates. Notice at the end of the sentence about police,
the writer seems intent on leaving the door open that the police
might change their mind and open a criminal investigation.
While it’s technically true, they don’t offer any reasons or
evidence for why the police might suddenly change their mind,
which in this case, seems very unlikely.
image1.jpeg
image2.jpg
image3.jpg
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/opinion/los-angeles-gang-
database.html
Are You in a Gang Database?
The bar for being labeled a gang member is low, and the
consequences are serious.
Feb. 3, 2020
By Stefano Bloch
Dr. Bloch is an assistant professor at the University of Arizona.

7. I found out I was in a gang database — a shared criminal
intelligence system used by policing agencies to
store information on identified gang members — in 1996 after a
dozen members of the Los Angeles Police
Department crashed through my front door. The officers were
from an anti-gang and graffiti task force
and the arrest warrant identified me as a leader of not one, but
two, graffiti gangs. When I found out that
officers had torn through my family’s apartment looking for
spray paint and markers as per the search
warrant, it reminded me of the actual gang members who had
done the same just a few years earlier.
As a local graffiti writer I had spent my adolescence running
from gangs that resented how “taggers” like
me wrote in the neighborhoods they claimed as their own. Now
I was labeled a gang member. I had been
labeled a gang member because I must have looked like one. Or
it may have been because a judge is more
likely to issue a warrant for a kid in a gang than a kid who
writes on walls. I will never be sure. I was a
vandal, but I was not in a gang, and the legal consequences for
each are vastly different.
At my arraignment, my “gang” identity was brought up to frame
the many charges for vandalism I was
facing. Like the more than 94 percent of state-level felony
defendants in America, I plea-bargained and
received a fine, probation and community service, but avoided
jail time. It was the gang label, not the
criminal charges, that scared me most. I realized then, as I
understand now, that gang categorization is
often more of a legal tactic than a matter of identity.
Recent accusations of Los Angeles Police Department officers

8. falsely identifying people as gang members
are nothing new, and the problem is certainly not just a local
issue. The Los Angeles Times reported last
month that 20 officers from the Metropolitan Division assigned
to crime suppression duties were
suspected of having willfully falsified information on field
interview cards during traffic stops.
Information on such cards is relied upon later to determine who
should be entered into a gang database.
Self-identifying as a gang member, in addition to tattoos and
officers’ descriptions of “gang related”
clothing, are used to make a gang distinction.
Such gang member categorization sometimes based on
superficial if not completely fabricated indicators
is part of a longstanding campaign of deportation of young
people supported at the federal level, and
increasingly so under the Trump administration.
The Department of Homeland Security and a subsidiary agency,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
rely on gang databases that pull together local law enforcement
determinations about gang membership.
The Obama administration did the same.
https://www.nytimes.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/nyregion/jury-trials-
vanish-and-justice-is-served-behind-closed-doors.html
https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A
%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-
06%2Fdozens-of-lapd-officers-accused-of-portrayed-innocent-
people-as-gang-members-falsifying-
records&data=02%7C01%[email protected]%7C070531a6804d4f
dd0e4e08d79b69477b%7C809929af2d2545bf9837089eb9cfbd01
%7C1%7C0%7C637148748807615999&sdata=AcFZLzJ50%2Fz
FoLpfWKUukvp8n3z6v3drOeN%2BiwrX%2FBY%3D&reserved

9. =0
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-21/lapd-
measured-the-number-of-gang-members-its-metro-officers-
interviewed
https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/deport_by_any
_means_nec-20180521.pdf
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/28/obamas-use-of-unreliable-
gang-databases-for-deportations-could-be-a-model-for-trump/
From Los Angeles to Long Island, where Operation Matador
was announced in 2017 to target suspected
members of La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13, federal officials,
with the help of local police, have actively
and often erroneously targeted immigrant minors based on
purported gang affiliation.
The “gang member” label that federal authorities have been
gleaning from gang databases is not based
on the determination of a court, and is applied without due
process. A local officer’s observation about
attire, tattoos, affiliation or in my case, vandalism, can set a
life-altering legal process in motion. While
entry into a gang database alone does not automatically trigger
deportation proceedings or incarceration,
being identified as a gang member does embolden federal agents
to selectively carry out deportation
procedures and allows prosecutors to call for sentence
enhancements.
In Los Angeles, such gang categorization has gone on since a
year before the passage of the Street
Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention (STEP) Act in 1988. The
legislation sought to reduce gang-related
violence through targeted anti-gang policing. But a lot has
changed since three decades ago when there

10. was an all-time highs in crime across the city.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department’s website, the
criteria used to determine one’s gang
identity today can include “fingernails painted a certain color,
certain undergarments … and specific
hairstyles,” in addition to wearing jewelry that is “expensive or
cheap,” or shirts that are “worn loosely
and untucked.”
In 2016, an audit by the California State Auditor of CalGang, a
database used to keep track of gang
members across California, revealed that the system even
included 42 “gang members” under the age of
one. According to the justification entered into CalGang by law
enforcement officers, 28 of these babies
had “admitted to being gang members.”
Classification mistakes like this are certainly costly, especially
for those without the benefits of
citizenship. Attorneys surveyed by the Immigrant Legal
Resource Center in 2018, reported “the increased
use of gang allegations in adjudications involving cases of
immigrant youth seeking protection through
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).”
In 2019, the matter of misidentification became more widely
known after a mother brought her case to the
attention of the L.A.P.D. A supervisor looked back at body
camera footage that supported her claim that
her son had been falsely categorized as a gang member.
People in minority communities have been misidentified as gang
members for years, but until recently,
individuals on CalGang were not notified of the designation.
Neither were the parents of minors. Many

11. people who were added before Jan. 1, 2017 still do not realize
they are in a gang database until they reach
a criminal or immigration judge or are considered for a job in
government. Most other state gang
databases do not require notification.
Although it happened to me personally, it was not until I had
earned my Ph.D and began researching the
insidious forms of gang abatement and the legality of anti-gang
policing that I realized how low the bar
was for being labeled a gang member, and how high the stakes
could be.
The allegations against officers out of the Los Angeles Police
Department’s elite Metro Division
concerning “gang framing” are troubling. Not only because, as
the department’s chief, Michel Moore, puts
it, “falsifying information on a department report is a crime,”
but because such crimes of misidentification
have been going on for years with untold consequences.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/magazine/ms13-
deportation-ice.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/nyregion/ms-13-murders-
long-island.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/26/california-
gang-enhancements-laws-black-latinos
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/sen/sb_0451-
0500/sb_458_cfa_20130409_091917_sen_comm.html
http://www.lapdonline.org/la_gangs/content_basic_view/23468
https://www.auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2015-130.pdf
https://www.ilrc.org/resources-gang-allegations
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-14/lapd-
scandal-lapd-gangs
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55b673c0e4b0cf84699bdff
b/t/5d7f9846de5a2c25a55a36e5/1568643144338/CalGang+Annu

12. al+Report+2018.pdf
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-15/lapd-
could-take-action-against-officers-in-gang-framing-case-within-
days-chief-says
Stefano Bloch, an assistant professor at the University of
Arizona, is the author of “Going All City: Struggle and Survival
in L.A.̓s Graffiti
Subculture.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to
the editor. Weʼd like to hear what you think about this or any of
our
articles. Here are some tips. And here s̓ our email:
[email protected]
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook,
Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/opinion/letters/letters-to-
editor-new-york-times-women.html
https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014925288-How-
to-submit-a-letter-to-the-editor
mailto:[email protected]
https://www.facebook.com/nytopinion
http://twitter.com/NYTOpinion
https://www.instagram.com/nytopinion/