What is media 'bias': a case study of Al Jazeera's reporting of the Iraq War

Despite a long history of debate, ‘bias’ and related terms like ‘objectivity’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’ remain difficult to define and operationalise. Using a corpus of news stories from the Al Jazeera English language website coverage of the second assault on Falluja, in November 2004, compared with stories for the same period from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio National’s AM current affairs program, this article argues for a method for analysing ‘bias’ that is empirical, probabilistic, contrastive and multidimensional. In the absence of such a method, the term ‘bias’ is more likely to remain a political weapon, than a tool for understanding how the media shapes our experience of crucial events.