ELE LUDEMANN: Biased labelling

•  Ele Ludemann writes – 

Have you noticed the media’s propensity to label people and groups in a way that shows negative bias?

People speaking up for women’s right to their own spaces and fairness in sport aren’t feminists or women’s rights activists, they’re anti-trans or transphobic.

The Taxpayers’ Union is often prefaced with the label right wing which is not only showing bias, it’s wrong. Advocating for prudent use of public funds and highlighting extravagant spending is not partisan and is in the interests of all of us, wherever we sit on the political spectrum.

The Maxim Institute is often labelled, correctly but unnecessarily, conservative.

There are other examples of pejorative or just unnecessary labelling for people and groups such as wealthy, on the right but I don’t think I’ve ever come across labels prefacing those at the other end of the spectrum.

For example, do you ever come across Greenpeace, or any other individual or group with similar political views, labelled far left or left wing?

Where groups and individuals fit on the political spectrum is often a matter of opinion and whether that opinion is correct or not, it is rarely appropriate to use labels denoting that in news reports and it is definitely wrong to use labels only to show bias towards those on the right and leave those on the left unlabelled.

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• • This article was first posted on Ele Ludemann’s blog, Homepaddock, HERE.