NPR Journalist teaches American University students to avoid media bias

Gene Demby talks to American University students about avoiding
bias in their writing Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014 in Washington D.C. Demby is
the lead blogger of NPR's "Code Switch". (Photo by Kirsten Klohr)

“You’re missing out on something interesting if you make the assumptions everyone else does,” said Gene Demby, NPR’s lead blogger of “Code Switch”. Demby talked about bias in the media to American University students Thursday.

Demby said he questioned why there were so few Asian American basketball players when Jeremy Lin started to get famous. When Lin played for the New York Knicks, he only got playing time when Carmelo Anthony was out injured. Demby said the coach didn’t expect him to do well. But he amazed the team and led them to several victories. It’s a common stereotype that Asian Americans don’t play basketball because they’re too short, too focused on school, or that it’s just not a part of their culture. Demby told students how he challenged this bias in his blog with his story about Lin. There are plenty of Asian Americans with basketball talent, but we don’t know to look for them. Demby said, “That’s because we come up with stereotypes to explain this phenomenon in front of us.”

Demby said we need to avoid bias by surrounding ourselves with different perspectives. We can’t let ourselves discriminate, even if it’s unintentional. He said we all have bias that shows in our writing. Demby said we could avoid that by “challenging assumptions and being skeptical of ourselves.” 

Bias was shown when the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, talked about equal pay for women. He upset a lot of people when he said women in the workplace should have “faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along…that’s good karma”. He’s being sexist by showing bias against women. He could have phrased it better by saying, “We should close the pay gap between men and women in the workplace. Women should not need to ask for a raise because they should be getting paid the same as men.”   

The Huffington Post published an article about sexual assault that shows another form of bias. Tyler Kingkade wrote about sexual assault on college campuses. Kingkade said, “It’s a positive sign, experts and advocates say, because it suggests that more victims are coming forward-rather than that more crime is taking place.” People who were sexually assaulted should not be called victims, but survivors. “Victim” seems very negative, but if they were called survivors it may help in the healing process to move forward. Kingkade should have said, “Experts and adovcates say it’s a positive sign that more sexual assault survivors are coming forward. It doesn’t necessarily mean there is more crime taking place.”