How to prevent confirmation bias affecting your journalism

This post was first published on the Online Journalism Blog — read the original for updates.

A couple weeks ago I published a guide to cognitive biases for journalists. I saved perhaps the biggest one of all — confirmation bias — for a post all of its own. It might be one of the best-known biases, but for that very reason it can be easy to underestimate. Here, then, is what you need to know — and what to do to reduce it.

What is confirmation bias — and how does it affect journalism?

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out — or more easily believe or recall — information that confirms our existing beliefs.

It leads us to make judgements that are not based on an equal assessment of all the evidence, but only that evidence we have cherry picked, remembered or attributed more credibility to.

Confirmation bias affects journalists in at least three ways:

• It affects reporters and the way that we pursue stories
• It affects our audiences and the way that they interpret and use our reporting
• And it affects our sources in the way that they present information to us