The classic experiment
Vallone, Ross and Lepper (1985) showed actual U.S. network news coverage of the 1982 massacre in refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon, to pro-Israeli and pro-Arab Stanford students. Each group rated the same coverage as biased in favor of the other side, and the groups recalled different amounts of favorable and unfavorable content about their own side. They also predicted that neutral viewers would be swayed toward the other side. The study continued the tradition of Hastorf and Cantril's (1954) "They Saw a Game", in which Dartmouth and Princeton students watching the same football film reported seeing more infractions by the opposing team.
Why it happens
Researchers have offered several explanations. The selective recall account holds that people better remember content unfavorable to their side. The selective categorization account holds that partisans classify the same content as unfavorable, and Schmitt, Gunther and Liebhart (2004) reported results supporting it. The different standards account explains that people think fair coverage should show their position is correct, so they see even balanced coverage as biased. Gunther and Schmitt (2004) showed that the same text produced little effect when presented as a student essay but did when presented as a news article, and Gunther and Liebhart (2006) argued that a medium's broad reach strengthens the effect by heightening concern that others will be influenced.
Extensions and significance
A meta-analysis by Hansen and Kim (2011) reported that the hostile media effect appears fairly consistently across studies. Feldman (2011) showed that with opinionated partisan news, people perceive outlets on the other side as more biased than those on their own. Reviewing 30 years of research, Perloff (2015) concluded that the effect is closely tied to media distrust, political polarization and information consumption on social media. The effect tends to grow with the strength of one's position and involvement in the issue. The concept is used alongside confirmation bias, motivated reasoning and the third-person effect to understand audience perceptions.
FAQ
- What is the hostile media effect in simple terms?
- It is when people on opposite sides watch the same news and both feel it is slanted against them. Even balanced coverage can look biased to people with strong views.
- How is the hostile media effect different from confirmation bias?
- Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out and believe information that fits one's views. The hostile media effect is perceiving the same coverage as biased against one's side. Both involve prior positions shaping information processing, but their focus differs.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26
References
- Vallone, R. P., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1985). The hostile media phenomenon: Biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the Beirut massacre. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(3), 577–585. The original experiment that established the effect — start here.
- Hastorf, A. H., & Cantril, H. (1954). They saw a game: A case study. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49(1), 129–134. The classic football-game study of partisan perception — the roots of the idea.
- Gunther, A. C., & Schmitt, K. (2004). Mapping boundaries of the hostile media effect. Journal of Communication, 54(1), 55–70. Finds the effect appears for news articles but not the same text presented as a student essay — maps its boundaries.
- Gunther, A. C., & Liebhart, J. L. (2006). Broad reach or biased source? Decomposing the hostile media effect. Journal of Communication, 56(3), 449–466. Separates the roles of reach and source in driving the effect — good for understanding its causes.
- Schmitt, K. M., Gunther, A. C., & Liebhart, J. L. (2004). Why partisans see mass media as biased. Communication Research, 31(6), 623–641. Examines how partisans classify content as biased — the selective categorization account.
- Hansen, G. J., & Kim, H. (2011). Is the media biased against me? A meta-analysis of the hostile media effect research. Communication Research Reports, 28(2), 169–179. A meta-analysis — check here how consistent the effect really is.
- Feldman, L. (2011). Partisan differences in opinionated news perceptions: A test of the hostile media effect. Political Behavior, 33(3), 407–432. Tests the effect with opinionated cable news — relevant to today's partisan media.
- Perloff, R. M. (2015). A three-decade retrospective on the hostile media effect. Mass Communication and Society, 18(6), 701–729. A 30-year retrospective — the best overview of where the research stands.