Hostile media effect
Also known as: Hostile media phenomenon
Partisans on both sides see the same coverage as biased against them.
What it means
The tendency for committed partisans to perceive balanced or neutral media coverage of a contested issue as biased against their own side. Both opposing camps, viewing the identical report, conclude it favors the enemy — a pattern that cannot be explained by the content itself. The leading account combines selective categorization, where each side notices and remembers the portions unfavorable to them, with naïve realism, where one's own position feels like plain fact so any deviation looks slanted. A related relative hostile media effect shows partisans rating coverage as relatively more favorable to the other side even when they concede it is not outright hostile. It illuminates polarization, distrust of journalism, and why neutral framing rarely satisfies engaged audiences.
Examples
Pro-Israeli and pro-Arab students shown the same news segments on a conflict each judged the segments to be biased toward the other side.
Supporters of both clubs watch the identical match highlights, and each set walks away certain the commentators were quietly siding with the other team all evening.
Staff on both sides of a restructuring read the same carefully neutral all-hands memo; each group concludes that management has already made its mind up in the other's favour.
First described in Vallone, Ross & Lepper (1985).