Biased, Not Balanced Broadcaster! Deconstructing Bias Accusations Toward Public Service Media

Abstract

Across Europe, Public Service Media (PSM) are increasingly subject to bias accusations in public debates. Excluding academic attention for actual bias in news content, research into the nature of bias accusations is limited. This article studies bias accusations against Dutch PSM in online discourse. Through a qualitative content analysis of tweets and blogs (2017–2022), our analysis develops a novel typology of bias accusations—positional, information, and framing bias—going beyond academic definitions. Bias accusations are diverse in nature, reflect strong perceived intentionality, and refer to heterogeneous social, political groups, yet are easily merged into singular political ideological divides.