Media Blindspots
Stories with substantial coverage from one part of the political spectrum and zero coverage from the other. A blindspot isn't automatically evidence of deliberate suppression — the real causes are more structural, and worth understanding before assuming the worst.
Why blindspots happen
The most common explanation people reach for is deliberate ideological suppression — an outlet consciously choosing not to run a story because it's inconvenient. That does happen, but academic research on news consumption points to several more mundane, structural causes that explain most real-world blindspots without needing to assume bad faith.
The first is simple bandwidth and audience interest. No outlet can cover every story, and editors make real, everyday trade-offs about what their specific audience is likely to engage with. A widely-cited comparison: Western coverage of the war in Gaza has consistently dwarfed coverage of the civil war in Sudan, despite Sudan's death toll being reported as several times higher — not because one story is being hidden, but because audiences have stronger existing social and political connections to one conflict than the other, and coverage tends to follow attention, not just importance.
The second is selective exposure — a well-documented pattern in media psychology research where people actively prefer news that confirms views they already hold, and tend to curate their own information diet toward sources they already trust, even when opposing information is just as easy to find. Studies of online reading behaviour find this selection effect is consistently stronger than any bias in what's actually put in front of people.
The third is algorithmic curation — genuinely distinct from selective exposure, even though the two compound each other. A filter bubble is what a recommendation algorithm builds around you based on your past behaviour, without you necessarily choosing it; an echo chamber is what happens when the people and sources you've chosen to follow all reinforce each other's framing. Research suggests offline news habits are actually more narrowly self-selected than online ones, since people online tend to sample more sources simply because it's free and easy — meaning some of the "filter bubble" effect blamed on tech platforms may be less severe than assumed, even as it remains real.