Are we getting the real story?

I believe that one of the greatest threats to free thought is biased media.

One of the issues with having a vast number of news sources at our fingertips is that people tend to read only what they agree with or material that is an easily dismissed caricature of the other side. This creates an echo chamber in which you are not exposed to thoughtful dissension, further strengthening your current beliefs unto the point of political fanaticism. A responsible media must strive to objectively report news. In its current form, however, media is moving away from this ideal.

I think part of the reason for this is the rise of blogging and other forms of social media (and where better to point this out than in a blog!). Opinionated bloggers have become so popular that they are a threat to the bottom lines of real news organizations. The New York Times posted a 14 million dollar loss in this year’s first quarter, largely attributed to the rise of digital news content. To combat this, major news sources are sensationalizing and corrupting their news stories with opinion to appeal to their target audiences. That major news sources do not see what is wrong with stories such as CNN’s “Media’s Challenge: Balancing Fact and Hype” suggests that the problem runs deep.

This issue is important because our viewpoints are being influenced by the media we consume and we don’t know exactly in what way and for whose benefit. Even something as seemingly unbiased as Google News, which gives you many different sources for each story, has algorithms which change what you see depending on what you have previously clicked on (effectively ‘un-unbiasing’ the sources).

My conservative friends do not believe any reasonable person could disagree with them. Likewise with my liberal friends. Across the ideological spectrum, we are doctored by the media we consume and we lose the ability to understand divergent viewpoints. We all are guilty of this, myself included. It has gone so far that some call for the resignation of professors over expressing opinions, while others say being sensitive to other groups is “PC culture ruining America.”

The fourth estate has a social responsibility to avoid bias, and we as consumers have a responsibility to attempt to focus on facts and avoid giving in to supporting this corruption of objective factual reporting.