I'm wondering what people think of the news? Is there a slant or bias in all news, or only some? Do you consume news only from sources you think are honest, or ones that even if not honest, at least agree with you? Wondering just in general what people's impressions of the news are, and how they respond to that. Do you notice efforts to be as fair and balanced as possible? I've chosen 'The Lounge' on purpose since I more just want to hear what people think. No one should feel like they have to defend their standpoint, nor should anyone else think it needs to be answered for. Please also remember there's no need to mention organizations by name or allusion, so as to not potentially antagonize others.
Well I try to read about the same story from various sources and then get the best idea of what really is going on from that. I do believe there are news sources that are biased towards certain things, mostly because you have six major corporations that control 90% of the media. http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/10/23/owns-media-6-monolithic-corporations-control-almost-everything-watch-hear-read/
I will often go to a few different sources, ones that I know have opposite biases, and try to sort out the truth from somewhere between them. I'm also a fan of non-commercial news services (CBC, BBC, etc.) They're obviously never going to be all that radical, but I think they do a good job of minimizing spin most of the time.
Over the years, I've been the subject (in part or in whole) of several news stories. I've also been witness to events that have ended up in the news. And I can tell you this: none of these news stories have ever been 100% accurate. At a guess, I'd have to say they were, at most, around 60% accurate. And that's why when it comes to doing research, I never use news sources.
News bias involves multiple issues from selling the news as a commodity to monopoly ownership to inadvertent framing and more. Media literacy is the place to start. News Bias Explored - The art of reading the news The website is detailed but to the point in bite size pieces. For example, on this page you can scroll over the underlined words in two articles covering the same story to see what kind of bias they contain: Omissions, word choice, sources, or limiting debate. To explore those concepts further, see the links on this page. I've spent considerable time learning media literacy. It's a subject I've been interested in since college.
When a friend of mine was murdered in a somewhat scandalous and sensational way, the news had so many things wrong it was upsetting. I think reporters just fill in the blanks when there are details they don't know. Either they don't know how to listen or they simply hear what they imagine they are hearing. And anything science is rarely reported accurately. And of course, everything has to be reported as if the controversy is 50:50 even when the evidence is more like 99:1. That really gets annoying when the news media essentially promotes junk science.
Thank you, everyone. Great so far! However, I was hoping we could almost have like a reader-response thing, where we talk about our own relationship with the media. I'll try to lead by example a little later on.
An example of bad science from the BBC: It's not like it's hard to get this right. You can very easily look it up. In space small particles are called meteoroids. As they streak through the atmosphere (thus the etymology) they are called meteors. Even large meteoroids that are destined to be meteorites are meteors when the surface is vaporizing in the atmosphere. And when they reach the ground, they are called meteorites. I think where this guy got confused is that meteor showers are mostly dust from comet tails. But that is not the only source of meteors. Or maybe he used a bad dictionary. Or maybe he thought the actual definition was too complicated for short attention span readers.
You can't trust any American media today. I pretty much flip between fox, msnbc, and cnn and try to decipher what might be close to the truth. 60 minutes is a joke now. In Philadelphia, local news is not that bad, but its just local news. I think HBO should branch out and make a news division. Away from Time Warner. They do interesting documentaries and Bill Maher isn't that bad. Yes, Bill Maher is a Dem, and he is highly biased, but he has interesting guests and good debates between his panal. But he does call out a lot of the bullshit going on and he doesn't let his fellow Dems off the hook. John Oliver is also pretty good. Its a comedy skit, but he has some good content. I did not realize how bad the student loan problem was here until he did his story. I am older and wasn't even aware that was a problem. I travel a lot with my wife, news overseas is way better than here. More educational and interesting than anything we have in the States. I travel to Thailand at least once every 2-3 years, and I learn more in the news in two weeks than I do living here in the States. Its sad. I don't think Bill Maher should be on the HBO news if they make it, he was just an example. I just think they could put together a fair and balanced team that could go wild here in America.
I really only pay attention to local news, I don't care about international or national news. I don't trust any of it and believe there is always an agenda.
I agree with the people who said to look at a variety of sources. Also, independent journalism is awesome, and I get a lot of my news from independent journalists.
Hear, hear. This is what I do as well. The local 5:30/6:00 news is just about all I can stomach. If something is grabbing the zeitgeist, oozing in from all sources, unavoidable, I go to BBC or ITV. Sadly, I have to say, that even these news sources, which I once thought of as "news in English without the American bullshit" are becoming much more like their American counterparts. It's a thing I've discussed with Brit friends who are also saddened to concur.
I think as a Canadian I am fortunate not to have to deal with the radical biases most Americans find in their media. Just watching American news, you can clearly see there is an agenda. Most of the time, the agenda is ratings, which leads to money (so sometimes there will be an endangering of ratings if say... Hilary Clinton has a bit of a romance with CNN). A good example can be related to various race-dominated news items (ex. all the "X Colour shoots Y Colour). Media in America is at a point where they will assume racial motivation to gain viewers without any actual knowledge of what happened. With the sea of Black Lives Matter news articles and the such related to such race-dominated news (when I say 'race-dominated' I mean race as a topic, not a particular race) I won't be able to find the article. But I clearly remember reading an officer shooting an armed black male- non-fatal and in complete accordance of the law- and the area fall into riots because American media immediately framed it as a hate-crime. It was no hate crime, and the officer and other civilians were likely to die if the officer did not take action. I think it would be safe to assume this was done with ratings/national favour (by hopping on the anti-white bandwagon) in mind. As a disclaimer: I am in support of equality and this absolutely happens with other news topics, but this is the most clear-cut example in modern news. There is a good deal of white officers taking lives of unarmed black people and it is disgusting- but such facts should not create precedence of ratings over fair and accurate news items. On another note, and though I have not the articles nor the time to confirm though I am confident in my accuracy, many years ago (I believe) a law was abolished in the United States. The law implemented the necessity of representing BOTH sides of a news story in media. I believe the lack of this law in modern day America is the ultimate source of so much corruption in media.
I don't watch any news on tv but I follow many on social media. And not only (in my opinion) are the national stations biased, but even my LOCAL news stations are biased. I follow them on Facebook (because I need to get my local news somewhere), and they are regularly exploiting people they post stories about. Calling people crazy, turning everything into a scandal or race issue, and not reporting the entire story (which I know from following multiple news sources). They turn every article into sensational click bait just for the ratings, and it's disgusting. They think they're celebrities or something. Absolutely zero professionalism.
Absolutely, it is solely for ratings and profit. News isn't about getting the story out anymore, it's about getting people to watch. This is incredibly damaging to society. As I said in my previous post, there are an increasing number of gross misconceptions about stories because of a particular agenda. What this does is condition society to jump to conclusions about things. How are we supposed to achieve equality when the media is contorting the facts surrounding such important issues such as race and gender? If every news story is black vs. white or male vs. female then society will become accustomed to jumping to conclusions based on the very hateful interactions (racial, sex based) that we as a diverse community try to eliminate. What this does is exaggerates one side of the story and creates hate from the group they are denouncing. If the news is pro-feminist, or pro-black, pro-white, then it fails to represent a defining issue of our time as is; but also, it creates hate from the group that is being vilified towards the pro-group. Racism and sexism has been turned, as Lea (above) said, click bait. Issues won't be solved if they are used to elicit views.
