Let’s face it, millennials do not read newspaper. At a time where there is a subscriber war between Pewdiepie and T-series, YouTube is hands down the go-to place for everything including the news. YouTube channels such as Vox make their videos so engaging that I often catch myself binging for hours, “learning” about the US and the world. Like many Canadians, I catch up with Canadians news through the daily National show by the CBC.
Vox is highly left-wing biased and so is CBC but at a lesser degree. After a 12-hours immersion in video news from the National Review (American) and the National Post (Canadian), news outlets on the opposite side of the political spectrum, I realized that the convenience and pleasure from these news videos come with a cost.
As a strong believer of the “there are two sides to a story” ideology, I caught myself hypocritically feeling disgusted when I see videos slamming left-wing leaders such as Barack Obama and Ocasio-Cortez on the National Review. To my surprise, these videos are factual and even more addictive than Vox because they are very emotional provoking at just over one minute long.
Using the Iran nuclear deal as an example, the National Review supported Trump’s move to exit with evidences of Iran’s nonconformity while showing a video of the Iranian Parliament burning the American flag and chanting death to America. Conversely, Vox’s video on the same topic focused on evidences of Iran’s conformity and how Trump’s action will damage America’s credibility. After going through other news topics, people whom disliked Vox’s Trump bashing videos became more personally relatable. At the end of the day, both Vox and the National Review are contributing to the ever-growing division between people by portraying news in such polarizing and incomplete ways.
My favorite Canadian news outlet, CBC, showed some subtle left-wing biases that I never noticed until I compared it to the right-wing National Post. I have always considered the CBC to be neutral because the reporters never expressed their personal opinions. Upon close examinations and comparison to the National Post, I noticed that Justin Trudeau is almost never criticized and even the right-winged subject matter experts on the show are still relatively neutral.
Using CBC’s coverage on the carbon tax plan as an example, the reporter took the focus away from the unfavourable statistics by placing the emphasis on Doug Ford’s overstatement of a looming recession and the unparalleled comparison between Ontario and British Columbia. Many people in the comment section also shared this view; ironically, I would had dismissed their perspective without this exercise. Although the disparity between these two news outlets is not as intense as Vox and National Review, I (and probably many within the 1 million subscribers) would consider watching CBC as a greater self-disservice than Vox. This is because I am unaware that CBC over the years is “lowkey” poisoning my perspective with biases; whereas, I know Vox is polarized so in turn I become more receptive to alternative views.
News would be dry scientific papers that no one reads if they present all the facts available in monotone. Living in a capitalistic society, stories can be extremely polarized and subtle tactics are used to hide the inherent biases. A chic channel with 5.5 million subscribers (Vox) that fronts to educate, could very well be displacing you from reality with their highly curated content. Therefore, as news consumer, we need to practice the due diligent to seek information from opposing sides.
