The term “fake news” was in a way popularised by US President Donald Trump, whenever he attempted to discredit news reporting that he disagrees with. This has resulted in the perception that even mainstream media cannot be trusted, as seen in how American liberals often mock Fox News, and how American conservatives choose not to believe in CNN.
But is it true that mainstream media is also responsible for spreading misinformation? Is there even such a thing as objectivity these days?
Well, answering these questions may not be as simple as it seems. While it is hard to determine objectivity, it doesn’t mean that everything that is not objective is immediately “fake news”. There are two things that we have to first understand:
- Every piece of news, no matter how objective, can be written from different perspectives.
- More often than not, people think that something is “fake” just because they don’t agree with the perspective that the news was written in.
This is a reality that we have to acknowledge and live with in this complex world. Not everything is black or white — there are many shades of grey in the information that we consume, and within these shades of grey, information can be nuanced to favour a certain political position.
Political Spectrum
The concept of “left” and “right” political positions has its origins in the French Revolution, during which the members of the National Assembly who supported the king sat on the right of the president of the assembly, while members who supported the revolution sat on the left.
Although this left-right political spectrum does not really apply in Singapore, the Prime Minister still sits on the right of the Speaker of Parliament, while the Leader of the Opposition sits on the left, directly opposite of the Prime Minister.
Not unlike other countries, the different media sources in Singapore are also perceived to favour political positions differently, albeit usually in a more subtle fashion.
SG MediaSpin
Since it is hard to determine objectivity, the best way to consume information is to read as widely as possible, in order to be exposed to different perspectives. By doing so, calling out what is “fake news” will not matter as much, because one will have a more comprehensive picture of an issue.
To make it easier for people to compare news on an issue side-by-side, Singapore non-profit “tech for good” collective better.sg designed a simple platform called SG MediaSpin, to let users aggregate different news articles on the same issue, so that the difference in the reporting style of each source becomes more obvious.
The platform also allows users to vote on the political position of the news articles. But because the left-right political concept is not applicable to Singapore, the positions “anti-establishment” and “pro-establishment” were used instead. The average rating of each article is computed and revealed after the user submits his/her vote.
To accentuate the difference in the reporting style of each source, the SG MediaSpin team even looked into one particular issue, sorted the articles based on their average ratings, and highlighted the key message in each article that betrays the media source’s political position.
However, a caveat to note is that the ratings are entirely based on what users submit. So if the sample is biased, the reflections may also not be the most accurate. Nonetheless, it is clear that users on the platform have quite a different impression of these various media sources.
Conclusion
Instead of trying to answer the question of whether there is any objectivity left in the media today, it is perhaps more important to recognise that no matter what the issue is, different sources are always going to report about it in a different way, and objectivity may become somewhat relative.
If you would like to find out more about better.sg and the projects that they are working on to improve media literacy, feel free to check out this other article of theirs: https://better.sg/blog/2020/09/08/make-it-better-misinformation-in-the-media.
Disclaimer: The author of this article is a member of better.sg and its Media Literacy Group.
If you found this article interesting, you might also enjoy these ones on Fake News and Cognitive Biases:
Originally published at: https://learncuriously.wordpress.com/2020/09/18/media-literacy-does-objectivity-exist
