Why Media is Biased

As of 2019, only 41 percent of Americans are trusting of the media and modern news stories. There isn’t much of a discussion on whether the news is biased or not- the only discussion that people seem to be having is whether it is mostly biased toward the right or the left side of the political spectrum.

But is all news really biased?

Studies show that Americans see news specifically tailored to be neutral as biased toward the other side- when a newspaper was published during the 1992 presidential race, one article pro-Clinton, another article pro-Bush, was shown to strong Republicans and Democrats, both saw it as biased toward the opposite view. We focus on the negatives, not the positives, and people are prone to believe in what they already agree with.

We like to be told that what we already believe is correct- we don’t like to reconsider our own point of view. This is why modern news is so biased as people become more polarized in their political views. It’s a cycle of news feeding people information that they want to hear rather than what they need to hear, resulting in people becoming more polarized, resulting in news articles catering more toward them. At the end of the day, media that isn’t biased somehow only ends up alienating either side of the political spectrum. Less views means less money means this method of reporting news is abandoned.

Maybe, if we can be more willing to think for ourselves rather than be fed regurgitated opinions, the masses will find neutral newspaper articles that leave the critical thinking up to the readers more appealing.