In today’s world, it is difficult to turn around and not face heavy controversies that split our community into opposing sides. Ranging from views on climate change to the rights of minority groups, the current political environment is a hurricane of topics that get people’s blood boiling. In a perfect world, readers could form unadulterated opinions based purely on the facts presented to them.
The news we are presented with is rife with misrepresentation of fact, political molehills being made into mountains and gross overshadowing of important events. Everything we know about what’s going on around us is given to us by the one community that we don’t even know if we can trust: journalists. The strange thing is, many journalists believe themselves to be unbiased when reporting, but we as readers know that this is not always the case. While honest journalism is what we as a society need in order to form our own educated opinions on many important subjects, it’s not something that a curious reader can easily find.
Of course, a reporter should try to keep their own political opinions out of the workplace when they’re relaying news to the world, but often it’s not that simple. One might consider themselves to be middle of the road when typing up an article on, say, the right to get an abortion, but through usage of certain words in certain phrases, a very different perception is given to the audience and the piece becomes biased. On sensitive and controversial subjects it is imperative that a reader keeps in mind that what they are reading is not always pure fact and can be distorted with bias from the journalist.
Let’s continue on the train of the right to get an abortion. It is, after all, a subject that divides our country quite profoundly. If you were to check out a right-wing source, like the Daily Wire, you would find a very opinion based story. Abortion is characterized as the murder of a child when, medically, a fetus isn’t fully developed until about 24 weeks and according to the CDC only about 1.3 percent of abortions are performed past 21, and legally murder is a human killing another human (without basis of self defense) and a fetus is not considered a human until it is viable outside the mother’s womb. As established in the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe V. Wade, viability occurs at around 21-22 weeks gestation (this, of course, is with a lot of outside support). This is not to say that their opinion is wrong or that people with a moral standing against abortion are wrong, everyone is entitled to whatever opinion they may have, but discussing something as major as an abortion should be backed up with facts, not scare tactics.
Now, if one were to visit a more left leaning source, such as the Washington Post, you’d find a fairly different story to be told. Hardly any opinions are explicitly written into the piece, however there are word choices present that make it clear that the author believes abortion should be legal and one should have the choice to get one if they feel it necessary. The piece also carries a bit of an air of disdain towards those who don’t agree with abortion, which isn’t really on the topic of what’s being discussed and the article would be absolutely fine without it. However, this doesn’t change the fact that multiple medical studies are cited and statistics are given whereas in our conservative piece the topic was presented in a very in your face way that compared abortion to things ridiculously larger than it, such as slavery and the Holocaust.
As abortion isn’t exactly a subject that has any legal or medical premises against it, to call out an anti-abortion article for not having fact supporting its argument is somewhat absurd and not wholly what needs to be discussed. The matter at hand is not necessarily the content of the article, moreso how articles are written as if the author is assuming that we, the audience, come without any previous knowledge on, experience with, or understanding of the topic. Yes, this approach can sometimes be a necessary element, but to dumb down content seems more than a little condescending towards the audience.
Furthermore, a reader must be wary of the racial bias in articles covering mass shootings or bombings. Have you noticed how a white shooter is always troubled or mentally ill, but the second a shooter happens to be Muslim or Middle Eastern, they’re labeled a terrorist or, through radical assumption, linked to ISIS? It’s easy to dismiss if you’re just scanning the piece, but that’s the danger right there. If a reader is getting the impression that the crimes of white people are excusable because they couldn’t control themselves or they were provoked, but the crimes of Muslim or Middle Eastern people are always motivated by a mentality that is shared by an entire religion or an entire race of people, then a bias is going to grow inside the reader even if they’ve never thought of themselves as racist or prejudiced. This more subtle kind of racial bias is a very dangerous thing because it’s not an isolated case; the more we hear about all Muslim or Middle Eastern people all being terrorists, the more likely we are to believe it. This is due to the neurological illusory truth effect, which means that if you hear something enough times you will start to believe it regardless of whether or not it’s actually true.
This, as well as other factors, enables some authors to hope that by using tangents, loud opinion, and attacks on the character of the person reading the article that we will overlook how bare the article is, how little fact is presented, how often only one side and one perspective is discussed. The sad part is, they’re pretty much right. This can be attributed to long held bias and opinion from the reader, but also, for the most part, people reading the news will tend to take what they’re reading at face value. The reader won’t always have the time to fact check or make sure the source they are using is reliable and so won’t know if the knowledge they’ve absorbed contains everything they need to know.
Worse still, a reporter can ignore important events that are happening in favor of writing about more superficial and likeable topics that people will want to read about. For example, Chechen gay men are still terrified for their lives, but the only time I’ve heard it spoken about was a passing comment before a class started, and in popular media I’ve only seen two or three articles about it and what the Russian government is doing.
Of course, the audience cannot be blamed for this because everyone has responsibilities outside of meticulously making sure what they read is totally reliable and relevant, but then, the problem isn’t in the audience, it’s in the content. The problem is in reporters who only report to further an agenda or who keep important events under wraps or overshadow them with minor occurrences. When we’re only given one side of an argument, or certain facts are covered up to sugar-coat a problem, it makes it difficult to form a solid opinion and to understand where other people are coming from. Reading an article should not create conflict between people but rather discussion about what’s going on in the world.
