Bias in Mass Media

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I was struck by how relatable the last source was in our packet of sources (the one where the news reporters minimize something that is much more important than something else). Many of us, including me, get the majority of our information about the daily goings of the world from the news, and usually, the first thing we see about something shapes our opinion about that something.

There have been countless cases of bias in mass media; one of the biggest perpetrators,  Fox News. Fox News has become something of a State TV for the president. Fox News' reporting has become so skewed in favor of the republican party, their reporting is not to be trusted. This is due to a variety of reasons: the president is an avid viewer of the channel, he regularly quotes them, Sean Hannity, a political host on Fox, has close ties with the president, the president's previous DoC and DCoS was the copresident of Fox.

What this has led to is the continual defense of the President's actions, which as a media source, should not have taken place. It is the job of the media to make sure that all news is fairly and accurately represented so that the general population can take an informed stance on such heated issues. Fox does exactly the opposite, instead of presenting both sides to the coin, they try and convince the audience that this coin has only one side.

I feel its unfair to just hate on Fox News when other media corporations do the exact same thing. Inherently, bias in mass media is a characteristically human problem: its simply not possible for an individual to not be biased about something. Normally, the biases cancel out and as a collective group of people, the group is unbiased, but in Fox's case, that group of people just compound each other's bias.





Comments

  1. Matthew ChenOctober 13, 2019 at 12:20 PM

    I feel you Varun. I was shocked to learn that China is not the only country that alters the news a few years ago. Every news channel has a bias towards a political party, and I think that news channels changed from simply telling the facts to the viewers, but instead trying to sway other's opinions

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  2. Sai RavulaOctober 13, 2019 at 7:08 PM

    I do feel like the old forms of media are indeed seen as a bit more aggressive in pushing an agenda, and it is always bad to be fed such information, such as what Fox News or CNN does for their respective audiences, but I also think that there are not that many alternatives, even with the internet bringing new forms of independent news. These smaller news outlets, often hosted by a single host, can be even more prone to spreading a bias to fulfill their agenda, but in a less corporate light. The best way to interpret news by far is to look at multiple sources to get a complete picture and to avoid such bias.

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