Volume Two, Issue Two

In the world’s ever changing and ever exciting news cycle- with so many varying opinions and ways of reporting- depending on which publication you read, you may feel like you’re reading two completely different stories.

Lots of journalists tend to omit facts or add ones that don't fit the story, but support what they want the viewer to think. Often these can be subliminal: newscasters will say things that objectively should not change our opinions, but subjectively have a huge impact on what we think. Most of the time, we don't even notice this.

Another problem we face when reading the news is wrongly reported facts. Every news channel and publication wants to be the first to report, and want to be the first so badly that they risk being wrong-- and frequently they are.

Too often you read news stories that seem to make opinion pieces out of breaking news. Instead of being unbiased and including all of the details, some journalists will leave details out of their story, so it fits the mold of what they want it to be, and so the reader is inclined to think how the journalist thinks.

So what do all of these problems mean for journalism? What do these things contribute to our unique news cycle? What this has done is simple: it has given us less reliable news. We must take everything we read with a grain of salt- Was it on Fox News? If so, it probably has a conservative bias. MSNBC? Probably will have a liberal bias. The overlying problem is, newscasters and journalists have forgotten where their loyalty lies.

A journalist’s first loyalty is NOT to their opinion, or to the opinion of the publication they are representing. Journalism’s first loyalty is to citizens. It is a journalist’s duty to bring citizens the most credible news possible. News content should be trustworthy. Yet you see fewer and fewer people having full trust in the news, more specifically the media (which is how most people get their news nowadays). Only six percent of people say they have a large amount of confidence in the media, according to the Associated Press.

In my own experiences, I have found that often I, like 94 percent of Americans, don’t trust the news and media. Much of the news we currently consume has a political bias. The key to avoiding bias as a reader/viewer, in my opinion, is to gather information from multiple sources and then try to sort out the truth from the opinion. But should citizens feel the need to do this? Shouldn’t the news be delivered to them unbiasedly by all journalistic outlets? Readers should not have to wonder what is true.

The way for journalists to avoid the issue of writing with bias is to stick to the facts. News stories shouldn’t contain too much emotion, and shouldn't have an opinion from the writer. Staying away from over generalizing words like never, all, none, and always is key to good journalism- an element most modern journalism is lacking. A journalist should always back up what he/she is writing with evidence that the information is factual. When reading the news, we must ask ourselves: Is this piece attempting to trigger my emotions? Look at the words. Is there an obvious bias in the terminology?

Now, it is journalism’s job to not only increase its loyalty to the citizens, but also to maintain it. The first step is making people aware of this issue. Once we demand honesty, the news cycle will change to reflect what the people deserve.