Media Bias and Human Nature - What Shapes Our World

There has been a fierce debate within cultural arenas on whether or not the media - mainly the news and news outlets - are reporting truthful views of the world. There are many growing groups within societies and particularly in America, that severely doubt and discredit many news outlets. There have been trending tags of #fakenews and constant disputes between which research study is factual and based on reality than most modern-day consumers and citizens have no idea where to turn to. So in the media bias essay we will reflect about this topic. 

Among this malcontent population, there is also the argument of under-representation of particular minority groups or issues that get ‘covered up’. Take Standing Rock, for example, a social justice display that took place over the placement of a pipeline on Native American Land. Despite drawing thousands upon thousands of activists and environmentalists, the media coverage mainly displayed arrests being made or dismissing the absolute magnitude of the event taking place in most cases.

Not only that, but many believe news outlets often reflect more negative news on average than positive reports or stories. Rather than focusing on rebuilding or things that could potentially shape how we see the world, there is a sentiment of focusing on negative, shocking news for the desired ‘wow’ factor needed to keep viewer numbers high and ever-present.

However, I argue that there is such a diverse selection of new outlets to tune into in modern society, that any individual could hand-pick particular outlets that aligned with their perception of the ‘real world’ and make a configured media to their liking.

As such, many media outlets admittedly cater to one audience or another, as any business model suggests, you must identify and be able to tend to a particular customer. News outlets have formed into this business mindset in the modern age, and fine-tune their own personal ‘voice’ depending on which channel or outlet you tune into. For instance, daily nighttime viewing of Fox News and CNN will have very different stories, or if you tune into an animal right’s news forum vs. a Disney inspired news outlet. We have become so labeled that we search for specific fountains of knowledge to accurately depict our reality.

Based on that principle then, we are further limited by our understanding and bias to what is true ‘news’ to us. An example of this would be a local news station in Toledo, Ohio. To people who live in the area, the news is highly relevant and reflective of the world they exist in, albeit limited to that group of people. Someone from San Antonio, California would not find the information relevant and/or of particular interest on any given day. This furthers the point of what is relevant and of use to the average subscriber to any news outlet. With so many options, it’s all a matter of whether or not you can choose which form of news or media is relevant to your interests.

This is the difficult task of sorting through fallacies when grouping all of the news media into a box, or essay rather. While it is a pressing matter that needs to be addressed and understood, we are currently bombarded with more news outlets than we know what to do with. It is no longer a matter of turning on the news at six every night and seeing what’s going on in the world. Now, there’s more than a handful of big-name news outlets to choose from based on your dietary choices, income, and political affiliation to decide which one is relevant to you.

If we as an institution were to conduct a study in which we placed an individual who leaned politically progressive in front of Fox News every day for a week for the main headlines, you would get the response the media doesn’t correlate to what’s happening in the world. However, should you place them in front of The Washington Post, or CNN for the same amount of time, you would get a very shifted response median.

In such a way, media perfectly represents society in how varied and multi-faceted it’s become. We have to begin to adapt to this system, as media becomes more of a people-pleasing business than ever, we as citizens are being made responsible for finding which forms of media and news report on subjects that are important to us and our lives. What stations are relevant and which ones we can’t stand to stomach for more than five minutes is crucial in gaining personal knowledge. One cannot blame news outlets and media as a whole for surviving in a changing atmosphere, people want more than anyone news station could provide. More than that, humans have such varied interests it’s impossible to report exactly what someone needs to know all the time, every time.

Is Media in general biased? Of course, there are too many peer-reviewed third-party studies that result from a single Google search to ever dispute such a claim. Is this avoidable? No. That may seem a bold statement but look at the absolute magnitude of human variance that exists. For a moment, understand how impossible it would be to properly showcase the world.

Massive media and news corporations could, of course, do more to provide general information about the world rather than spending time pandering to particular audiences and handpicking ‘experts’ in whatever field suits them to dish out their ideas. However, what is happening now is pure competition, like any business. There isn’t just one form of news anymore, there are thousands, if not more. Every locality has a local news station and even more local form of a newspaper or online forum. There is no human mind on Earth that would find all of the information from every news outlet in the world relevant.

I do argue that we should take more stock into our preferred media outlets. They may not provide unbiased reports of the world, but they certainly can shape your perception of it. By purposely keeping information selective, any news outlet can shape one’s entire view of the world and what’s going on within it. This is namely a large reason why it takes the world weeks to find out about global and environmental disasters, such as the burning of the Amazon Rainforest. Three weeks passed before a non-regional news outlet began spreading the story. I do believe paying attention to social media has become more informational in many ways for younger generations than news outlets as well.

Many of the younger generations tend to completely rely on social media for news coverage, only then going to news and mainstream media outlets for a deeper explanation. So therefore not only does our idea of media and the news have to change, but so does our idea of where the true media lies.

Going more in-depth into that topic, social media has become more powerful in many ways than news outlets on our shaping of the world. News outlets are changing the way they operate, and many of the major contenders in the news arena are almost if not completely online. Social media is now a hunting ground for news companies, such as Facebook and Instagram. This is something to be noted in how news reflects our world, and how we value news in general as a culture.

Another phenomenon to mention within our perspective of the new outlet ideology is the idea of ‘celebrity news’. Not in the form of the dramatized stories that consistently are being tossed into media, but the idea that social media accounts run by celebrities have become news outlets for the current generations. It is more common than ever to see a celebrity on social media posting news updates, political opinion posts, or awareness campaigns for events happening in the world.

This has become more prevalent than ever, especially given the understanding that these are not professional news outlets, yet their words and ideas hold the weight of one. All of these factors must be taken into account when establishing an argument for media and how it affects and more importantly reflects the world itself.

As previously mentioned, media and news outlets, in general, have become big business and heavy profit margins for many, so is there any chance of finding a completely unbiased news outlet that completely reflects the world? No. Because humans are biased by nature, and we will always be limited in some way or another to our overall understanding of this world and what is ‘important’ or relevant. However that should not say truth cannot be found, within the right selection and preference of media, anyone can find their happy medium or ‘Goldilocks Zone’ of truth and relevancy in media. This thus proves my argument of being able to make a world view that fits the individual simply by being aware of what specific news outlets one chooses to involve themselves within their daily life.

Works Cited

• Buckingham, David. “Teaching Media in a ‘Post-Truth’ Age: Fake News, Media Bias and the Challenge for Media/digital Literacy Education / La Enseñanza Mediática En La Era de La Posverdad: Fake News, Sesgo Mediático y El Reto Para La Educación En Materia de Alfabetización Mediática y Digital.” Cultura y Educación 31, no. 2 (April 3, 2019): 213–231. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/11356405.2019.1603814.
• Endersby, James W. “Fair and Balanced? News Media Bias and Influence on Voters.” SSRN Electronic Journal (2011).
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• Jiménez González, Juan Luis, Gutiérrez Carrizo, Inmaculada, and Perdiguero, Jordi. “More News, Good News? Bias in Media Coverage of Competition Policy.” Documentos de Trabajo FUNCAS, no. 780 (2016). https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/oaiart?codigo=5660561.
• Lee, Eun‐Ju. “That’s Not the Way It Is: How User‐Generated Comments on the News Affect Perceived Media Bias.” Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication 18, no. 1 (October 2012): 32–45.
• “News Consumption and Media Bias.” Marketing Science 26, no. 5 (September 2007): 611–628.
• Tully, Melissa, Vraga, Emily K, and Smithson, Anne-Bennett. “News Media Literacy, Perceptions of Bias, and Interpretation of News.” Journalism (October 11