No matter where you go for your news anymore, there is seemingly always a political bias inserted into the news as it’s being broken to the public. There was once a time when biases were kept to very limited aspects and when they weren’t overly invasive in everyday media that we encounter. And this is no unpredictable surprise either, as overall political polarization has gotten worse over the past several years.
While everyday Americans get more politically involved and more divided, the news media is doing the same thing to cater to the dividing viewer base of news, both on cable and online through internet video streaming or online articles. Everyone knows that the media can have political bias, such as the well-known right-wing political bias of Fox News and the left-wing political bias of MSNBC.
And this political polarization, while it may seem to be innocent catering to the viewers, it’s far from that. This blatant attempt at manipulating the opinions of consumers is a dangerous practice and one that could go even as far as corrupting the free nature of our democracy in the future.
While extremes on both sides of political bias are known for spinning facts into ones that are more favorable towards their political beliefs and supported policies, there are also more covert biases in our media that some consumers might be unable to detect without doing intensive research on the media they are consuming and the journalists and reporters that people are trusting to break the facts of the news to them.
What we are seeing more of today, particularly on cable news, is a meddling of journalism and political commentary – houses shrouded in both fact and opinion are merged by a force that is not a recipe for good. This can prove to have negative impacts on our politics and our already worsening political division in America. And while nearly every journalist and reporter out there may have their own political opinions, the disguising of the resulting bias as factual news is incredibly dangerous and ruins the reputation of credible reporters who refrain from any bias while reporting.
The duality between personal opinion and what you pass on as news is important and detrimental when you are a person who is trusted to report the news with accuracy and precision, and the increase of bias in reporting is not making this issue much better on everyday Americans either. Just in terms of the impacts it can have on election outcomes alone, The Washington Post and George Mason University conducted a poll in six swing states during this election year which resulted – in only 3 in 10 civilians in those states saying they trust the media to report the news with accuracy. This leaves a large majority of 7 in 10 in major swing states for the 2024 election in distrust of the media and, therefore, a distrust of journalists in general.
This severe distrust, paired with the resulting negative opinions around journalism, is not a good combination in an already very divided political climate. The purpose of the press is to report honest facts as they come in, to keep the people informed on the eve
ryday happenings locally and globally. And while smaller, more local news sources remain truthfully unbiased, they often lack the resources or recognition to report on larger news stories, particularly when it comes to the American political world, where usually only the top newspapers, channels, and websites are given access to the White House press pool, and where many smaller sources are ignored or discredited by press offices of numerous politicians, especially in Congress. Our own House Representative, Tom Kean Jr. (R) of New Jersey’s 7th congressional district has refused to answer questions from any press for several months and refuses to debate his opponent in the upcoming election, challenger Sue Altman (D) who has criticized him for rejecting a debate.
This lack of trust in the news, combined with the lack of transparency in our political process is what has caused such massive and simultaneous distrust in both the media and in our government’s ability to lead the country in a good direction in both the short and long terms. And with political division growing even worse each day, we may not see the end of this distrust for a long time.
