With the most recent presidential election, American voters have been further divided politically than ever due to the lack of a neutral stance in the midst of the media’s excessive partisan propaganda.
There are four main types of bias that the media can use. The first is called omission bias, when one side of a story or event is removed in order to bring attention to the other side. The media can use this method to politically misinform Americans and only show them the side of a story that they support. The second type of bias that can be used is source selection bias. This occurs when a report includes both sides of an issue, but one side has stronger evidence than the other side. For example, a news outlet could interview several credible people for one side of an event, and only one or two people for the other side. Another type of bias is labeling bias. This is when the media negatively labels certain people, events, or groups that they do not favor in order to evoke strong emotions from opposing parties. The media uses this to give Americans false information about certain political events because of the words they use. The last type of bias is placement bias, which is when a certain viewpoint is put after or farther down in an article than the viewpoint that is deemed “correct” by the media outlet.
Some political bias is not very easy to detect and can be looked over easily. News outlets can cover up their bias so it cannot be detected but will still give Americans misinformation to further polarize the political parties. For example, Fox News would portray an event one way to favor the right, while CNN would portray the same event another way to favor the left. If you are getting your information from reading an article, re-read it to see if you can catch any of these forms of bias. If you are getting your information from watching the news, read the chyron or caption and do the same. The easiest way to figure out if the media you are consuming is untruthfully covering a political event is to look for labeling bias.
With all of these biased news outlets, Americans will tend to stick to the sources that most align with their own opinions. This puts them in an echo chamber, which means that they are only consuming political media that has the same beliefs as their own and are only hearing about their party. By doing this, it hinders Americans ability to become informed about different parties, ideologies, values and even policies.
Though it is impossible for the media to be completely unbiased, it is important that Americans know what media they are consuming. Americans should aim to get their political information from media that has little to no political leaning and stays neutral. The politically biased media sources negatively affect Americans and their ability to consume factual information.
