What’s Wrong With the Media and How We Can Fix It
They’re not just biased, they’re here to entertain — and we’re the laughing stock
The media is our main connection to the larger world outside of our small sphere of existence, our information source for events beyond our personal scope. The last few years have seen it come under the spotlight—and not just mainstream media, but also non-conventional media sources such as Facebook.
It’s an open secret that most media sources have some level of political or social agenda. We pick our media sources in the same way we choose our political party, with a heavy leaning towards our own views. Taken to extremes, this leads to confirmation bias and living in a bubble where we don’t allow ourselves to be exposed to viewpoints that we may not agree with, irrespective of their legitimacy.
That’s not the issue I want to focus on here. Instead, there’s a much larger misconception that can confound the efforts of even the most conscientious truth-seeker.
People believe the news media exist to educate us, but they don’t — they’re here to entertain us.
Media outlets are not an altruistic public service; they’re a business and follow the same rules and motivations as your local used-car salesman.
They need to make money, they need people to read their articles, and they are willing to go to great lengths to catch your attention.
I’m not one of those people who shout from the rooftops that mainstream media is lying to us. I don’t think they are, but I do believe they’re treating news like advertisements and being extremely selective as a result.
As responsible adults, the things we probably should know about are unfortunately rarely the things we want to read about.
Herein lies the problem. Media is going to feed us what we want — they have to because their profits and continued existence relies upon it.
If we make it clear we’re more interested in superficial fluff like what B-grade celebrities ate for breakfast than, for instance, the social and environmental conditions that led to the Syrian crisis (which has gone on to affect practically the whole world, before you shrug and say that it doesn’t affect you), we can’t complain when that’s what the media dish up to us.
The end result is that we either are never exposed to any number of interesting and important things happening around the world, or we only come to the story late, well after the window of opportunity for fixing matters has passed, and develop a distorted opinion of it as a result.
To use the above example, I expect most people would be aware by now that there’s great unrest in Syria which has caused sustained mass migration, which in itself can be held as directly influential in the rise of nationalism and far right-wing extremes in many countries.
But how many people know the reason behind it, and that even climate change may have played a part in triggering the initial spark that caused this monumental mess?
Coming into the matter at the end of the story, as many media outlets have done, gives a very slanted view. Looking just at the effects of the last few years, the majority of the headlines will focus on the story that millions of refugees are flooding around the world.
This is a ‘sensational’ title that is sure to catch peoples’ attention. It’s designed to make you worry that it may directly affect you so you end up buying the paper or staying on the channel to find out more.
The media company has succeeded; it has your attention and is therefore making money off you. It doesn’t care how you react to the news or how it influences your opinions. It’s completely amoral in that sense.
But of course that’s not the full story, it’s just the result of decades of build-up that — had the world been aware of earlier — we may have been able to prevent or minimise. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, but the more information we have from the outset the more likely we are to make informed decisions which could positively affect the outcome.
It may not appear to affect us in the beginning, but few events happen in isolation these days in such a connected world.
We’re only now starting to come to the realisation that climate change is a significant problem, but the signs have been there for decades. We’re coming in very much at the end of the story — now that the headlines are ‘sensational’ enough — and it very likely could be too late to do anything about it.
We can make the decision to go through life with blinkers on, only paying attention to events we think may affect us directly and relying on the media to decide what’s important in our lives. Or we can be proactive in learning about the greater world and raising awareness of incidents while they can still be shaped for the better.
In these days of connectivity and the internet, it’s easier than ever to find information, but not always so easy to sort the wheat from the chaff. That’s where sites like Media Bias/Fact Check come in handy, helping to expose both the socio-political bias and truthfulness of news sources. Or sites like Snopes to expose fallacies in the latest trends.
Here are some easy steps that everyone should consider implementing if they’re serious about being an informed adult:
- Before reading an article, check the bias and truthfulness of the source on a site such as Media Bias/Fact Checker.
- Work on the assumption that ALL news headlines are clickbait and cannot be relied upon unless — at the very least — you read the full article.
- Before believing anything of importance, research it and/or check its validity on sites designed to combat fake news and unsupported trends like flat-earthism and anti-vaxxers.
- Make an attempt to utilise different media sources at least once a week. Include ones from different countries. The Media Bias/Fact Checker website helpfully has lists of news websites grouped by their bias. Have a look at the least biased list and pick a different one each week.
- At random, select a few linked sources and click through them to find out whether they actually support the point or quote the original article is using them for (you’d be surprised how often they don’t, but disreputable writers use them because people automatically trust a cited source and are usually too lazy to confirm them).
- Pick a highly publicised event and make a point of reading both the left-wing and right-wing biased viewpoints, then compare them and see how significantly they differ.
- Avoid articles that use highly emotive terms, whether they’re right-wing or left-wing — they are trying to manipulate you and are not giving you the respect to form your own opinions.
- Consider supporting media outlets that still use investigative journalism and who haven’t caved to the clickbait culture. Genuine news isn’t free and nor should it be. As they say, “If you’re not paying, you’re the product.”
Reversing the trend of an under-informed public is something we have to take control of—it won’t be done for us. The value of an educated populace cannot be understated; it’s in everyone’s best interests for us to have a clear, unbiased view of the world.
I’m not telling you to give up plastic bottles, or go meat-free one day a week — or any of those small personal changes that we use to feel better about ourselves. If you really want to make a difference, making sure you’re well-informed will have the most long-lasting benefit in every aspect of life.
