In an era of 24-hour news, and the ability to carry the Internet around in the palm of your hand, it seems likely that Americans would be increasingly aware of current events on both the domestic and international levels. By nearly every conceivable metric, however, the average American’s knowledge of international affairs, and even current events in the United States, has been steadily declining. One of the major factors (though certainly not the only one) for this decline in knowledge is the for-profit news industry.
Everybody agrees news channels have bias. If you watch the same story on two different news channels, Fox and MSNBC for instance, often times you will be presented with “facts” that are mutually exclusive of one another.
This reality is the result of news no longer being designed to give the facts of a specific story, or keep people generally informed. Instead, its purpose is to keep as many people as watching as possible.
Rupert Murdoch didn’t become a billionaire by merely reporting the facts of a matter. In order to keep people entertained, objective facts are almost entirely edited out of a story. In mere minutes, and with the creative manipulation of numbers, an expert statistician can take a seemingly high unemployment rate and make it look average, or even low. We are delivered the facts we want, ultimately leading us to either a flawed understanding, or a complete lack of comprehension of a story.
The for-profit news industry doesn’t stop at distorting our understanding of facts, they often times replace real, newsworthy, world events with other stories because we are easily distracted. At the time of writing, there is still extreme political turmoil in Egypt, and Bradley Manning was recently found not guilty of being in violation of the espionage act.
Meanwhile, the top news stories on several website to be speculations for the next iPhone and the size of a soda you can buy in New York City. The fact that there are stories that have important implications for the world that don’t make the headlines of websites is absurd. The news has become far too concerned with presenting entertaining with stories that are easy to digest instead of delivering real stories, as their ability to generate profit is less.
As long as the presentation of facts is dependent on the almighty dollar, there will always be an issue. Even public news stations, like NPR, have resorted to some level of pandering. Running a news station isn’t free, so stations will have to report the news that the people funding them want to hear. Or, at a very minimum, not make them angry in the process of reporting the news.
As much as I would love to offer a solution to the problem of for-profit news, I’m not sure there is one. There are certainly some deep-seeded flaws with the way our news is presented, but they are impossible to avoid without either regressing technologically or nationalizing all news outlets. The only reasonable advice I can offer is to be aware. Know where the news you’re hearing is coming from and know for whom it is intended. Keeping these things in mind will help to clear out some of the bias that is natural within our system. Lastly, if you see a story that looks interesting, it probably is. It never hurts to pursue a topic a little more on your own time. By looking to multiple sources for a story, not only will you become a more knowledge and worldly person, you will have a more well-rounded understanding of whatever story you choose to research.
Zachary McCann is a senior majoring in philosophy.
