One thing we need to accept as media sources grow and grow is that we will never receive the full story about anything. Many factors contribute to this and will effect your news sources. Nothing will ever be cut and dry. Nothing. Any news story you read will be biased, it will be tainted, and it will never say 100 percent of what truthfully happened. This is because of a variety of reasons that I have highlighted below.
News sources have sponsors and influential investors.
This will cause a change of news, maybe they won’t alter the facts but they might leave something important out when writing if it makes their investor look bad. I know when I read my daily email of TheSkimm they will put an asterisks and a foot note whenever a company they are talking about is an investor. This reminds me that news may be biased and to me it’s them saying it may just be that way.
Everyone has opinions.
Even the most unbiased person has an opinion. No matter how hard you try, your opinion will get mixed in somewhere, so will a news writers'. If they don’t like one of the political candidates and are writing an article comparing two of them maybe they won’t specifically say something bad about one but they might just boost up the other candidate a little bit more.
Everyone sees things differently and people will always have different accounts for an event.
Two people might both be watching a store owner get robbed, but that doesn’t mean they will tell the same story. One might leave something out, that doesn’t mean the other person is wrong for saying something happened that wasn’t backed up. Or viewing angles might change how something looked. People have different interpretations so depending on who you talk to could change the way something seems.
Websites promote certain traffic...and so do your friends.
You might only see part of a story that was reported on Facebook. If six of your friends share an article right after an event happens and you read it then, will you check back later to see the revised edition as more information unfolds? Probably not. You will feel that you know enough of what is going on and won’t think twice about checking back to see if something changed as there was more clarity on the situation. Also, certain pieces of news might get pushed to the top because that’s what a website is promoted.
Certain websites have different credentials.
Check the sources before believing everything you read. Did they talk to a leading investigator in the case or Joe Shmoe who might have met the person under investigation once? See who they got their intell from and how reliable it is. Can it be backed up? The best thing to go off of is cold hard numbers that represent the facts. Just make sure those numbers are also from a credible source.
The moral of this story is to always check multiple sources for your news intake. Although you still will never get the full, untainted story, it may just be a little clearer in your head and a little bit easier to put all the puzzle pieces together. And remember that no one will ever know it all.
