I have a profound distrust for the established media outlets of the world and especially the big ones. I know people that insist that one side is less biased but if I talk to these people for a little while I discover the same thing over and over again. These people have a certain political bias so they are blind to the fact that the place they are getting news from are also biased and maybe some just do a better job of pretending to not be biased than others.
The most profound of these are the big ones like Fox News and CNN who if you are truly a centrist you can easily look at virtually anything they are reporting on and see that they are immensely biased and it seems foolish to me that their viewers or readers can't see this.
When I meet someone that is pissed about politics all the time I first kind of feel bad for them that whey would waste so much time on that sort of drivel, but also feel as though they are a little bit "thick" for not realizing that the places they get their news are specifically designed to cater to their biases and also to rage-bait them into believing a certain way.
There is a site out there called allsides.org that is reasonably good at showcasing a certain hot topic of the week and then displaying the various viewpoint presented by various news outlets that are deemed to be biased in one way or another.
I find it amusing to read these stories, that are supposed to be about the same subject matter, and watch them come to completely different conclusions.
They claim to have a multi-partisan board of directors and don't actually do a lot of reporting themselves. They have kind of set themselves up as an overwatch group of the media and I think they serve their purpose. However, I can't really shake this feeling that it is just another wolf in sheep's clothing that is designed to make people feel a certain way, just like it seems almost all media is these days.
They have a chart of media bias and when I look at it, it just kind of makes me sad about the state of information that exists in today's world.
When I look at this the ones on the outside are for certain and I don't think anyone, including the people that read stuff from those groups, are silly enough to believe anything other than the fact that they are definitely right or left. The things that kind of make me turn up my nose a bit is the stuff that is considered "center." Much of this has to do with the fact that I don't believe that there is such a thing as actual reporting anymore and that everyone has an agenda.
If the news was ever truly unbiased is anyone's guess, but I don't think we really have any of that in today's world. Everyone has a boss and that boss is going to have their own opinions and those opinions are going to be, whether directly or indirectly, enforced at that organization. Imagine if you will that a boss prefers a certain worldview and some of his employees on their own accord, happen to fall in line with those views, but then again there are some other employees that may actually be better at their jobs the the ones who have the same viewpoints... well the similar viewpoints make the boss feel better so it just kind of makes sense that the similarly-thinking individuals would end up with better projects and assignments as well as be better rewarded as far as salary is concerned. What we end up with is a bias that was perhaps never actually even intended to happen, it just organically became that way.
For one thing, suggesting that Wall Street Journal opinion is somehow right leaning is very surprising to me. I guess this could stem from the fact that they tend to enjoy stories of making money and then would be more pro-capitalism. I don't really even know but in the off chance that I do read something by WSJ I certainly don't get the feeling that I am reading something right-wing. Suggesting that the New York Times leans left is just a joke. They are full-on left and have been for the entirety of my adult life. Even comedians that specialize in left-leaning comedy would agree to this.
I think at the end of the day that there simply isn't any real news anymore. I used to be a big fan of The Economist, which I believed was one of the only "real" news outlets out there but they struggled to make any money with their subscription model and have since started to have more opinionated pieces and now are suspiciously not even on the Allsides chart at all. Maybe they have lost so much attention that they are not deemed worthy of being on the chart anymore and that would be a real shame seeing as how they are one of the oldest news outlets in the world.
I think that for me and for most other jaded people on the planet, I just assume that all news outlets are lying and no matter what it is that they say, I have started to presume that the opposite of what they are saying is the truth. At the very least I believe that the real truth is not the point of view they are attempting to portray.
For me, I read the news with a sense of amusement only, I do not expect to be informed of anything at all in stories that have any sort of political theme to them.
