All news is implicitly biased. Every individual has a unique lens through which they view the world. Every article and report is written by someone with an individual viewpoint and a set of values by which they live their lives. But we must be careful not to confuse bias and lies. The truth is that when people talk about biased news, a lot of the time what they really mean is news that does not align with their own opinions.
Reading from the Same Perspective Again and Again
This often results in many of us reading our news from the same sources all or most of the time. We stick with the news sources we ‘trust’. And it is no bad thing for us to be skeptical of where we are getting our news. The internet has brought about an infinite number of new places to get news from – there is no doubt that some of it is questionable at best.
But there is a subtlety that we may not recognize. When we read from the same newspapers and websites all the time, we are reinforcing the opinions we already have. In trying to avoid bias, ironically we are often cementing our own biases!
Add to this the fact that online algorithms are continually suggesting to us more of the same content that aligns with our beliefs, and what inevitably happens is that we believe that our view of the world is the correct one!
Seeing Other Perspectives
What we should be doing is reading our news from a wide variety of trusted sources. That includes reading opinions that might be opposite to the ones we hold. The facts are still the same but the viewpoint will be different. Think about a political topic that you feel particularly passionate about. Have you read all sides of the argument? Have you looked up some trusted sources to find out what those with opposing views say? Only when you have read from multiple sides will you know how you truly feel about it. Informed readers will question their own beliefs on subjects.
Biasly’s side-by-side news comparison is the perfect way to challenge your reading, and bring you a few trusted viewpoints of the same story. We’ve done all the hard work for you – bringing you the key political stories of the day from a left, right and neutral source. You don’t have to spend time trawling through different websites to find different views of the same story. You don’t have to work out which stories are neutral, left-leaning or right-leaning. Our ground-breaking artificial intelligence bias-meter technology scans hundreds of articles every day to determine their political leaning – so you don’t have to.
At Biasly we are committed to making it easy for news consumers to read widely, stay informed and ensure they have a well-rounded and balanced view of today’s political issues.