Millions of Americans gain their news perceptions from cable news, with this huge quantity of people getting information from these sources, comes certain risks as well. Cable news will often present information and may distort the information with personal biases based in their political beliefs.
Bias is an ever present existence in a variety of news sources and it ranges wildly between the degree of its influence in news. One realm of news that can be a relative minefield of blatant bias would be political news programing, through which dishonest practices are occasionally used to spread agendas rather than observable facts.
With many sources of cable news comes an associated bias that leans in the direction of one political party or another. While there are rare exceptions within cable news programs that provide a degree of reliability that attempts to resist bias. After a study was conducted by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it was observed among the studied news sources that the existing bias among them, seemed to be shifting further towards the left or right political spectrum.
While many news programs hold political preferences, it is not inherently wrong or deceitful to do so. However, an issue may arise once a news program decides to cross the line from presenting more news pertaining to one side of the political space and begins to present misinformation or even disinformation to harm views of other political parties while promoting their own political beliefs. Allowing political views to skew the presentation of facts completely eradicates the point of watching the news, this skewed information only allows a faulty view of events as they happen as the best case and completely incorrect perceptions of events in the worst case.
A recent development has taken place in which more Americans now get their news from smartphones, computers, and tablets as opposed to more traditional means according to Pew Research. While this change is significant, it is still important to note the substantial amount of U.S. adults that continue to utilize television as a source of news. With the huge quantity of adults that do persist to get their news from television, the risk of misinformation and disinformation reaching millions of people becomes an exceedingly conceivable threat.
Overall, while it is not necessarily negative for a source of news to be associated with a particular political party, certain steps should be taken by these sources to ensure as unbiased of an approach to news as possible. Opinions and opinion pieces should be clearly shown or stated as works of opinion. Sources for information in news broadcasts should be readily available and thoroughly inspected by the news channels themselves.
With the considerable degree of damage that unchecked misinformation can have, it is important for Americans to take responsibility to attempt to navigate news in order to understand what the truth is. This is an unfortunate precaution that must be considered in a time period where it is difficult to know what sources of information you can trust when many news sources are becoming unreliable forms of information media.
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