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Media Bias

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The media today has become a topic of concern for many members of the general population. Am I getting a reliable source of information? Is this source withholding the truth and ameliorating a topic? If I know that the information being reported is false, how can I trust that any other information from this source can be trusted? These are several questions that a particular citizen might make on a day to day basis, and when the question of bias is thrown into the mix, an overwhelming feeling of mistrust in our media can ensue. Media sources today are siding more and more towards their viewers political views, and this creates a form of media-bias that can spread untrustworthy information out into the public. Depending on your media source, …show more content…

And towards who? Donald Trump. After the New England Patriots’ 2017 Super Bowl win, the team was invited to the White House to meet the president and to take pictures. This is the standard procedure for all winning Super Bowl teams. However, The New York Times seemed to think that the White House visit was being boycotted by the Patriots, in perspective to the controversiality regarding President Trump. The Times posted two images, one from 2015 with President Obama, and one from the 2017 win with President Trump. There is a very clear difference in the amount of players shown in the picture, with 2015 containing much more than 2017. The Patriots returned posts about the pictures, stating that, “These photos lack context. Facts: In 2015, over 40 football staff were on the stairs. In 2017, they were seated on the South lawn” (NY Times “Misleading” Photo). The south lawn in the 2017 is not shown, and this gives the impression of a far less turnout to the White House visit. Another important point to add, is that in the 2015 picture, the team and the president are posing and ready for a picture. They look happy and proud to be there. With the 2017 picture, however, the photograph was taken at a different time frame, showing the president speaking and the team simply standing in place. The fact that the Times used this picture instead of a posed one implies their intention to set an uneager …show more content…

Many members of the general public have caught onto the ruse of mass media outlets, and are starting to not trust them. A Gallup poll from the somewhat recent year of late 2016 has shown that Americans’ trust in mass media has fallen to a record setting low. For the general population, only 32 percent of Americans trusted the media outlets’ reports with a “great deal of trust” or a “fair amount of trust”. A deeper look into the polling shows that only 14 percent of population who classify as Republican trust the media a great deal or a fair amount. This could be due to the bias against Republicans in certain media sources, or it could fall into something deeper. As for age groups, ages 18-49 have shown 26 percent in the same trust rating, while 50 and older shows 38 percent. The difference in percentages due to age are most likely due to the technological fluency of younger generations. Better understanding of technology can allow for a person to dig deeper into what is true or false in the media

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