“Will from Langhorne”
I was driving home shortly before 2 a.m. when I heard a vaguely familiar voice on the radio. The man on the radio was soliciting opinions on a couple of topics, not the least of which was newspapers. As the host went on I realized I was hearing the launch of Will Bunch’s next career as a talk radio host. That’s when I picked up the phone and made my first call to the “Big Talker” in ages.
Okay, so they got my name wrong, but at least I got through. A few folks who called before me complained of bias in the news media (as in, “oh, that damn liberal media”). I wanted to raise a slightly different point about bias.
It seems the average person talks about bias with no real awareness of his or her own bias. I suggested that what most of us consider bias is just another way of measuring our own personal defaults. We all have prejudices, which is why I question people who pass themselves off as objective while pointing out the inferred biases of others.
I even unwittingly echoed something I heard at the Norgs unconference last year – it may have even come out of Will’s mouth (though I can’t recall well enough to attribute with confidence): I suggested that one byproduct of the internet is that many of us have been spoiled into getting news tailor-made to our preferences, right down to the biases most of us don’t even recognize in ourselves. Thus we have less patience for the full-package of information offered in a traditional newspaper, mainly because we have to work “too hard” to pick and choose the news we want to be made aware of.
The freedom to pick and choose the news we want is a double-edged sword. It allows us to focus on things that are important, but it also allows us to become philosophically myopic. Which is probably why a certain post from Slacktivist came to mind while I conversing with Will. To paraphrase the gist of that post, when someone reads the news, they should be smarter after they’ve read it than they were before.
Too many news consumers seem to only want an affirmation of what they already believe to be true.
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