The press, including electronic media, is central to the lives of US citizens. It provides readers with information that they may find useful to know in their everyday lives and keeps people up to date on what is going on throughout the world. If not conducted effectively, however, it can be used as a weapon against political, religious and racial groups. Major news networks need to be responsible with the power they have and conduct research in a way that is accurate without sharing personal bias.

When asked about what effective journalism is, Elizabeth Anderson, a history teacher at Sandy Spring Friends School, responded by saying that it needs to have “strong, factual research, strong resources, and well written, researched opposite views.” Miriam Rock, an SSFS English teacher, stated that “Good journalism is fact-based. It looks at the world around us and makes meaning in a way that hasn’t necessarily been made before.”

Journalism seems to have lost its sense of neutrality, especially today, as most news networks lean either left or right. Miriam Rock said, “I don’t know if a truly unbiased source exists. I go for news sources that are relatively unbiased like the New York Times, but I think bias shows up whenever anyone decides what they are writing about, the facts they’re reporting and how they are structuring pieces.” With very few sites that are politically neutral, it is hard to decide which station is telling the truth and influences people to make assumptions about the opposing side which are not necessarily true. For example, CNN and Fox News are two stations with very different views. CNN is primarily left wing and Fox News is primarily right wing. If one goes on one of their sites, they would see one-sided views that either exploit the opposing party or making their own party look better. This is called passive bias, where they are not directly expressing their views as they would if they were opinion pieces, but are taking bits of the information to make their party seem like they are the only ones in the right. This leads to deeper and more entrenched political division.

Are news stations taking less time and effort to construct a well-written article than they did in the past? Elizabeth Anderson pointed out that “cable news networks are really going for ratings and the quick blast.” Her example was with CNN where everything is considered ‘breaking news.’ This “desensitizes the viewer to what is really important and what is really not.” Miriam, however, disagreed that newspaper stations are rushing more today to construct an article and that “there was always a rush. I think there are just as many sources today. The fact that articles are online means that the editor can continue to update them in the future.”

Regardless of whether or not newspapers are spending less effort to create a well-written piece, they need to recognize how much power they have in this world and use it to create articles that do not result in collateral damage to one political party.

featured image: http://thenewyorkcitypost.com/history-of-nepali-journalism/