The search for honest journalism in the internet age
Perhaps it would be melodramatic to assert that truthful media is dying, but thorough media coverage is certainly on the decline, no thanks to the growing reliance on internet outlets to deliver news. At the risk of permanently affixing a tin foil hat to my head, I’d like to take the opportunity in this edition’s staff editorial to address growing concerns about media biases, and even suggest that news outlets from National Public Radio to The Lamron alike are capable of reducing media bias.
Taking a cursory glance at the New York Times homepage sheds some light on the ways in which popular media outlets prioritize their stories. Top articles include: “Amid Quake’s Devastation, a Rare Bright Spot: Rescuers Still Find Survivors”; “Cities Need Constant Care. They Didn’t Get That in Turkey”; “Inflation Cooled Just Slightly, With Worrying Details”; and “How to Stop Having Those Silly Fights With Your Partner.”
The purported focus on international disaster, followed by a sharp turn into personal advice represent a larger problem that internet-based journalism has brought into focus; on the one hand, the more widespread accessibility of internet media allows for more people to see more stories about anything from international affairs to lessons in love. But this impossibly diverse spread of articles points to a larger issue with internet media and its inability to focus on any one topic. In other words, when the internet enables everyone—from professional journalists to teenage bloggers—to post just about anything, everything is upheld to the same degree of importance.
Furthermore, there is a growing tendency, largely due to social media outlets like Instagram and Twitter being used as news sources (the Pew Research Center reported in 2021 that 69% of Twitter users go to the site for news), to focus internally at one’s own relation to events and ideas, rather than to hear from other perspectives; Instagram infographics and personal anecdotes as ploys to “do better” come to mind. In her book Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino characterizes this desire as “self-calibration” (Tolentino 13), a tendency to groom a news-aware persona, rather than to be aware. Again, according to Tolentino, posting news on the internet “makes communication about morality very easy but makes actual moral living very hard” (Tolentino 11).
The burgeoning problem, then, is that news exists not strictly, but to a large extent, on the internet, and the internet necessitates self-absorption. Apps like the aforementioned Instagram and Twitter make far less money from quiet observation than consistent posting, and the same goes for more “professional” news outlets.
So, where does this leave us humble news readers and writers? A good start to distancing oneself from the urge to stare into the internet’s “trick mirror” may be to avoid its clutches as much as possible. Social media was, after all, originally intended to be used for social purposes; harkening back to the early days of Myspace and using the internet as a place to catch up with friends, rather than a place to become an informed person, may help to thwart such self-contained impulses.
As mentioned, though, the internet is not designed to be used in moderation. It may be helpful, then, to diversify information sources, taking, for example, a bit from the standard social media sites, a bit from podcasts, a bit from traditional news sites, a bit from personal conversations, a bit from small papers, etc.
Media bias might just be impossible to wholly avoid as the behemoth that is the internetcontinues expanding. While it may seem that opportunities to be a vigilant news-seeker have all but vanished, there can be great value in listening to first-hand stories from real people, both in print and in your day-to-day, rather than sweeping through blue-light front pages that emit nothing but buzzwords and attention-grabbers.