Hurricane Harvey has been all over the news recently, and understandably. But comparatively, I've barely heard of the floods in South Asia, with more than 1,000 deaths and even more victims. My point is not to diminish the severity of what happened in Texas, but that we need to also remember to not focus all coverage on national issues only.
Lawrence Sung
Nov 11, 2019
I came across this chart while searching up media neutrality: It got me thinking--is there even such a thing as unbiased media? To that, I say no. Every human being grows up in a different set of circumstances and is exposed to unique stimuli that contribute to the development of a person's personality and beliefs. Over time, those solidify as one constantly uses them as a framework through which one interprets the environment around them. Thus, no matter how hard people try to be neutral when disseminating information, there will always be a slight bias towards one region of the political plane (I prefer not to use the spectrum notion since it generalizes too many political traits) because of the built-up habit of using one's belief system and personality to analyze the world.
Is this bad? Absolutely not. In fact, I think that this is great for democracy! With the notion of media neutrality gone, news agencies are free to express their own opinions about the world around them. Furthermore, the power of interpreting the media no longer is in the hands of the media themselves; rather, the democratization of media will allow the people the chance to interpret both sides of the news, for once, and will grow the public's ability to think for themselves. Thus the common people will be liberated from the vices of a monotonous press.
Why do you think that this is?
Very few articles such as http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/29/547078456/floods-in-south-asia-have-killed-more-than-1-000-people-this-summer have been published by major news outlets. This seems to isolate the US from the rest of the world.