I chose to investigate Today because my family watched the Today show almost every morning when I was growing up. Therefore, I was curious to learn more about the reliability of the source. According to the media bias chart, NBC: Today has a bias score of -1.22, which means that it is slightly left-leaning. This does not surprise me because the Today show did tend to have commentary that was skewed to the left. Today received a score of 42.00 for reliability, which means that it has a mix of fact reporting and analysis. This also doesn’t surprise me. While the main purpose of Today seems to be fact reporting, there is clearly some commentary and opinions on the different topics. Overall, I still think that Today is a decent source for surface-level, day-to-day news. However, I think that it’s also important to recognize that it is slightly left-leaning, and commentary and analysis are included in reports.
Month: October 2021 (page 3 of 3)
NPR was the news source that I choose because it is the news source that I listen to the most and I wanted to see where they would fall on the chart. The media bias site showed that NPR was mostly analysis or a mix of opinion with reporting and analysis, skewing slightly left. They had a reliability of 46.23 and a bias of -4.73. Their content is mostly neutral however I thought they would have skewed left rather than just slightly left because typically their content follows a more “liberal agenda.” From previous personal experience their reliability at covering a wide range of topics is not surprising. They have many ways to access their news via on TV, podcasts, or online and also have a transparency page that allows readers to figure out NPR’s sources. If the sources are anonymous there is a detailed relationship of the source to the article.
It is an understatement when I say I don’t like Fox News. Donald love Fox News, and it’s not a surprise if you look at the Media Bias chart. Fox News has 14.6
on the bias chart and 35.92 reliability. This news outlet is further right wing in comparison to the New York Time, which I read daily. In 2016, Fox News switch it slogan from ” Fair and Balanced” to “Most Watched, Most Trusted.” This slogan perfectly describe the company as you’ll see later. (Note that in 2016, Trump become elected president). Over the pandemic, I went to live in Florida, to get away from the energetic NYC. Every location I went to, they would put on Fox News, at the nail Solon or the doctor office, you name it. Being an easily bored person that I am, I watched it. And I am disappointed. One of the first news I saw was about covid out break. I don’t fully recall what they said but they used the term “wuhan virus,” the same phrase Mr. Donald the Duck have been using to further the blame of the outbreak on Asian. So I decided to write a passive aggressive email to them. Let just say the email is more aggressive than passive. Their respond was “We do apologize if this has negatively affected your experience. It is never our intention to bother any of our viewers.” I might be bad at reading, but I don’t think their apology is sincere considering the fact that the week after, the same thing happen. They used the term “wuhan virus.” So I emailed them again. This time they took longer to respond…As in they ignored me which I am n
ot surprise about. The term “wuhan virus” is mostly used by Donald, then Fox News uses it, and that made it a popular racist statement.
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of place in Florida put on Fox News on their TV in the waiting room. And me, a person who like to talk to stranger, walked up to a few Florida resident and ask them a few questions about the current events. We talked about the vaccine, the pandemic, and most importantly Mr. Make American great again. I has the chance to talk with this lady at a nail salon, she is a Florida resident for 40 years, and have kids living in upstate NY. She said her daughter is a doctor and her daughter co worker said not to get the vaccine. She didn’t explain to me why her daughter coworker said not to get vaccinated but whatever the reason is, she bought it. She also mentioned stuff stuff about the vaccine being unsafe, maybe not fully tested. Which is reasonable to have doubt about it, but what I notice most is that Fox News said something similar a few
minutes earlier on the TV in the salon. For disclaimer, this woman seem to be highly educated, very polite, and reasonable. Then there is this asian man who I met at a coffee shop. We got into a heated ‘discussion’ about Donald. He said a lot of question able things and one of them is, ‘Trump is not racist because he create jobs for everyone including black people.’ I did not argue with him much because I was in a public setting, surrounded by angry white republicans. The common theme in all these encounter is that Fox News, being so right wing, and so popular in states such as Florida, really shape the way people think. The things that people says sound like a copy and paste from Fox News.
I think it is irresponsible for news outlet with over 133 millions viewers to uses such language. The one good thing about this experience is that I now have a better understanding of why people think a certain way, it all go back to where they get their information.
(A screenshot from Fox News to my passive aggressive email is attached)
For this blog post, the website I decided to look at was Vox. First, I went to the “About Us” section on the Vox website. The first big statement they had was “Vox explains the news”. I thought this was interesting because based on who you ask, the news can be interpreted in different ways. The about us section said little about their own personal bias, but it did lay out the topics they cover. After this, I went to the “How we make Vox” section. One of the sections talked about how Vox tries to use visual graphs and charts to capture the reader better. Ezra Klein, the founder of the website said that “journalism focused on readers’ needs and interests won’t necessarily cater to the tastes of other media pros”. This is interesting because it shows that Vox is willing to be unique in how they go about doing journalism. When I clicked on the “politics and policy” section, there was also nothing about media bias. I found this interesting because normally I think of Vox as a more left-wing news cite.