“Send in the Clowns” (considering the President of the United States)

“Blue State Blues: How Not to Become a ‘Shithole’ Country”

Two article titles from two extremes of the political expression. Both peddled to the public and online platforms fitting for the tech age we currently live in. Both are scathing towards the other side and are classified by MediaBiasChart.com as “propaganda” and “inaccurate.”

The two headlines are plucked right from liberal outlet Palmer Report and conservative outlet Breitbart news. Though they are challenged on the legitimacy of their reporting, they hardly raise worries of people taking them as fact.

They are what experts can call confirmation biases. They mirror an extreme left or right view and those who read are those who find their point of views validated by these articles. Their diction is scathing, matching resentment towards the other side, their claims, at times, have no subject matter to support them and fact checking set off sirens. It reads like an Op-Ed rather than the objective news one searches for any (and no, they aren’t explicitly marked as opinion).

This country has had endless concerns with “Fake News,” but what is that? Are they fake news? Is the New York Times like our President claims?

It has existed for well over a hundred years. It started when outlets created false articles almost entirely. So much they coined it as “yellow journalism” back in the day.

But what is today’s fake news? Is it falsehoods or biases? Is it lies or willingly manipulating or redacting the truth?

One should reasonably focus on finding truthful and unbiased sources. Associate Press is considered an in-depth and rather moderate part. Though people also want to find pieces that follow their political alignment. Yet we should consider the truth to follow those alignments one might be dismissing the entire truth or the whole truth.

For in this country, freedom of press implies our right to the truth and freedom of speech opinion. They can overlap, but is arguable that one should keep them separate in the majority of news.