In 2024, mass media has become ubiquitous in daily life – from social media to television to radio broadcasts – with many of these sources claiming to be “neutral” or “entirely fact based”.
Nevertheless, studies have shown many major news outlets such as Fox News and CNN being skewed much further than expected on a basis of far right leaning to far left leaning, leaving Americans concerned about bias presence in their media consumption.
Bias can be present down to each individual word in a news report and is something that all forms of media are susceptible to. A recent uptake in bias among larger news organizations, known formally as “media polarization”.
Since the 2016 election, two large news organizations, FOX News and CNN have become the face of the opposing political parties. While CNN tends to lean liberal within their broadcasts, FOX often demonstrates bias towards conservative policies.
Students who have grown up familiar with the two major outlets shared their thoughts on media polarization. “I used to know FOX for watching sports and sometimes when elections came on,” said senior Henry Gannaway. “Now it just feels like FOX is only known for supporting the right, and the same goes for CNN and the left.”
Americans who rely on a large news source for news are more likely to see it as “mainstream media.” In fact, 92% of CNN viewers and 78% of FOX news viewers said they viewed their respective news source as mainstream media. The only expectation of this being news corporation Newsmax, where only 16% of Americans who get their news from the channel viewed it as mainstream media.
This outlier is most likely due to Newsmax’s branding of itself–a so-called “truth” news outlet that strays from the “lies” told in other larger media outlets in an effort to support former president Donald Trump.
Throughout his presidency, Trump frequently endorsed Newsmax content and continues to be featured with phone interviews on the channel. Despite Newsmax’s supposed “fact-first” content, Defamation Voting Systems recently settled a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the media outlet for defamation due to claims regarding the 2020 election.
Many Americans, including students, share a frustrated view on the struggle to find news without bias. “I want to vote in this next election, but I just don’t know where to find some reliable news sources,” senior Finn McMillan expressed. “Everything is either clearly leaning one way or it’s being labeled false by someone who probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about”.
With a plethora of news sources available on the internet each day and the rise of artificially generated articles and images, truly “neutral” sources seem to be a thing of the past. Organizations such as the Associated Press, Pew Research Center, CNBC and Newsweek are generally considered credible sources, and outside groups like Newsmax, while endorsed by some politicians, are not. The true effect of biased news in elections is not yet known, but the upcoming 2024 election will likely reveal the profound impact of media bias on public perception and voter behavior, as Americans navigate an increasingly polarized landscape.
