The Good, The Bad, and The Bias

For 24 hours, I replaced my news sources with ones that are furthest from my views. My political views are relatively left-wing, and as such, I get most of my news from CNN or CBC. Due to this, I replaced my feed with Fox News and National Review, both right-leaning media outlets. While I wasn’t sure what to expect, the immediate biases caught me off guard. After reviewing tweets, articles, and videos, a central theme I noticed from both outlets was their heavy criticism of American President Joe Biden. A few of the articles I read criticized his political agenda, immigration policy, and plans to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal. In the midst of trying to separate fact from fiction, I came across an article by Fox News titled “Biden Tells European Allies 'America Is Back,' Seeks to Turn Page on Trump Era.” This article showed favouritism towards former President Donald Trump and criticized Biden for “taking a number of thinly-veiled shots at his predecessor” (Shaw, “America is Back”). The report continued to quote a former senior defence official during the Trump administration who stated that Biden was capitalizing on the honeymoon period of the election to pin down allies. After reading the article, I was shocked that they made, in my opinion, no effort to show an impartial view. This made me think about how many people use Fox News as their primary source of information and how one-sided their views may be. The next article that caught my attention was by National Review and was titled “The Cruz Cancun Conundrum”. This article attempted to defend Ted Cruz for taking his family to Mexico while millions of Texans had faced a major disaster. To make matters worse, the writer stated that the Senator’s decision was justified and the right thing to do. Reading news reported by people with the opposite views is never easy, but this article upset and angered me. While I am no stranger to politicians being exempt from the rules, seeing a political figure leave in the middle of a disaster on top of a global pandemic is just wrong by all accounts or at least in my books. But hey, maybe that's why I should never have a career in politics, I think I would lose my mind. Despite a challenging 24 hours, I learned a lot. Replacing my news sources with Fox News and National Review has made me more cautious about what I read. I found myself looking up the same topic from different sources to check how true they were. In addition, these news sources made me question the outlets I use, and I wondered if they also had a bias that I am blind to because they align with my opinions. While I can’t say for sure, I don't think CBC or CNN have such blatant prejudice in their reporting. Overall, I found it difficult to read opposing viewpoints, but I realized that is what makes it so important. I am now trying to be more aware of my biases. While at times it makes me want to pull my hair out, I will keep subscribing to Fox News if not to have a more well rounded view then to laugh at their comical biases

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