Bias, Objectivity, and Privacy In Contemporary Media

The world has seen journalism in many shapes for the last 400 years and it’s time we demand better journalism. Every day it feels as if there’s a disaster and the sky is falling; according to popular media. That's a bit dramatic, but it is true that the media is assuming an overdramatized role in which viewers are persuaded by the abuse of these methods; bias, objectivity, and privacy. There should be formal criticisms of the errors mentioned in which they will be analyzed, interpreted, and evaluated while being supported by credible sources to prove or disprove the hypothesis,” Bias, objectivity, and privacy have been actively abused by the contemporary media.”Bias, objectivity and privacy are important factors because they are not measurable, but they have been researched recently due to viral misinformation. Bias is the most known topic in the media now and it is used as a persuasive tool for viewers. “Fact Checkers” and opinion sites are where bias takes place in the internet media. Specifically, these websites consist of CNN’s “fact first” and Fox News fact checker and opinion sites, respectively. A relationship was noticed where these sites were consistently “disproving” each other. Fox News would release an opinion poll and CNN would deploy a fact check to counteract their own biases in a perpetual debate. Objectivity plays into this because the news should aim to “inform and educate”. However, that has not been the case with current internet news media. An independent news ranking source, “AllSides”, rated CNN as “Left” and Fox News as “Right” leaning political stations (obviously). There are millions of consumers who are receiving content from these respective sites and are persuading them daily. Privacy in the media is invaded because the media has conformed to the internet and will buy advertisement slots on social media sites to market their content, in which they had to purchase personal information from third parties.

The interpretation of the factors is not going to be generous either, because these websites consistently outsource their platform to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. These media sites exhibit high levels of subjectivity and reach millions of consumers every day, but take advantage of their respective biases and use that to misinform consumers. It's common to see the objectives be settled as fast as possible and then fill that void with their own agendas for what should be unbiased reporting. Again, privacy is abused because media sites are spreading misinformation which becomes an invasion of intellectual privacy and can be harmful to the common consumer. It is essentially intellectual theft; news media like Fox and CNN insert their own subjective content to construe current events to the level that the reality of the objective is in poor shape.

The evaluation of the media texts and their respective sites comes out to be fairly poor, too. Fox News and CNN assume overdramatized roles due to their meet ridiculous claims that are intentionally utilizing their bias and ability to polarize issues in all media forms. This contributes to the intellectual privacy invasions of millions across the nation, dividing one another, rather than contributing to the knowledge and welfare of the nation. These respective media outlets jeopardize the fabric of society every day with their twisted version of “Yellow Journalism”. Both sides of the political spectrum are equally suspect of exhibiting poor-quality content. Our society deserves a little more effort in the media industry. 

Previous work on this notion comes from Jake Bittle, a commentary on Fox’s approach to intentionally push their bias on post-election expectations on President Biden,” Assuming Biden ever gets around to rolling out his big plans, then, Fox will have exactly the tool kit and the personnel it needs to render those proposals dead on arrival”. Bittle ends his article with a not-so-shocking reality; the news media has the power to persuade. This description of Fox’s media effects is truly frightening and clearly fits right into the roles described earlier. Do not forget though, Fox and CNN serve as polar opposites, clearly, CNN follows this same strategy as well. Bias in the media has an extensive reach when it comes to its content production.

The potential dangers of subjectivity in the media are supported by Praveen Kumar, University of Hyderabad, “From a constructivist point of view, news media doesn’t provide an exact mirror of social reality (Allan, 1998), thus encouraging viewers to accept particular definitions of reality over the others.” This statement cannot be statistically proven, nonetheless it does reflect a lot of common beliefs about the media. It feels extremely detached from reality in which the consumer can observe content that may be objectively wrong because of the subjective reality that is reflected back to the viewer. Once the content is reflected on the consumer from respective media networks, the thought process is generally pre-constructed and the media now produces more opinions than facts or truth; covertly projecting the idea that a common viewer can no longer think for themselves. This observation concludes that this news media influence has grown exponentially for the last 23 years and there has been little progress to change this systematically. Other than exploring personal thoughts, this current news media serves no other purpose than being an equivalent of glancing at celebrity tabloids in a supermarket, except it's on your television, smartphone, or personal computer. However, that is not what the reality of the situation is; Fox and CNN are billion-dollar corporations that feed an echo chamber without any regard for truth or fact, it’s their world and (we) the consumers are living in it. 

The privacy aspect of media has also taken a decline in the last decade. Instead of respecting individual rights, the news media and other industries have taken advantage of the internet to further encroach on intellectual thought processes. Media has used its ability to sell its way into the personalized news media of the masses through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc.,” Privacy is an ethical challenge (Zwitter, 2014) and also one of the most relevant legal aspects in any big data project (Pérez-Sanz, 2016). If a media company implements a data wall for any of their digital offerings, it must take into account how people will feel about disclosing their personal data. These media outlets outsource their content to other sites so they can also endanger individual privacy rights by selling their information to create personalized and convenient echo chambers. This media effect carries dangerous weight, because this information can be put at risk by hackers and simultaneously, invades subconscious thought by being consistently marketed. 

These findings produce sufficient evidence to understand that the popular news media continually perpetuates a debate about being “right” and “wrong”. Between fact-checkers and opinion writers, the media prefers to run itself in circles. Considering this, consumers should take action and demand quality journalism efforts to provide unbiased and sensible information. This has the potential to solve some detachment issues regarding media and its relationship with reflecting reality. Looking forward; privacy is a somewhat recent concern with the progression of technology and urgently needs to be revisited in the future to see if any privacy standards are set in the new age of information.

2018, p. 19., doi:10.3145/epi.2018.ene.02. “Allsides Media Bias Ratings.” AllSides, 2021, www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings?field_featured_bias_rating_value=1&field_news_source_type_tid%5B2%5D=2&field_news_bias_nid_1%5B1%5D=1&field_news_bias_nid_1%5B2%5D=2&field_news_bias_nid_1%5B3%5D=3&title=.

Bittle, Jake. “Fox News Prepares to Wage a Culture War on Joe Biden.” The New Republic, 23 Nov. 2020, newrepublic.com/article/160217/fox-news-prepares-wage-culture-war-joe-biden.

“CNN's Facts First Searchable Database.” CNN, Cable News Network, 7 Dec. 2021, www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics?query=fox+news&page=1&order=relevance.

Fox News, FOX News Network, www.foxnews.com/.

Kumar, N Praveen. “Journalistic Objectivity in Media Risk Debates: Challenges & Opportunities.” The Clarion- International Multidisciplinary Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, 1 Feb. 2016, p. 91., doi:10.5958/2277-937x.2016.00013.7.

Portilla, Idoia. “Privacy Concerns about Information Sharing as Trade-off for Personalized News.” El Profesional De La Información, vol. 27, no. 1,