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The truth in news is important
SUN. | 11-14-21 | OPINION
With all of the different news influences there are today, for example, social media, it is hard to tell if some information is true or not which can affect people’s trust in the televised news. The news can very easily get corrupted by people who don’t know what they are talking about or are biased to a specific side.
For years, before social media was made and normalized, the news was the only reliable source for people to get information on what was going on. People relied on the news to tell them what was happening, be it just in their town or around the world, and if the newscaster gave inaccurate or biased information, there was still no way to know that it was wrong and it could go downhill very quickly. People will take what the news tells them very seriously, and if they are given the wrong information, there could be arguments or fights over nothing. Information is the building block of almost everything in our society. Wars can be waged or relationships can be ended over simple information. This is why it is so important that the news is accurate and unbiased.
The rise of social media has completely changed the way the news works. Practically no one subscribes to the newspaper anymore and although a lot of people still watch the news on their television, with the presence of social media and all of the biased information that people post, it’s hard to trust what you see.
The reason social media makes it hard to trust the news is because anyone can post anything they want, make it look official, and someone around the world will believe it. That one person believing the random thing someone posted can
Graphic by Jake Bradsher
start a huge chain reaction of inaccurate information, and it could lead to all sorts of problems. This isn’t to say that social media is evil or anything; I just want to raise awareness of the incorrect information that could very easily be spread.
The main problem with the social media information issue is that the false truths posted on social media can make their way into televised news. People could spread the information they find on social media to official news sources and that could start a butterfly effect, spreading false information all over the world. A lot of people form or support their opinions based on the television news so if they are presenting false information it could really mess up a lot of peoples’ mindsets.
There have been some examples of so-called trustworthy news websites and television stations being proven false. Yellow journalism is a good example of this. Yellow journalism is a type of writing that uses crude exaggeration and doesn’t tell the truth as they should. Apps like Twitter and Facebook are good examples of modern-day yellow journalism. They exaggerate the truth and make things into much bigger deals than they should be
With how important the news is to a lot of the world’s day-to-day lives, it is immensely important that it is accurate and unbiased. The news should always be fact checked by professionals before it is aired because it could easily cause horrible consequences if people were shown false information. People’s minds and opinions can become corrupted by social media, and we need the news to be there to be the anchor of truth in our society. The news provides stability and accurate information for people to be able to comprehend all of the information that they take in daily from social media and other outside sources. It’s very important to keep this anchor truthful and unbiased to keep us in the right about our information.
