Headlines are often clickbait, often written by an editor, rather than an article’s author, meant to tease readers. They can signal the angle or bias of a story, but not aways. Here’s a challenge.
Scan and ponder these four headlines:
“The Risk That Josh Shapiro Could Pose to Kamala Harris’ Campaign”
“Some House Republicans slam Vance as Trump’s VP pick: ‘The worst choice’”
“Promising To Restore 'Law and Order,' Trump Falsely Claims Crime Is Rising”
“JD Vance Referred to Interracial Marriages as ‘Two-Colored’ in 2021”
What questions, doubts, reactions arise? Notice these, maybe write them down. We’re often so busy we often bypass that little voice in the back of our heads. Do you think you can discern the political bias of the article or its publishing source?
“The Risk That Josh Shapiro Could Pose to Kamala Harris’ Campaign” is from Slate, which media bias organizations adfontesmedia.com and allsides.com assess as a far left-biased news organization.
“Some House Republicans slam Vance as Trump’s VP pick: ‘The worst choice’” is from The Hill, a source that allsides.com labels as center. Meanwhile, adfontesmedia.com rates it as just slightly left of center, comparable to Sky News.
“Promising To Restore 'Law and Order,' Trump Falsely Claims Crime Is Rising” is from Reason Magazine, a source that is “right-leaning,” according to the same organizations.
“JD Vance Referred to Interracial Marriages as ‘Two-Colored’ in 2021” is from MeidasTouch, a newer organization that adfontesmedia.com rates as left leaning.
Does any of this surprise you? Which source are you most likely to trust? Is there one that you’d read with a more critical, skeptical eye? With distrust in institutions at a notable high, people frequently avoid or discredit newspapers or news media that don’t fit the filter they use to make sense of what is happening in the world. Too busy to read all 922 pages of Project 2025, a party’s platform, or the nuances of a case like the Delphi murders, we turn to reporters and columnists to distill the key points. But when a competing claim surfaces, we are forced to reckon with which source to trust.
Beth Lindsay, Research and Instruction Librarian at Wabash College, advocates that you SIFT. Taken from Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg’s book Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Less Duped, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online, SIFT is an acronym to help you navigate bias.
The S is for stop. Stop and consider how a headline or article makes you feel and if “it seems designed to elicit strong emotion (especially anger)?” said Lindsay. “Is this a topic with which I am already quite familiar and thus have a well-informed opinion, or is it something I’m less familiar with, and would need to learn more to help me form an opinion?”
I stands for investigate before reading. Lindsay emphasizes that you should do this before reading because that’s before you form an opinion. Who wrote the story or news script? Who pays for it? When was it written/recorded? Where and by whom? Is it non-profit or for profit?
With so many people turning to social media for information, it can be challenging to investigate. Social media includes a lot of “common folk” offering up their opinions, hoping to influence the rest of us. In fact, that’s a rhetorical tactic called appeal to common folk where the speaker purports to be “just one of us” and a “voice for common sense.” It’s worth asking, what is their motive? Do they believe themselves influencers? Are we listening to them because we want to learn or because we want to be affirmed in our point of view?
When you stumble across a new source or voice, it’s worth cross-checking the facts, quotes and experts they cite. The News Literacy Project acknowledges that bias seeps into even the most well-intentioned reporters, thinkers and publishing organizations.
If your inner alarm system triggers, consider the possibility of “bias creep.” Bias in reporting takes a variety of forms. We’ve indirectly addressed partisan bias (the leaning of the writer and organization) and corporate bias (who pays for it). In demographic bias, the writer caters to his audience to please them. This can even lead to being “too neutral” and omitting key details for the audience’s sake.
There’s also coverage bias. The old “If it bleeds, it leads” rule of thumb comes to mind. When news rooms focus on violent crime because it’s sensational, it can provoke people to believe that violent crime is overtaking their city, state or nation, even if police data shows it is dropping overall.
Finding better coverage challenges us to ask, “who is in a better position to know?” Trace those quotes and claims to the original source and check if they’ve been lifted out of context. How do they sound if lifted out of the sentence around them? If they were spoken aloud, how does the tone of voice affect you? Is it sarcastic, honest and straight-forward? Is it challenging or targeted?
“What I love about SIFT is that it is *very* quick, AND, once you have confidence in a source, you don’t need to continue the process,” said Lindsay. “So, for example, while no source is perfect, I have relatively more confidence in accuracy from The Wall Street Journal versus an online news outlet I’ve never heard of and can’t find out anything about their ownership structure or editorial process.”
It’s important to notice when we’re in a bubble, filtering out voices we disagree with, and not doing due diligence to see how other people are framing a story, if quotes have been taken out of context, or if facts have been omitted or misconstrued. Lindsay notes that when we’re motivated, we do the research and evaluate our sources.
“People already do it in their everyday lives, like when they want to buy sneakers or a new phone,” said Lindsay.
“We used to have a poster in the newsroom that read ‘If your mother tells you she loves you, get a second source.’ That’s basic journalism 101. No matter what you heard or read, get a second source. It's difficult to go to one source and get the complete story,” said Tim Timmons, editor of one of two papers in the county.
Early in his career Timmons recalled an editor teaching him that “when you cover a story, you should see a blank chalkboard. Draw a line and put everything about one side of the story on the left side, then everything on the other side on the right. We all used to try to do this. Somewhere along the line, our industry moved away from it.”
Timmons acknowledged that the news industry has changed. Over 2,500 news organizations have closed since 2005, including 360 since the pandemic. Though he has written in his column that he might vote for Trump, he also faulted Trump for much of the loss of reliable news.
“We owe a lot of this to Trump because he started drawing lines in the sand and putting people on one side or the other and telling everybody that it was all fake news because he didn't like it or he didn't agree with it. He trashed everything, and he made it hard on everybody. Now we’ve lost over 2000 newspapers in this country, and the bottom line is that has made it harder to find reliable news.”
The onus is on us. Buyer beware, so we’ve been cautioned. That can be quite accurate for larger media outlets, which have cut reporting staff and are often too far removed from the story to get the best sources and understand the context. One bright spot, Timmons noted, are local papers, if we support them. They are often the best positioned to report accurately.
“When you write your story, you try to make sure you have balance, so that both sides are represented,” as Timmons said the industry once did. He admitted he might be biased, but he thinks small town papers are still aiming for that.
“I think we’re pretty good at not slanting things to our perspective,” he noted. Maybe it’s because locally people are less polarized and maybe it’s because small town papers can’t afford to disenfranchise half their readership.
Of course, we need national, regional and local news to maintain our ability to self-govern well. If we want a less polarized nation and to feel less duped, reading widely matters.
Note: We invited the editors of both papers in Montgomery County an opportunity to share how they navigate bias. We did not hear back from Tina McGrady.
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