Last week, I was talking to some members of my church about journalism, and one of the biggest questions that came up had to do with navigating bias in the news.
Some people believed they had to read every story from multiple sources or visit both right-leaning and left-leaning outlets to be able to come away with a fair take. They felt either overwhelmed at the idea of having to do so much research to understand a story or totally disengaged, as if they didn’t trust any news source enough to want to follow it.
We can acknowledge political bias in our news sources—this chart is one example showing where different outlets land—without forcing ourselves to read all sides every time. In fact, Duke University sociologist Chris Bail found that everyday exposure to opposing views in the news doesn’t actually open up our media “bubbles”—it tends to just make people more angry about the other side and more defensive of their own positions. It can be good to know what different sources report about a news story, but it’s not a requirement for starting to develop a daily news habit.
