According to several articles, when individuals go online to follow the news or read opinions, they tend to go to those places where they will find writers who agree with them. Unfortunately, at this point, many people stop there and do not take the next step to study other sides of the issue.
The notion that certain sources reflect the viewpoint of the reader, editor, or publisher is neither new nor particularly surprising. In the early years of our county, it was a given that certain sources were inherently opinionated and reflected a certain line of thinking. Newspapers like Benjamin Franklin Bache’s Philadelphia Aurora, which was published three times a week from 1794-1824, largely served to attack the Federalist party of George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton. On the other side of the colonial era newspaper wars, James T. Callender attacked Thomas Jefferson in his newspaper, the Richmond Recorder, where among other accusations about the third President, Callender presciently claimed that Jefferson had slept with his slave Sally Hemings and she had borne children by him. Fans of these papers knew that what they were reading was highly subjective, and the editors and the writers did not make any pretense to objectivity.
I can recall living in Israel in the 1980’s and noticed that people would read several newspapers, rather than just one, with their morning coffee. They knew that each paper was slanted toward a particular party, and that arriving at the “truth” was like watching the Japanese film Rashomon, in which four witnesses’ accounts of a murder are all different, or reading Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, where the story is seen through the eyes of several different characters and it’s up to the reader to put all the pieces together.
According to Michael Schudson, a sociologist and author of Discovering the News, the norm of objectivity in news may have come about when newspaper publishers realized that they could attract a commercially viable audience rather than merely serving as an arm of a political party. Others believe that this newfound faith in objectivity, which was occurring in other fields simultaneously, may have accompanied the invention of the telegraph which placed a value on brevity and emphasized a reporting style that stressed, “Just the facts, ma’am” (to borrow from Jack Webb). As a result of both of these trends, publishers discovered that they could reach a broader audience than before if people did not self select to buy only those papers whose biases they preferred. Readers could now follow one source, get all the news fit to print, and be certain that they were getting the “truth.”
This misplaced faith in the objectivity of news sources began in the early 20th century and seems just as misguided in the early 21st century. Unfortunately, though, people either still believe in it, or they’re fine with reading the news with the understanding that what they are digesting is indeed partisan.
So, where does this leave us as educators? As I often tell parents of prospective students to Bosque School, we take children who are 11 years old and by the time they leave us, they may be voting. Along with their parents, we have an awesome responsibility to teach adolescents how to become informed and engaged citizens who understand the complex issues of today’s world. Part of this process demands that we help students comprehend that most of the news they read is subjective and reflects the views of the writer; as a result, it is their responsibility to read a variety of sources and to learn all sides of an issue. Like those Israeli coffee shop habitues, our students need to sit with several different sources; gain exposure to a multiplicity of opinions, including those they might oppose; and make decisions that take into account a variety of viewpoints, rather than merely going to the sources with which they are comfortable. When our children’s views are challenged rather than merely reinforced, they will be more effective citizens and ultimately more well-rounded people.
