Entry #3: The Daily Bugle Isn't the Only One...

 

    Ah, news, a real double-edged sword. Sure, it can provide people some of the most accurate and most recent information, but in the wrong hands, the news can be really dangerous. Where you would see stories with truth, you would instead see partial truths that only account for one side. Where you would see objective you would see subjective. At worst, where you would see truth, you could see lies. In many cases, news in the hands of greed and bias create a recipe for disaster as many people will take the first thing they see at face value. In some cases though, people can point out bias easily, however with a practice called, "Slanted Reporting," it becomes much harder to detect since it is a lot more subtle.

 

Picture of biased news in the famous movie, "Spiderman." (https://www.thepropgallery.com/spider-man-daily-bugle-spider-man-newspaper-cover)

    Slanted reporting is having bias towards another side without making it obvious that there is bias. This is a practice that happens throughout many news sites such as Fox and CNN with biases towards their political views. In this report, we see an example of bias in news, albeit being fake news in the sense that this is just a news report in a movie. It also should be noted that the side that James Jonah Jamison is on is very biased. However, I would like to make the argument that while his delivery is not subtle at all, in fact it is really animated, it has a layer of subtly to it. Why I say that is that it is such shocking and scary news that opinions like these are almost completely dominant, making this broadcast feel more subtle because everyone in this context would be scared and share the same view points. In the people's context, their legendary savior, Mysterio, one who has saved the city countless times, was murdered by Spiderman, some teenage boy that goes around allegedly helping people. It becomes even more convincing since Mysterio is saying this on camera and Spiderman's words can easily be interpreted in favor of Mysterio, which is exactly what happens. Things get so bad that Spiderman had to go into hiding because of all of the death threats and thrown bricks. Fear is a powerful emotion, and it can cover up bias to add a layer of subtlety. Say this kind of reporting was done during a war against North Korea. Would anyone even take the opposing side of North Korea? Of course not. Even if the U.S. started the conflict for recourses, there would not be many people, if anyone, who would side with North Korea, making any kind of news that someone could make, no matter how biased, seem completely objective because of fear. Obviously, I am not saying that Spiderman is from North Korea, but this shows that fear can make bias subtle, transforming a normally biased report into more of a slanted report. 

    

    As subtle as it may be, slanted reporting is dangerous. Referring back to the Spiderman example, if he were caught and put under arrest, or even killed, many lives, the innocent citizens who rely on Spiderman's protection, would all have to live in fear. All these lives would be in chaos just because some news company wanted to keep with the times and hide the opposing side. It may even be possible that this has already happened to us before and we could not even tell it was biased in the first place and just defaulted to believing it. This is why it is always important to check your sources, because no source has to abide by the rules of a court.