All About News

Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

Mainstream Bias and Alternative News

Connor Thomas
 All About News
Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

Modern journalism has become a shell and a joke of its former glory. With the
legacy media straining further and further from the middle, it has become
increasingly difficult for Americans to receive their news without a bias towards a
partisan side. This causes a widening distrust that prompts many Americans to search
for alternate forms of news. Although alternate sources come with a risk of being
questionable in their credibility, biased mainstream news faces the same risk, so the
American people have nothing to lose by searching for more bipartisan reporting,
resulting in less biased and more bipartisan Americans.
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Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

To start, an easy way to look at this would be to think about how our mainstream
media skews. Ad Fontes Media has a chart detailing news corporations' biases and
reliability. The chart shows how far media outlets, notably legacy media, skew in
each direction, with the majority leaning towards the left but still considered reliable.
Though verging to the right, the Wall Street Journal and Fox Business are the only
sources deemed still reliable. Significant conservative news outlet Fox News has a
high-reliability variation between opinion and analysis. While that could be accurate
in previous years, as modern America has progressed, the legacy media has been
trusted less and less.
 All About News
Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001
 All About News
Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

According to a recent Gallup poll, “currently, 68% of Democrats, 11% of Republicans and 31% of
independents say they trust the media a great deal or fair amount,” with an overall trust level of 36%. Now,
that significant divide can be attributed to the negative media coverage of President Trump and his
antagonistic views towards the media (Brenan). However, it can also be attributed to the widening bias and
partisanship of the media as it skews more to the left since even independents have a low trust level of the
media. Part of this change has to do with how Americans receive their news.
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Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

Nowadays, people primarily receive their news online through the Internet or on social media sites
such as Facebook or Twitter, opening various new sources of information and how Americans share
those sources. In a study done by Ingrid Rostad in the Journal of Information Technology & Politics,
she found that “Twitter is extensively concerned with mainstream media content” but also “that many
of the tweets directly referring to mainstream media do contribute with new perspectives or a critical
evaluation of mainstream media news coverage.”
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Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

Consequently, but not shockingly, according to a study by the

Pew Research Center, 59% of Twitter users get their news
“regularly” based on what pops up on their feed, as opposed to
utilizing considerable “legit” sources of news that were
previously stated as biased and partisan (Shearer and Mitchell,
“News Use”). Social media has allowed the mainstream media
to cover new topics that would not be initially covered in the
news by shedding light on new topics and stories and has
caused the media rhetoric to change around criticism towards
them. For instance, according to the Carrier Clinic, a subsidiary
of Hackensack Meridian Health, social media has exponentially
increased the support and resources of mental health care, a
concept that was not widely supported until social media
provoked a movement in mental health awareness.
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Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

While social media has been an outlet

for change, it also has been an outlet for
misinformation and disinformation,
causing the introduction of fact-
checking. A majority of Americans who
receive their news coverage from social
media suspect it to be considered
inaccurate, at which 59% still believe
the news to be unreliable (Shearer and
Mitchell, “News Use”).
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Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

In a study on fact-checking and fake news, three researchers from the University of
La Laguna summarized that “if people do not perceive social media as trustworthy
news sources, it makes sense that they do not find social media fact-checkers
trustworthy either” (Ardèvol-Abreu et al.). With partisan news sources and
misleading social media headlines dominating the majority of news intake, what is
left are alternative, reliable, nonpartisan news sources, but where can they be found?
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Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

Alternative news sources differ from the mainstream as they often cover stories the
mainstream does not or views events alternatively than the mainstream. Those
sources can often be interpreted as more partisan than the mainstream media and be
more unreliable, and in the search for unbiased, bipartisan media, they can lead
astray hopeful seekers of information. The Associated Press is considered the most
reliable, nonpartisan news source, relating to the Media Bias chart, but they are a
singularity among the primary news sources.
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Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

Though the rest of the mainstream media are

considered reliable and popular sources for news,
they have flaws that shed light on the beneficial
qualities of alternative news. For example, in a
study done by Pew Research Journal, 75% of
conservatives and 72% of Democrats considered
Fox News as a mainstream, conservative and
partisan news source, despite the platform
attempting to successfully brand itself as only
“commentary” of mainstream media as opposed to
“being” mainstream media (Shearer and Mitchell,
“Broad Agreement”).
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Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

In representation of left-winged news, CNN aired the

tagline “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police
Shooting" during the response to the Kenosha riots after
the shooting of Jacob Blake, causing mass ridicule among
other news outlets like The Hill towards CNN and a push
for the idea that the mainstream media supports the BLM
riots of summer 2020 (Concha). To put it bluntly,
according to the newspaper The Laurel Leader-Call,
mainstream media's hypocrisy is difficult to ignore
(Cegielski). In an interview with former CNN economic
analyst Stephen Moore, he stated that the media platform
used to “pretend” to support right-winged voices to
maintain a balance in their news, but now they have
transitioned to despise conservatives openly.
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Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

The Leader-Call is a prime example of why alternative news

sources can be better than the mainstream. It is a small-town
newspaper that those people can rely on for their information
outside of the mainstream. While the article is an opinion
article, there is still plenty of room for other news that is not
mainstream and can be more factual and beneficial than some of
the mainstream sources; the matter is not necessarily to find a
completely unbiased source that does not exist, but rather the
least biased source possible. That is the benefit of alternative
news and why that should drive more Americans towards it; the
source is the least partisan, most straightforward, and truthful,
and ultimately drives for clarity on a subject matter as opposed
to mainstream media that is scrounging for drama and publicity.
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Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

The divide between the mainstream media and the country will continue to grow. As the majority keep
moving farther and farther left, the base of those willing to listen will get smaller and smaller and
cause them to stop listening and find alternative news, even if they are more partisan or biased
towards the left or right. As opposed to actively reading and participating in the current news, more
US citizens will begin to do the “scan and scroll” of headlines on social media, continue to disbelieve
any fact or fiction they come across on articles, and ultimately be less up to date on current events that
could potentially be significant. Until the mainstream media starts moving back towards being the
voice of facts and reason and not the biased and partisan corporations they are seen as today, they will
continue to lose their base to alternative sources that will give them the information they desire. While
social media can sometimes be a steady alternative to news media, the mainstream drama will travel
faster on those platforms. Thus, a more active search of real bipartisan news will become more
credible and rewarding to the public that desires to be factual rather than opinionated. Ultimately, both
the mainstream and alternative sources will have issues with credibility on a partisan, biased, and
frankly hypocritical level, but when the mainstream fails in factuality, where else is there to go but
alternate sources.
 Works Cited
Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

●Ardèvol-Abreu, Alberto, et al. “Intentional or Inadvertent Fake News Sharing? Fact-Checking

Warnings and Users’ Interaction with Social Media Content.” El Profesional de La

Información, vol. 29, no. 5, Sept. 2020, pp. 1–13. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=a9h&AN=146957

564&site=ehost-live&scope=site

● Brenan, Megan. “Americans' Trust in Media Dips to Second Lowest on Record.” Gallup.com, Gallup, 11 Oct. 2021,

https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-dips-second-lowest-record.aspx.

● Cegielski, Jim. “Mainstream Media Is the Real Dangerous Virus.” The Laurel Leader-Call, 20 Mar. 2020, https://www.leader-

call.com/opinion/columnists/mainstream-media-is-the-real-dangerous-virus/article_0b7bed36-6aae-11ea-bdb4-af0101a9c922.html.

● Concha, Joe. “CNN Ridiculed for 'Fiery but Mostly Peaceful' Caption with Video of Burning Building in Kenosha.” TheHill, The Hill, 27 Aug.

2020, https://thehill.com/homenews/media/513902-cnn-ridiculed-for-fiery-but-mostly-peaceful-caption-with-video-of-burning.

● “Interactive Media Bias Chart.” Ad Fontes Media, 30 Oct. 2021, https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/.

 Works Cited
Sunday 11/21/2021 Newsletter Edition: 001

●Rogstad, Ingrid. “Is Twitter Just Rehashing? Intermedia Agenda Setting between Twitter and

Mainstream Media.” Journal of Information Technology & Politics, vol. 13, no. 2, Apr.

2016, pp. 142-158. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/19331681.2016.1160263.

● Shearer, Elisa, and Amy Mitchell. “Broad Agreement in U.S. – Even among Partisans – on Which News Outlets Are Part of the 'Mainstream

Media'.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 19 May 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/07/broad- agreement-

in-u-s-even-among-partisans-on-which-news-outlets-are-part-of-the-mainstream-media/.

● Shearer, Elisa, and Amy Mitchell. “News Use across Social Media Platforms in 2020.” Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, Pew Research

Center, 4 June 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/01/12/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-in-2020/.

● “The Good, Bad, and in-between of Social Media.” Carrier Clinic, 8 Aug. 2019,

https://carrierclinic.org/2019/08/08/the-good-bad-and-in-between-of-social-media/.