With the constant news cycle, Americans are living in chaos.
Filtered through every social media site and news outlet, the jumble of information and content is contributing to our growing contempt for journalism and the media.
The current trend of distrusting the news speaks to Americans’ ever-changing media sphere. With Fox News and CNN deemed too biased, many teens and young adults get their news from Snapchat or Instagram, and almost 60 percent of X, formerly known as Twitter, users use the app as a news source.
TikTok has also become a news source for users, with 39 percent of adults under 30 saying that they regularly get their news from the app. Misinformation spreads like wildfire on social media sites, and the average reader doesn’t care to fact-check every bit of information.
Journalism must be, to an extent, theatrical to keep audiences coming back to hear how the story ends. The characters need to develop, and the plot needs to thicken, regardless of if the story is resolved or just plain wrong in the first place.
Every news outlet in our country is competing for our viewership and actively trying to broadcast the stories they think we will find the most captivating. The rise of infotainment, especially in television, is warping our perception of what factual news should look like.
Cable news generates revenue based on ratings, so they have to work to keep the viewer engaged throughout their entire broadcast, which is where scandals and sensationalism come into play.
Take Fox News, for example. They are arguably one of the most biased news outlets, and they knowingly report stories that are not based on facts to keep their audience and push their conservative agenda. While Fox is deliberately misleading their viewers, consumers are eating up every word without even thinking of fact-checking.
Although consumers rarely fact-check what they read or hear, it’s not just up to us. Ideally, journalists and reporters would do their part and make sure what they are reporting is true and unbiased.
Unfortunately, not every journalist or news outlet effectively checks their sources or makes sure the statistics and quotes they’re using are factual.
Sixty-eight percent of Americans feel that news sources are unwilling to admit when they’re wrong and will actively try to cover up their mistakes.
There are thousands of news outlets in the U.S., and that’s not including the self-proclaimed news bloggers on TikTok and YouTube. It would be almost impossible to check the accuracy rating of each of these sites to uncover the truth about how accurate our news is. This is why we, as consumers of the news, should fact-check what we read if we want to be considered informed citizens.
Former journalist and political scientist Paul H. Weaver authored an analysis of the current media landscape titled “News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works.” His main thesis was that the government and American news outlets work together in a corrupt cycle of self-interest and manipulation.
Weaver also made the argument that corporations utilize the news as a tool, in the same way that politicians do, to boost the status of their business and tear down their competition.
His thesis speaks to the problem with the never-ending cycle of news. 24/7 coverage was created to meet the public’s demand for live updates on stories and is made easier by social media. The clear issue is there are not enough stories to fill up a 24/7 broadcast.
This leads to newsrooms repeating information, exaggerating secondary stories, and relying on filler content or biased coverage.
We can see this with Fox and MSNBC, who often report on the same event but add their personal biases and analysis to the story. This was very clear during the election, where Fox was informing their audience on Trump’s plans for office and bashing Harris’s agenda, and MSNBC was doing the opposite.
When news sources include personal analysis or opinions in a story, they’re trying to change or influence the public perception of an event. Perception can become someone’s reality, so the news that we consume can affect how we see the world.
One example of this is how some Americans are currently living in fear because of news stories or headlines that they’ve encountered. Reading news stories that are negative or upsetting will boost the cortisol levels in our bodies, resulting in a heightened sense of anxiety that our bodies cannot handle.
The excessive amount of news and information that we have to sort through is becoming detrimental to our mental health, and for certain individuals, it’s placing them in an unnecessary state of fear.
A recent example of news striking fear into community members is the recent postings about ICE raids in central Iowa. Countless pictures were posted across a variety of social media sights from concerned citizens saying ICE was detaining people. The Polk County police department made a statement discounting the misinformation, saying only one person was arrested by ICE agents.
Reading the news and keeping up with current events is how we stay informed citizens, but if we can’t trust news outlets or journalists anymore, then we have to be proactive and fact-check what we read.
While we shouldn’t have to be wary of biases in journalism, it’s sadly the reality of our current media landscape that personal opinions and analyses will be present in our news feeds.