Media Bias, Newsy, and Nidal Hasan
I became aware of an interesting news site lately called Newsy.com. This is the first site to present single-story coverage of a given event with that story compiled from multiple news sources. For instance, regarding the D.C. Sniper and Major Nidal Hasan, both of whom I’ve posted about recently, Newsy cuts together news coverage from CNN, WaPo, the Baltimore Sun, the Daily Telegraph and others to give a multi-sided view of a topic.
This approach does more than simply save viewers channel or websurfing time. The real power of Newsy lies in a different area entirely: this approach allows us to see media bias and holes in coverage in context, and, depending what stories are presented, helps balance them out with complementary viewpoints. Listening to multiple takes on the same subject builds a multi-faceted picture of current events.
For people looking to be better informed, this approach can help free us from being habitually locked into a “favorite” channel or set of ideologically aligned sources which simply amplify any particular bias those sources already have.
I’m all in favor of a more diverse media scene as long as people actually partake of the diversity. Newsy might help spring people out of the subtle but pervasive media bias trap that persistently sucks in the unwary.
Of course, human beings with their own biases are cutting together these stories, so we are never going to get completely bias-free reporting or story presentation. That’s evident in the Hasan coverage, which is slanted towards Hasan-as-terrorist rather than Hasan-as-mentally-ill person. Nevertheless, it is telling on many levels to have multiple news narratives brought together in one place.
Current clips at their site I thought especially interesting were about the D.C. Sniper, Lone Republican Votes for Healthcare Reform, about Anh ‘Joseph’ Cao from New Orleans, and a piece on fixing unemployment.
A short report on Nidal Hasan is embedded here as an example of their work (although I do not deem this an example of unbaised reporting, the information is still interesting. )