Manchester City Library

Part 1 

Part 2

Bias and Fact Checking

REMEMBER All media has bias. There is no escaping bias in media. You can, however, be more aware of it and make informed decisions. 

Bias can come in multiple forms and include, but are not limited to:

• Corporate bias – When the interests of the parent company are reflected in their news coverage.
• Personal bias – When the reporter or journalists’ views impact the way the story is told. Includes the journalists political bias.

There are some things you can look for when determining bias:

• Fair and Balanced Reporting – Is your source of news coverage fair and balanced? The absence of a balanced report (or the presence of an agenda) reflects upon the bias of the source (website, news station, and/or reporter).
• Presentation – The tone (words used to tell the story) and the framing (how the story is packaged) are parts of the presentation and reflect bias. Bias can even be shown in story selection! 

The website AllSides.com is a resource you can use to view news stories from a variety of sources. This image is from June 12^th and shows two news stories with articles from left, right, and center sources. 

What can you do?

Fact Check!!

• Use fact checking websites like Snopes or FactCheck.org, check other news sources, or even do a basic Google search. Also, double check to see if your source is satire or not (such as The Onion). 

Avoid “echo chambers” or “information bubbles” and try using multiple news sources

• People are often friends with those that share similar ideologies as themselves. Your Facebook feed, therefore, will reflect those ideologies and creates an echo chamber. It is natural to seek sources that will reinforce a point of view. However, algorithms will also reinforce this by ranking search results based on your browsing history. To balance this out, try using multiple news sources.

Keep an eye out for our rescheduled program on Media Literacy once the Manchester City Library reopens!

For more info on Media Literacy, check out these sites:

https://www.snopes.com/

https://www.propublica.org/ https://www.factcheck.org/

https://www.factcheck.org/

https://www.politifact.com/ https://www.allsides.com/

https://www.allsides.com/

For more info on Media Literacy, check out these sites:

https://newslit.org/

https://namle.net/

https://namle.net/

https://www.commonsensemedia.org

https://medialiteracynow.org/

https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/newsandmedialiteracy/

https://namle.net/