Sometimes articles headlines on some websites are slanted in a way to be intentionally read without being factual or to give the reader a preset notion of the information in the article. I see this type of thing all the time in news stories. I have to stop and go back and check other sites to see if the story is the same on other news outlets. Sometimes other readers will call out the article in the comments.
After a quick search, I found an article with a slanted headline.
"Walmart's Latest Scheme to Replace the Middle Class with an Underclass Forced to Buy its Shoddy Goods"
Whether or not you support Wal-Mart's business practices, it is hard to disagree with the message this headline is delivering. Just by reading this headline, you know that it is going to be an anti-Walmart article. If you use social media like Reddit or Digg to see your news, than you might come across this article without going to the website. Or sometimes you will just see the headline. The headline can stick in your head and make you think differently if you do not read the article or understand the website you are reading the news on. Alternet.org is a very left-wing liberal website. Regardless of your political leanings, these websites exist for both liberals and conservatives who will try to appeal to their readers rather than reporting facts in a lot of cases.
By using 'Wal-Mart's Latest Scheme', it implants the idea in the readers mind that Wal-Mart is a shady company who plots how to make more money. Whether or not the information is true is irrelevant when you read a slanted headline. These kinds of headlines exist everywhere and are created daily and we need to be vigilant about not having our opinions slanted by misleading articles and headlines.
Do websites and media outlets who have an expressed and explicit bias have an obligation to deliver the news in a fair and unbiased way? I think there's often a distinction made between pure journalism sources and pure analytic sources. I wouldn't expect an outlet like the National Review to give an unbiased representation of the facts. That's not their mission. Their entire purpose is to arm conservatives with talking-points and to formulate conservative policy stances. A source like CNN or even Fox News, on the other hand, I expect a certain level of fairness when engaged in journalism. I think a big part of sifting through the mess of media today is to know the intended audience of an outlet and to understand their mission as a company or non-profit organization. I don't read "The Nation" the same way as the CNN homepage, because they both represent a wholly different cog in the machinery of modern media.
ReplyDeleteI'd also add that it's the expressed mission of any firm to "make more money." I think the pro-capitalist stance isn't so much that it's wrong to characterize firms as doing so, but rather that it's an important part of social/economic progress for businesses to pursue economic advantage. If that means outsourcing labor to an increasingly international labor market, or importing a resource that another country can produce more efficiently, then it would be counter-productive to everybody's economic well-being for a firm to reject doing so.