This page of our Media Literacy guide has a great definition for Media. Check it out!
Bias vs. Agenda
Students often come to media literacy thinking that the primary thing they should be concerned about is bias. And since everyone has some form of bias, that ultimately leads to students thinking no one can really be trusted.
Personal bias has real impacts. But bias isn’t agenda, and it's agenda that should be your primary concern for quick checks.
Bias is about how people see things; agenda is about what a news or research organization is set up to *do*. A site that clearly marks opinion columns as opinion, employs dozens of fact-checkers, hires professional reporters, and takes care to be transparent about sources, methods, and conflicts of interest are less likely to be driven by political agenda than a site that does not do these things. And this holds true even if the reporters themselves may have personal bias. Good process and good culture goes a long way to mitigating personal bias.
by Mike Caulfield Smoke-free (discussion) (notion.so) on Check, Please!
Below are some examples to help us think critically about media.
Keep in mind, many media outlets push out opinion pieces or interview people with their own agendas or biases, but that does not necessarily mean the outlet holds those opinions or biases. It is important to know how to identify an opinion piece, versus a news article or report. Opinion pieces are sometimes labeled or identified as Op-eds, Viewpoints, Commentary, or Editorials depending on the context. Sometimes, outlets have an entire section dedicated to opinion pieces. Other times, the opinion pieces are mixed in, but identified via a label that can be hard to miss, much like sponsored content labels.
Sometimes, the line between commercial/sponsored content (ie content with an agenda -- an agenda to sell you something), is blurred, as highlighted in this episode segment of Last Week Tonight (language warning):
One outlet may even publish articles on a topic that seem to differ or contradict. Here is an example of differing perspectives in one outlet (Vice) that seem to contradict about extremist groups (keep in mind that vegans do not drink milk):
Why So Many White Supremacists Are into Veganism | Got Milk? Neo-Nazi Trolls Sure as Hell Do
View this box and the links below to more information about media:
You can take this TCC tutorial to learn how to find valid, reliable information.