Media Bias and me!

I can say, with some certainty, that before college, I have had no education with the explicit intent of preparing me to recognize and react to media bias. I'm interested to know what it was like in larger systems, but my school had enough trouble finding history and science teachers. My senior year, I called three of my teachers "Coach." I never played any form of sport in high school.

Somewhere along the formative process of becoming...well, me, I came to realize that people have this nasty little underlying habit of wanting you to believe what they believe. If I was to muster a guess as to why this is, I think I would have to go with the idea that very few people tend to believe in things that they hold to be wrong. I would denominate this to be human nature, but call it whatever you'd like.

It didn't seem to be a terribly hard concept to realize that newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet were all conceived, staffed, managed, transmitted and financed by humans, or at least what can pass for them in public. All of these different seemingly-human individuals had their own set of beliefs, their own ideas of right and wrong. I fear the day that I meet the person who is apathetic enough to be completely unbiased in everything he does. I don't want to see media made by this person. It would probably resemble reading a dictionary, although if on looked hard enough he or she would probably find some form of bias there too.

I guess the world at large is a bit more naive that I would like to admit. Hell, maybe I am too. I buy products that I see on TV. I'll stop and listen to a news broadcast that is talking about something that attacks or supports an strong bias that I have.


Am I part of the problem?...