Most of the time, people turn to news for updates on the events occurring around them, whether it is politics, terrorist attacks, or stock market drops. We go to these several sites for news that is accurate and unbiased. People are looking for what happened, not what others think about what happened. This is the problem with a lot of news these days. We don’t hear all that happened, but instead we watch what people want us to watch and hear what people want to say. There is a difference between truth and opinion and we refer to the news in hopes for truth but many times we are given an opinion. Most people don’t even know that what they are watching or reading is heavily biased or opinionized.

Everybody is entitled to their own opinions and they should be respected for it. However news shouldn’t be something that should be reported with an opinion. It should be neutral and only stating facts of what happened. Adding feedback and comments about other people’s opinions definitely makes watching the news more interesting however it shouldn’t be excessively involved in every news article or broadcast like it is currently.

For political topics, news sites and stations should be unbiased however an example is how Fox News is extremely biased towards the Republican party. Instead of giving viewers a bird’s eye view of news, Fox gives a dog’s eye view when it comes to politics. Fox often targets Obama and other democrats. In 2012 when Obama was in the race for presidency, 46% of his coverage on Fox was negative while only 6% was positive. For the viewers and readers of Fox news, they will gradually form an opinion not based on facts, but on what other people think. By being politically biased, viewers will not get a chance to formulate their own opinions and views on certain political figures, especially in important times such as presidential elections. Of course Fox news isn’t the only news channel that is politically biased. But the real problem is that people aren’t getting a neutral update on politics, therefore should it even be considered news?

When there is a terrorist attack, the moment people hear about the tragic news, they direct themselves towards a variety of news sites such as CNN, BBC, or NBC. Yes, these channels do report news, however not only do they report with a twist of their own opinion, but they choose which stories to report and make known to their watchers. Let’s take terrorist groups. Without a doubt I could easily name 5 off the top of my head. But what goes through most people’s minds when the word ‘terrorist group’ is mentioned is ISIS. Just today, I checked the news and the ISIS appeared across the headlines for all of the news sites I checked. What happened in Brussel, Belgium was unequivocally devastating and it proved yet again how ignorant humans have become. In addition, ISIS is a terrorist group that has affected our country along with several others. But what about other terrorist groups that don’t or never make headlines, but kill as many if not more innocent people than ISIS? A perfect example of this is Nigeria's Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group. They are much less popular due to how news has chosen to portray events across the globe however I believe more people should recognize how much Boko Haram has done, in addition to ISIS. In fact, Boko Haram has killed more people than ISIS has. But why don't more people know about this group, we may ask ourselves. Humans have become so self absorbed and selfish. The news only reports what is most important to us and what has affected us before (ISIS) instead of reporting all news without opinions like they should be.

Overall, these are a few examples of how biased our news channels have become. I think that if we want to inform our people on what is happening around the world, it should be done in a neutral tone. Not only are we reading about hate against certain political groups, races and religions, these channels are choosing which stories they want to show to the world. The sole purpose of reporting news is to better inform people about the events occurring around the world that they can’t personally witness. Thus, the news should cover all aspects of events, despite popularity. Being informed on the latest news has become as easy as a click here and a tap there. However this news that we are reading or watching might not be as accurate as we deem.