Finding bias in deceptive news

Bias is human nature. For the news, this can reflect such things as what stories are being reported and how they are being reported. Bias is one of the arguments that people are making to encourage individuals to vet news sources. In reality, most signs of bias can be found without having to leave an article.


Before I go any further, I want to go off topic for a moment and explain a little about how I write blog posts. When I have ideas, I add them to a list of ideas. I write one or two posts most weeks. To find a subject, I turn to my list of ideas. I keep several drafts ready to post, and typically post from these drafts roughly every three days. Because of this process, there is usually a delay, sometimes substantial, between deciding on a subject then posting.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I ran into an article online while I was still early in this process that I thought would help me make my point. While still a good example, it is now dated.

The article in question was about Donald Trump calling the Democrats hypocrites for the language that Samantha Bee had used. You can read the article here. In particular, I want to point out the very first sentence.

President Donald Trump, who once bragged that his celebrity status gave him a pass to grab women’s crotches, asked Friday why comedian Samantha Bee wasn’t fired for using a vulgar, sexist term to describe his daughter.

This article starts off topic by attacking language used by Trump. You can argue that his language was in the same vein as the language he's criticizing, but it's technically irrelevant to Bee's comments and the accusation of hypocrisy.

What does this sentence tell us? For starters, the writer hates Trump. Additionally, starting with this sentence can take the edge off Bee's comments. The writer is clearly trying to diminish Bee's words. From this, we can clearly see that this article takes sides and cannot be viewed as neutral.

There are other signs of bias scattered throughout the article, but we don't need it. Similarly, we don't need to vet. For anyone paying attention, we can establish the writers' bias after just one sentence.

Obviously, not everyone is biased towards the Democrats. Here in Washington, KOMO is owned by Sinclair. Sinclair provides many of their own stories to KOMO. Most of these have obvious conservative bias that can be found similarly without vetting.

The example I provided came from the unethical and highly liberal Associated Press. Even conservative outlets utilize the Associated Press as a source. While I did not find the Samantha Bee article from KOMO, I have seen plenty of articles on that website that are definitively skewed toward the perspective of the Democratic party. Simply put, even conservative outlets will post liberal propaganda.