Notes and reflections on history and education
Take a look at this screenshot. Based on this screenshot alone, is this outlet trying harder to inform the audience or promote a point of view?
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Most of the evidence supports “promote a point of view,” including the image choices (Trump’s large, stern face), the word choices (“defy,” “warning,” “offensive,” “crusade,” “exposes,” etc.), and the number of stories with a similar slant.
Media Literacy Challenge 2026 – Skill #8: Journalism vs. advocacy
research and writing for newspapers, magazines, websites, and channels; in its strictest form it is what journalists and reporters produce when they are striving to be nuanced, objective, and/or impartial, irrespective of their own biases
journalism that, like opinion journalism, doesn’t claim to be neutral, objective, or impartial; advocacy journalists usually have some social or political goal they’re trying to promote or achieve with their journalism
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3 Responses
Does this news source promote its own agenda or impartially present the facts is a question that I frequently ask myself. I think that the more local a source and the event, the more likely it is to report the facts, sans agenda, although there are notable exceptions. Whether or not to put a fence around the local cemetery became a hotly debated local issue. At first the local paper just reported the case each side was making, then after weeks, the editor published his opinion. National news is, I think, harder to find fact only sources for. International news is often, sadly, under reported in the USA except where the USA is directly involved. International news outlets often carry international news not, or minimally, covered by main stream USA news outlets, and MIGHT be more objective in reporting the facts of USA news.
I don’t mind organizations advocating for their cause, but I wish they would stop calling it journalism and be clear about their objectives. I am still surprised when I read about an event and then my conservative news viewing friends talk about it and then I hear about it from liberal leaning news viewing friends and I can hardly believe we are all talking about the same event. But then again, if you have ever separated two quarreling kids and asked what happened, maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. So perhaps one could say advocacy is human nature and journalism is the more refined art.
As someone who studied and worked in the communications and journalism field, I have closely watched the shift from a huge emphasis on news networks focusing and touting nonbias to not even attempting to portray a neutral story. It is amazing to me how much of a 180 the industry has performed. As a consumer, it makes me very skeptical of the media including the stories that are trying to be less bias. I think it hurts society generally when we do not have a trusted source to gather facts and form our own opinions. Hopefully things will swing back towards traditional news ethics.