Beat the Bias: The Rise of Social Media Journalism
By Opinion Editor Baneen Talpur
Growing up, I was much more well informed about the world around me. The habit of watching the news each night was instilled in me by my father, who would turn on the news every evening after coming home from work. Dinner time would be spent learning about what was happening in the world that day. Overtime, the news became increasingly difficult to follow as there were simply too many things going on at the same time. I, like many others, became desensitised to what was happening as multiple wars, Brexit, and Trump becoming president, played on the screen. The world seemed to constantly be in impending doom, and the way of dealing with was to simply turn it off. As I grew older, the news was now at our fingertips through our phones, so we stopped watching the news on TV, turning to the screens in our pockets instead.
Where I used to be able to focus for a 30-minute news bulletin, I can barely handle a story with more than 5 paragraphs. My attention span has dropped, and unless the headline could be compacted into an Instagram story, I no longer find it easy to engage. While new technology has increased our connection to the wider news, allowing us to access news with more immediacy, TV news, and politics in general, have become very inaccessible. The language that politicians use is often way out of touch for the average individual. Information is gatekept. Things are presented to us in such a complex way and every time a politician is asked a question, they run around it in so many circles, leading you to forget what was actually asked in the first place. Unless the journalist refuses to fall for this, though this seems to be a rare occurrence, the conversation starts from something simple and turns into a minefield that only an expert with years of study of the topic is able to understand.
Up until recently, I felt really guilty about this. I thought that because I did not watch the news on TV, that I was somehow less smart than those that did, or that they somehow had a better grasp on current affairs than me. I could no longer comment on anything because I was not using intellectual sources. I was not using difficult terms like the journalists on TV do. I don’t talk how they do, and I don’t look like they do. The news now seems to have a sense of poshness to it that is simply beyond me. The content no longer felt accessible, it felt elitist. If it wasn’t told to me through the “Bimbo University” mindset, I could no longer comprehend it properly. Because I felt out of touch with how the information was being presented, I felt that I could not access it.
I lost my faith in the news a long time ago. Bias is now rampant in the industry. Before information used to be presented to you and you had to pick a side, now it feels as if the news has picked a side for you. If you do not agree with that side, you are labelled as one of three things: inferior, anarchist and/or anti-society. The news is now somehow a way to keep society in check, allowing no space for independent thinking.
This is particularly true for the current genocide against Palestinians by Israel. News coverage primarily focuses on Israel, justifying the actions of the Israeli government to its audience. Every news bulletin is siding with Israel, saying that “Israel has every right to defend itself”, while my Instagram feed is showing me hundreds of Palestinian bodies in bags. While before, I downplayed the importance of social media journalism, in this context, it is the only way that I can find out about what is actually happening on the ground. With recent blackouts in Gaza, social media journalism has become our only way of accessing information on the conflict. The journalists that once tried to expose corrupt governments, spending months and years chasing a story, are now defending the actions of those very same governments. Solely on Instagram and Twitter do I get to see the reality of what is happening. Even social media is trying to be policed now with the rise in shadow banning and shutting down the voices of those who are trying to speak up.
The news is no longer neutral, it is actively trying to tell us what we should believe, ostracising us if we do not comply. The truth is trying to be shut somewhere far, far away. Misinformation is on the rise, and it feels as if the public is being kept in the dark. The information could be presented in a much simpler manner, but they choose not to. The information could be less in favour of the white man and treat all humans as equal, but it chooses not to. Take for example the media’s response to the war in Ukraine versus the war in Palestine. Ukrainian life is sacred, while Palestinian life is not. Since 9/11, the news has constantly vilified Muslims, and the average Muslim spends their whole life trying to shift the narrative, trying prove that they are not like the Taliban savages that are shown on TV.
Those in power are afraid of us and so they hide what is really going on. They use difficult terminology and hard words to discourage the public from figuring things out so that those in power can get away with it. Maybe an Instagram story may not seem to mean much, after all we do go through hundreds of them in a day, but with no one credible source out there to inform us, we must now take the responsibility to inform ourselves and to convey that information in an accessible manner. If Bassam Yousef’s dark-humour-filled comedy is what is getting the point across to me, then so be it. We should not be ashamed of our source of news as long as it is factually correct. The world is doomed and there is a story to tell. That story could change lives and it could very well be the only way that someone finds out about the latest event in world affairs. So put that “Free Palestine” Instagram up. Let’s show the government the power that the average person can have.
