Conservatism is very hot button issue in our society. We can clearly see it in our everyday life when we go to news outlets to get our daily news. Whether you get into a debate and get punched in the face, then have the media say that you were “allegedly attacked” even though there’s photographic evidence, or whether we harmlessly argue in classrooms, whenever we get into a conversation dealing with politics, we are quick to defend. We state our political stance and are ready to debate with anyone with the opposing view. This happens often in our classrooms.
Specifically, political debates occur in the classes that deal with politics. I did a survey on how students felt about Conservatives and how they felt about their censorship on the media. The survey was taken by students in a few classes that dealt with politics and society. The results of the survey and their implications will be shown further on in the article. The results were shocking but not unexpected since the classes were made up of mostly minority students, and most minorities tend to favor more Liberal Democrats. But nevertheless, these results are shocking since it means that some students may be getting biased news and which will shift their opinion when it comes to how they see the world and how they view those who are different from them.
In Figure 2, you can see how divided students were when it came to accepting their friend’s political point of view. Almost half of surveyed students answered ‘maybe’, which suggests that they will judge their friend’s opinion and if they like it, they will respect it and if they don’t like it, then they will not respect it.
Another question that was asked in the survey was “how biased do you think the media is”, with 1 being very biased and 5 being not biased at all. As seen in Figure 3, most students felt that the media is very biased. And since media is how everyone gets their information from, biased news outlets can affect how the students view politics in general.
Another question asked in the survey was “do you feel as if our country is divided politically because of fake news?”, and the results pictured in Figure 4 show that 85.1% of the students that were surveyed do believe that the media and fake news play a part in how our country is divided. This corresponds with Figure 3 where it was asked “how biased do you think the media is?” because it puts the students responses together. The two results show that students recognize that the media is biased (seen in Figure 3) and that because of that bias, our country is divided (seen in Figure 4).
Overall, this survey showed me that students at Garinger are aware of media bias and they do believe that it tears our country apart. What we have to do to lessen the effects of media bias is to get our information from various sources because if you get your information from one source and one source only, the news outlet may rearrange the story to favor their political bias. We should also spread more awareness about media bias because my survey only covered classes that dealt with politics but we have to see what others have to say.
The Rambler 