Ashley's Blog Post #2

 In "The Bias of Communication", Innis says something that I think relates very much to the current state of our political debates and news broadcasts. He says that "An interest in the bias of other civilizations may in itself suggest a bias of our own." The mainstream media that we consume everyday tends to be either very left leaning or very right leaning. The left wing points out the problems with the right wing and the right wing points out the problems with the left wing, but neither seem aware of their own biases. Channels like Fox News or Ben Shapiro try to act like they are presenting hard facts, while presenting these facts in a way that is extremely one-sided. An example of this would be a Ben Shapiro video that is entitled "Mutilating Children is Now Big Business (This is Pure Evil)." The title uses the term "mutilating children" instead of something more neutral and accurate such as "gender reassignment surgery for minors." The terminology that Shapiro uses very clearly indicates to the audience that these surgeries are morally wrong, while a different title and different word usage would allow the audience to think for themselves and come to their own conclusion on the subject. 

A big problem with media now is that they exist in echo chambers. Innis talks about how we can only learn about other cultures if their media is preserved and made discoverable. While media is being preserved on the internet, it is not being discoverable. This is because algorithms cause people to continually see the same types of posts over and over, so they get a warped view of how the world really is. 

I'm very curious to hear your stories about media bias and echo chambers. Did you ever feel as though you or someone you know was stuck in an echo chamber? How do you deal with the fact that most of the media around you is biased but pretends to be factual? How do you access actual unbiased facts, or is it even possible to do?