By Riley Schwengel
Contributing Writer
As a young adult, one thing that is very important to me is independence. I like to make my own decisions, participate in the activities that I want to take part in, form my own opinions and choose my own path in life. Many my age interpret this independence as freedom from their parents to do whatever they want. Once they come to college, they relish in the fact that their parents no longer hold the sway that they once did in high school. For example, they can drink and party as much as they want. What many students do not realize is that this newfound freedom applies to other aspects of their lives as well, not just their actions. To me, independence means that I can form my own opinions about all areas of my life, especially regarding politics. Although many news sources are biased, I have found alternatives that make it possible to get just the facts so I can make my own judgments.
I have always been interested in forming my own opinions of current events and political concerns without anyone telling me what to think. Naturally, I first declared myself independent from my parents, forbidding their political leanings from influencing my personal opinions. Enjoying my newfound freedom, I began to look at news sources, ready to consume facts and produce my own thoughts and ideas. However, as time passed, I realized that many trusted “news” sources had no interest in providing unbiased facts. Instead, they only seemed interested in giving their personal opinions on events and political goings-on. FOX, CBS, NBC, CNN and CNBC all seem to be content with reporting their personal slants on news stories, assuming that we are able and willing to just take their opinions as our own without questioning them. Whatever happened to unbiased news? Whatever happened to the idea that a news company’s responsibility was just to give us the facts? When did the ability to form opinions get taken away from the citizen and given completely to the news corporation? Discouraged from the large news corporations, I tried to find an unbiased news source.
I was able to find a few methods of getting unbiased reports. News wire services are helpful: this is where the large news corporations like FOX and CNN get their facts. Services like AP News send out short reports that include no opinions by writers or reporters, which gives them a way to get facts and a general, unbiased idea of events. Foreign news is also an option in addition to these services, especially the European news companies. These companies are much less biased than their American counterparts and their opinions on a story are usually saved until the end of a report, leaving the bulk of the story to be an exceptional resource. Finally, a superb method of getting unbiased news is to look and compare all the different sources on a particular event. For example, if CNN and FOX both report a news story, look at both reports. While the opinions will differ between the two sources, the facts should be easily identifiable because they should be the only part of the story that remains constant. By following these rules of obtaining news, the average college student can be free to make his or her own opinions and thoughts without the interference of news corporations or parents.