Understanding Media Bias
Have you ever considered if you have been biased in favor or against something? If you have not yet realized it, we all have some level of bias. You could have a favorite member in a music band because he/she looks cool, or something crucial like maybe agreeing to a political party without considering other parties. A bias makes a person decide between two or more subjects and has a prejudice against the other. Bias occurs when a person is leaning more on the perspective they like or simply just want to believe without considering the other side. Biases have their own pros and cons. I could say that each bias has their own level of value. Bias could have a significant impact negatively on people’s view of a topic, and sometimes it doesn’t affect opinions significantly. When it comes to researching the facts and knowing current events ,it is essential that people are aware of media bias.
Media bias is defined as the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of many events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. It is also known by the term “filter bubble” because people tend to reinforce their beliefs and bias by only listening to certain sources or perspectives.
Bias isn’t always bad, it is only bad when it affects another person’s knowledge about fact through targeted propaganda. News has been more accessible because of technology, it made it easier for people to access news from all around the world, at the same time news outlets tend to get more competitive trying to make the news released be seen more. Journalist try to color their articles with some level of bias just to make it seem more interesting than usual. There are different types of biases depending on the type of media. 
Showing bias can happen in many forms, and one of them is through video and images. Being biased through video and images might sound confusing but journalists use this sometimes to throw-off readers like the Vancouver kiss couple.
Link for an article about it: Link
A journalist used a picture of a couple that look like they are making out in the middle of a riot. But, that wasn’t the case. Another picture revealed that it wasn’t a couple kissing, but a woman that got trampled by a riot police while his boyfriend helped her up. Journalists could show only parts of a video or picture to hide the parts they do not want to show.
How can people identify media bias easily?
Allsides.com and adfontesmedia.com are websites that have charts and the types of media bias you could encounter. A media bias chart is a chart that consists of almost all of the well known news outlets in America. It is used to know what information you could expect from the media outlet. Each news outlet positions on the chart depending if they’re liberal or conservative sided, and on how factual or opinionated the news outlets are. There are only a few that are able to avoid political propaganda and contain mostly factual information
Liberal or Left is defined as: People who believe that having a big government is better to make sure everything is going as it should be and have laws to be able to manage the economy equally. Liberal media is biased towards Democratic views.
Conservative or Right is defined as: Those who think that having a small government is better, because it would be a more flexible environment for people to work in and there it is less restraining. Conservative media is biased toward Republican views.
Independent is defined as: Independents are those who don’t settle for each party. They vote for which party the independents think is correct and not by being biased to a certain political party. Independent media attempts to report the facts from multiple perspectives.
Allsides.com has a lot of information about media bias. It has media bias ratings, a media bias chart, and a fact check bias chart. There are 12 different types of media bias and each of them is used in different types of ways in order to be biased on an article; here is a link for more information about the types of media bias and how to spot them. Link
More info is available in the website Allsides.com
Adfontesmedia.com has a clear chart about media bias which will make it easier for readers to know what bias to expect when reading a new article. Link
Having a bias on news outlets could have a huge impact to those who want to know the truth and the facts of what is happening around the world. People should be able to identify media biases to avoid believing opinions trying to be viewed as facts. Everyone is biased and that is fine.