I saw a headline post on my “Trending” news section of Facebook. It said, “Man with concealed handgun license takes down shooter.”
That worried me. It worried me, because it sounded somewhat biased. Surely different news outlets would have headlined that different ways. So I researched it.
Sure enough, Fox News had that headline. Then outlets like CNN had “Shooter acquired gun legally…” Isn’t it interesting how neither of those headlines are particularly biased, yet they reveal a hidden bias inside? The articles, of course, were dripping with bias.
This started scaring me, because it showed that most of my friends on Facebook tend to be more conservative, so Facebook assumed I’d like that particular spin on the news story. It makes me nervous when I only ever hear one side of the story, because I’ve found one side of the story is rarely the real story.
But that’s all most people ever get. All of their friends are either hyper liberal or hyper conservative, so their own thoughts get echoed back to them. That further solidifies their views. Then it turns everyone who doesn’t agree with their Facebook majority into the enemy.
I can’t afford to narrow my view like that. So when Facebook tries to start spoon feeding stuff it thinks I already agree with, I have to do something about it. So I try to seek out people who believe differently than me. I look for different opinions about each news story of interest (which, by the way, aren’t many news stories).
I’m not trying to have an opinion on everything. But I find that as I expose myself to more worldviews and opinions on a matter, I grow in compassion for people who believe differently than me.
It turns out, most people have real reasons for believing the way they do—even when it’s different than me. Imagine that!
http://biblehub.com/proverbs/18-17.htm
Thanks this was very helpful Jonathan