Twenty years ago, if you said the phrase ¨fake news,” you would be met with some awkward stares. For so long, people have been able to trust their source of news, but in today’s time, that has changed. When I watch the news or look up an online news source, I want to know about the events around the world. Most major news networks have resorted to just covering politics. I watched the news for 30 minutes straight the other day, and not one other thing was mentioned other than American politics. All I wanted was to know what was happening around the world. I wondered if the news companies had websites that covered worldwide news. Also, if they did report news, how biased was the information presented. I spent three days checking each news site three times a day and here is what I discovered.

CNN

Let me make one thing clear, this is a political site, not a news site. On their website, the biggest headlines are about the U.S. government. They almost completely overlooked the terrorist shooting at Kabul, Afghanistan, which happened earlier this week, but spent time covering  the Mueller investigation, which has been going on for months. CNN has many articles pertaining to their beliefs, which are mainly liberal. One thing that CNN fails to do is report news without bias. There are quite a few things that they have reported incorrectly, which is unacceptable when you are a trusted news source. One of the most recent inaccurate stories was about the Trump-Wikileaks email report. CNN quickly made a retraction, but that doesn’t make it any less damaging or frustrating. It is fairly common knowledge that CNN is a liberal news site, so many of their writers don’t care for President Trump by nature. Still, I wish they would at  least give him some credit. While they may not agree with his politics, he is still the President and they should cover him fairly and give him some credit for what he has done well. Trump has done very well in trying to follow through with his campaign promises. CNN should in the least acknowledge that he is trying to do what he said he would. Also, our country is running very smoothly economically right now, but that fact is rarely covered. I just wish all issues and the President were covered equally and fairly.

Fox News

Like CNN, this is a political page, rather than a news source. It seems that Fox’s only reason for existence is to report about other news agencies’ fake news. Fox hardly ever reports actual international news. Seriously, why is it newsworthy that CNN used the word “s**thole” 170 times in one day? They should be reporting on international relations and the stock market surge, maybe even the Super Bowl. Fox is always bragging that they are the trusted news source. It would be hard to not be trusted with news if you never report anything. Fox news is a conservative political page.  If you watch half an hour of CNN, then watch half an hour of Fox, it is likely that you will see two very contrasting views. If a viewer watches Fox news and CNN at the same time, you will find that the two aren’t even reporting on the same topics. When Trump did the State of the Union address, it was very noticeable the difference in reporting between Fox and CNN. CNN said that it just created a divide in Capitol Hill, while Fox said that it helped create unity. Fox says it is determined to not have bias, and furiously denies it has bias when facing accusations. Fox does have bias, and a lot of it. Don’t let them fool you into thinking that they are unbiased.

ABC

In the days I scrolled through the ABC website I was actually pleased with what I found. There was a decent selection of different news articles. The news was actually fairly unbiased from what I saw. Some of the opinion articles that were on the website were attacking Republicans and not attacking Democrats, but it was really subtle. I’m sure non-politically minded people would really not notice much. They did, however, report that Trump was impeached, which was incorrect. This botched report sent the stock market plummeting. Overall, this site reported the news more diversely and fairly than Fox or CNN in my opinion.

NBC

NBC had the most news to report from around the world. On their website I found several pieces of news that I thought was important that no other news company reported on. There were reports on a superstorm that occured in Australia and one about an officer who brings superheroes to life for sick children. Right away, that made me like this company. However, NBC did seem to support some liberal issues by giving them more coverage than was really needed for the topic, in my opinion. They did have strong news coverage through a lot of news articles with a good amount of  variety. Their reporting is better than any of their competitors.

CBS News

CBS was the only news station that didn’t have anything politically involved as a headliner on their website during the time I was closely looking at each website. I looked up and down through their website and discovered that this was a site that wanted the viewer to know what was going on around the world. There was a wide variety of topics, such as the flu is still going strong, different crimes that have occured, FEMA is ending its support to Puerto Rico, and Trump is keeping Guantanamo Bay open.

AllSides.com is a website that measures the bias in media. The site uses the terms left, leans left, center, leans right, and right to describe which direction a news source slants. CNN is far left, Fox leans right, and CBS, NBC, and ABC all lean left. The only placements that I disagreed with based on my brief study are Fox news and CBS. I believe that Fox should be far right, and CBS should be center.

Unfortunately, there are always going to be news sources that try to persuade viewers to side with their perspective, and sometimes that is going to be by using biased news, fake news, or alternate facts. It is important to be aware of this and to read carefully and question what you read. Also, consider doing your own fact-checking. Sites like www.snopes.com and www.politifact.com are thought to be valid and trustworthy fact-checking sites. Furthermore, there is hope on the horizon. Websites such as Reuters have committed themselves to reporting news as unbiased as they can. While there is always going to be some kind of bias in news, I think it is pivotal that news agencies just give facts, rather than opinion.